Chef reached a new level of dominance over his minions Monday night: Josh actually bowed to him at the show's end. Though Ramsay must be intolerable, there was no mutiny last night, only the usual tempest of anger from Ramsay, this time accompanied by decent outbursts from Rock after the guys (plus Melissa, who was switched on the last show) lost the first challenge, a lobster cook off.  It seemed he was having one of those moments where his original anger acted as fuel, creating more anger and making him increasingly more ridiculous ("*#&^%ing BISQUE! @&!$%ing CRAB AND LOBSTER BISQUE!! THAT AIN'T ORIGINAL!  THAT AIN'T CREATIVE!!"), which entertained greatly.

After the loss, the men sifted through garbage and the women went to an In Touch magazine photo shoot.  Ramsay accompanied the women, and, as usual, he acted stiff and surly. Soon things disbanded for dinner service.

As far as dinner goes, one could start to pity the patrons of Hell's Kitchen, who never seem to get a full dinner service due to Ramsay's ending things early out of frustration.  A few mishaps occurred in the kitchen: Bonnie set a pan on fire, Julia burst into tears, and the guys generally sucked. Not much else; the guys lost and Melissa was the fairly obvious choice to be booted.

Having seen neither "Animal House," the quintessential college film, nor "Undeclared," the sort-of-quintessential college television series, I fear I may be lacking perspective on the new series "Greek," a fraternity/sorority dramedy that premiered this week on ABC Family. However, I am a college student, and, though not a Greek-er myself, I know a thing or two about the campus scene. With this knowledge, I might venture to guess that even diverse institutes of higher learning do not house quite as many time-tested stereotypes as Cyprus-Rhodes University, the show's fictional setting. There is the quiet irritable Asian engineering student; the frat boy in boxers and a cowboy hat; the rival preppy jerk frat boy; the bitchy perfect rich bulimic sorority girl; and the wide-eyed ingénue of a nerd trying to reinvent himself freshman year (our protagonist, Rusty, whose attempts to make it into a fraternity make up the pilot's plot). 

Rusty has a sister, Casey, who's a queen bee at Zeta Beta Zeta, and who should be able to score him a bid because of her preppy-stud boyf, Evan, President of Omega Chi.  But she sort of refuses to acknowledge Rusty, which is an issue. 

He throws himself into the fray of Rush Week anyway, beginning with failure and ending with an awkward monologue about the greatness of fraternity brothers that impresses Evan at Omega Chi. Before the rush process wraps up thing turn a little soap opera-ish: there's a sexy moral dilemma with sexy complications, and a few comic interludes. Rusty is idealistic and a little charming throughout; a few other characters show some promise too (Dale, the roommate, one half of the internet comedy duo Clark and Michael, might be funny given more screen time). But, for a premiere, a lot of the jokes bombed and many scenes seemed like place-holders. So we will see: elements are there, elements are missing, but improvements will likely be necessary for this thing to take off.

We can now say for certain that chef Gordon Ramsay is both a ferocious hunter and an excellent marksman. He demonstrated Monday night, when he took the boys to play paintball after they won the first challenge, a leftovers cookoff. Lone wolf Ramsay managed to take out Josh, Brad, and Rock without suffering a single hit.

Meanwhile, the girls cleaned the kitchen as punishment. As per usual, things were tensely silent until Bonnie cried. There was a reason, but I forgot what it was.

For dinner service, steaks were high (that's a food pun! Like on the show!). Each team had to come up with its own menu, which meant entertaining bickering within the teams as well as some novelty in terms of the cooking itself. The boys, predictably, went flashy, offering turbot with wild mushroom ragout and other foreign sounding fare. The girls did a little more infighting, and ended up with the more popular menu (diners had to order entirely from one or the other) thanks to the last-minute addition of Julia's strip steak and shrimp entrée. Cooking started; yelling ensued; people were called donkeys. It isn't that the cooking portion isn't exciting, it just seems as if the entire second half of the show would be more compelling if it had a little variety. 

Anyway, Gordon didn't like either side. Julia, the only one he doesn't hate, picked who would be nominated for the girls; the guys' choice was a team effort, with Brad eventually going. He got tossed before Bonnie in a bit of a shocker. Next week, teams will merge.

With only five chefs left Gordon Ramsay had fewer targets to spew venom on, so he made sure to cover everyone completely. Really the most spectacular moment was when he tossed a comatose Josh out of the kitchen and off the show partway through dinner service. Describing it wouldn't do it justice, but I will say he threw a spoon.

Following that, Rock, Jen, and Bonnie fought over very little very loudly. Rock's really fun when he's fighting with people, but he's better in front of the camera on his own. He started wailing about how sometimes he "likes working with women," but then he swore at Bonnie and Jen and did that angry grunt thing he does.

All of this, extra axing included, made it seem as if this was the most eventful episode yet. The editors went for maximum tear-jerking, playing up the touching story of a certain chef who, despite her Waffle House training, managed to make her way to the final rounds of Hell's Kitchen. That was before Ramsay kicked off Julia.

Nearly everyone was crying, even Rock (though he didn't care about Julia; he was mad at himself). Ramsay showed a new side of himself, kissing Julia like an angry uncle before telling her that he would pay her way through culinary school.