#Hell’s Kitchen Season 20 Episode 3 Review: Young Guns: Come Hell Or High Water!

At three installments into the season, two things are undeniably true.

One, the Blue team will lose challenges and eff up dinner service, and two, their signature dish is raw chicken.

For a bonus, we can also add that Antonio won’t know when and how to STFU. After everything that transpired on Hell’s Kitchen Season 20 Episode 3, including Chickengate, it’s hard to envision the Blue Team ever redeeming themselves any time soon.

It’s a wonder Chef Ramsay hasn’t busted a gasket with all of the things he’s dealing with because of these young guns. May whatever entity have mercy on any of the patrons of Hell’s Kitchen who land on the Blue side of the restaurant.

I’m not sure anyone over there has managed to consume a single meal. The real surprise is that there aren’t any hangry customers storming the serving station, demanding to know what the hell is happening back there.

If the Blue team has any hope of having a successful dinner service, they need to win a challenge to boost morale.

The good news is that they’re capable of it since they were close to winning the throwback squid cleaning challenge. Finally, there was some excitement between the teams competing.

It was close, and we didn’t know who would take the win home as they were running neck and neck.

The squid cleaning challenge goes back to the first season, and you can’t help but think that some of these challenges purposefully exist to mess with the vegan/vegetarian contestants on the series.

Neither Emily nor Josie were thrilled about retrieving live squid from a dunk tank and dissecting and cleaning them. It’s such a gross process, but despite their reservations, they were all-in.

The only one who seemed to struggle with the challenge was Antonio, who had barely eased one squid in moments before the challenge ended.

Antonio wants this, but he’s such a hot mess most of the time that there’s no way he can last long. He desperately wants to take on a leadership role, but he doesn’t earn the respect of anyone on his team.

Without respect and skill, how can he be a worthwhile leader? Maybe he needs to zip his trap and absorb things like a sponge instead.

The Red team’s reward appeared fun. The car racing was a blast, but it’s the food that looked delectable. That filet was pure, mouthwatering perfection.

And it beat the calamari, fish sauce, and whatever other things added to that ghastly sandwich the guys had to eat.

It’s not Hell’s Kitchen unless they throw their own version of Fear Factor eating challenge cuisine into the mix. Although, perpetual good sport and the only saving grace of the Blue team, Steven, didn’t mind eating it.

He always manages to make the best of any situation, including working on a team that is bringing him down.

And he’s observant AF. He already knew dinner service would be a disaster in large part because of Jay, and he wasn’t wrong.

Jay was one of the first to make a poor impression with his introductory dish, and he’s coasted by for a bit, but he was a disaster on the garnish station during this installment.

I mean, it’s freaking garnish.

Garnish is a deceptively hard station, and it’s prone to cause issues for many, but Steven had to run Jay a play-by-play on everything, and it made him sound as if he didn’t have any experience whatsoever in the area.

You’re not even cooking meats, dude! They’re sides! Why is it this difficult?

And yet, even with the poor communication and the team’s inability to retain what dishes they were supposed to be making, Jay’s garnish nightmare paled in comparison to Alex being ANOTHER chef on this team who can’t cook chicken.

They’re all supposedly cooks competing for an opportunity to head a successful restaurant that belongs to a Michelin freaking Chef.

Shouldn’t they all know how to make freaking chicken by now?! It’s getting ridiculous. I’ve never seen so much raw poultry in my life.

Not once did Alex produce a chicken that wasn’t severely undercooked. It was so bad that Curtis Stone could see it from his VIP table on the Red team’s side of the kitchen.

For some reason, Ramsay goes easy on these guys producing raw meat consistently. It doesn’t make any sense.

One instance of serving raw poultry is a mistake, but more than that is a pattern, and it’s disconcerting that this is the biggest obstacle on the team. Ten-year-olds can cook chicken.

Service was so awful he had to pull the Blue team aside twice before kicking them out. They couldn’t bounce back for anything in the world, and the amount of food wasted is a crying damn shame.

Why can’t they find a way to serve the messed-up food to those in need or something? It’s painful every time Ramsay throws out a plate of poorly made or aesthetically imperfect scallops or whatever else.

The women had a similar issue with recalling all the orders shouted out and making the proper amount of food, but at least they bounced back from it, even though they resorted to singing their orders to get them right.

But the guys fumble through a service, and then when it gets bad, they give up.

The obvious choices for the bottom two were Jay and Alex. It shouldn’t have even required a discussion, but they conversed about it anyway, and that’s when Antonio’s inability to stay quiet put him on his team’s radar.

In his attempt to play leader again, he offered to fall on his sword and go up, taking accountability for his shortcomings during service.

But then, when someone agreed with him, he was shocked that anyone would criticize him and stated he didn’t just offer to go up.

Antonio doesn’t even listen to the words coming out of his mouth, so why does he keep subjecting everyone else to them? He shot himself in the foot this time, and he has to know he’s on borrowed time as long as he keeps irritating the ever-loving hell out of his teammates.

As annoying as Antonio consistently is, Alex was a nuisance, too.

Yes, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” but, astonishingly, he managed to rope in three other people during chickengate.

Did it matter if Sam touched the meat when he took it out of the oven or Trenton or whoever else told Alex their opinion of it?

Alex’s job was to cook the meat. He failed to make sure he fully cooked it. It shouldn’t have fallen on anyone else. No one needed to tell him his meat was raw.

It also reflected poorly on him when Ramsay gave him time to acknowledge all the people who told him his chicken was OK, and it changed each time.

When Ramsay walked away, it was one person, and by the time he came back, it was two others.

Alex should’ve gone home for all of that, but Jay bit the bullet instead.

With no shining star on this team aside from Steven, weak cooks, and annoying people like Antonio, it’s not looking good for the Blue team.

You hate to see it. Competition is only fun when actual competitors are putting up a fight.

Right now, this isn’t a competition; this is a slaughter.

Over to you, Hell’s Kitchen Fanatics.

Any of you out there watching and reading? Let us know!

Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.