Best. Reality. TV Show. Ever.

Devil in the details: Chef Gordon Ramsay emerges from the flames

Hell’s Kitchen, whose 4th season begins tonight on FOX at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT, didn’t get even a nod from me during its first two seasons, but after a chance viewing last year, I’ve become perversely hooked. Set in the titular TV restaurant/studio of Scottish chef Gordon James Ramsay, the contest pits two ambitious teams of would-be head cooks against each other, as they struggle to win top dog status in their own “million-dollar restaurant” (although, when you think of it, a million-dollar restaurant could be, like, a little corner eatery).

So what? This is the essential topology of every r-show since the May 2000 U.S. debut of Survivor. I think what roped me in, however, is:

1. To me, cooking is really hard…no, scratch that…impossible. With every other kind of reality show, I can at least imagine myself performing the task of, say, climbing a tree, or figuring out how to sell wedding dresses.

But with a cooking show, I haven’t a clue what they’re doing. I mean, to this day, peering over my wife’s shoulder as she—a really good cook—watches one cooking show or another, every time I hear the word reduction, I just feel dumb. Yet, I stay emotionally connected to ritual I’m viewing, because the output, is, after all, food.

2. Hell is hell. The first time I saw Hell’s Kitchen, it looked like a lot of high-angle shots of people walking around through steam, cursing incessantly. (The words, bleeped out on American TV, are reportedly not covered up on the show’s Australian or late-night UK editions.) The Apprentice looks positively genteel by comparison. In fact, watching Hell, it quickly becomes clear why, until Celebrity Apprentice, Trump was in the dumps, while Hell’s Ramsay is branching out into additional TV vehicles. At least until the recent season, The Apprentice maintained a somewhat disassociated, country-club feel that, I believe, came from each challenge’s vast, three-day taping. Hell clearly appears to be shot in one day—a move The Apprentice has, at least temporarily, adopted—giving the proceedings a tightly-wound knottiness. And, you know how, on Tyra Bank’s America’s Next Top Model, when a girl gets kicked off, her picture in the group shot softly vanishes? On Hell, the departing kitchen grunt’s photo is consumed by flames.

3. Ramsay: Madman of the Moors. I don’t know what they pay Trump to show up at the beginning and end of The Apprentice, and nod powerfully in headshots on phone calls, but they should just give that money to Ramsay. The spitting Scot is in almost every frame of the hour-long show. When it’s time to open the Kitchen for service, half of those aforementioned bleeps come from him, as he utterly berates his staff. His caustic braying (“This sope is AWWFOLE!! It’s HIDEEYUSS!! GET OUT!!!”) creates an unbroken tension that’s never relieved for the viewer, nor, clearly, for the contestants. Hell’s Kitchen is cooking porn, S&M-style, at its finest.