KEY POINTS:
A funny thing happened on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA last night: The tough-guy chef looked almost like a pussycat compared to the Italian family whose restaurant he'd turned up at to turn around.
Well, "turned up at" is pushing it. Like all reality telly, little is left to
chance and the Pellegrino family were made for reality telly talent.
They ran a dysfunctional restaurant the way they ran their dysfunctional family: With a lot of noise and fighting and with the woman doing all the hard work while the men sat around being waited on.
"The speciality of this restaurant is arguing," we were told, and this speciality was about to turn into brawling, as the hot-headed chief lazy bastard Peter took to chasing bill collectors and shouting and carrying on like the very caricature of a hot-headed Italian restaurant owner.
Peter was quite something. At least he thought he was quite something.
The kitchen was a graveyard of long-dead appliances but while he'd spend money on his spivvy suits and getting his teeth whitened, he was too mean to splash out on a stove that actually worked.
And Peter didn't actually work either. He swanned about comping his mates and ordering his hard-working sister to make him drinks when she was flat out trying to serve real customers. Gordon was so taken aback by this family he went a bit quiet (for him) while he took the measure of the true awfulness of the situation.
He told Peter what he did about his teeth: brushed them. Peter looked at Gordon as though he'd never heard of such a way of dealing with teeth.
Peter, thought Gordon, was hoping for a role in a Goodfellas movie.
When Gordon told the family what was wrong with their restaurant, which was everything, and Peter, Peter was hurt. "It's like someone telling you your kid is ugly."
I was really hoping it might come to blows between Gordon and Peter, "a 250-pound spoiled baby", but no such luck.
But it was like watching two Staffordshire terriers circling each other in pursuit of dominance, and baring their teeth and saying the F-word a lot.
This is silly stuff really, but as far as silly reality stuff goes, it's mildly entertaining if a bit of a swiz.
Overnight a brand-new kitchen is installed, but who paid for it? We're not told; it just appears like magic. Perhaps it's from kitchen fairies. This is all about fairy tales anyway: starts out bad, ends up lovely, with everyone living happily ever after (or until the cameras go home).
Gordon and Peter shouted and swore and Gordon called Peter some very rude things but at the end Peter said, "I really fell in love with him. My first son is going to be named after him: Gordon Ramsay Pellegrino." And your response to that would have been either "aw" or "yuk" depending on how sweet you like your tiramisu.
* Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA is on Thursday, 9.30pm, TV One.
