Hell's Kitchen (season 17)

The seventeenth season of the reality competition series Hell’s Kitchen, which was also known as Hell’s Kitchen All-Stars, aired from September 19, 2017 to February 2, 2018.

Premise
Sixteen chefs from previous seasons who made it to the black jackets but were not chosen as one of the final two at the end return to compete again for a head chef position at Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen-inspired restaurant in Las Vegas.

Why This Season is an All-Star Trainwreck

 * 1) It suffers from the same issue many “all-star” seasons of reality shows have, which is that most of the returning contestants are already successful now from receiving black jackets in their original seasons, and therefore are not as motivated to do well the second time around.
 * 2) The teams look very lopsided on paper, with the men (blue) being a much stronger team, while the women (red) are mostly high-drama personalities. Because of this, the blue team wins the vast majority of challenges and dinner services.
 * 3) On a similar note, there is also not much diversity with the previous seasons represented, as the chefs coming back are mostly from Seasons 10, 14, and 15, with none from 8, 11, 12, 13, and 16, not to mention anyone from a season earlier than 5 as well.
 * 4) In fact, since every black jacket from Season 14 aside from the winner and runner-up returns, they all make it to the black jackets again the second time around with the notable exception of Josh, and someone originally from that season ultimately wins, it seems a lot more like a spin-off of Season 14 than a new season of the series.
 * 5) At the same time, every one of Season 15’s black jackets other than the winner and runner-up is also back, but unlike with Season 14’s, they are all gone by the halfway point, and none of them make it far enough to come back to work for someone in the finale.
 * 6) There are some contestants for whom it was not a good decision to invite back.
 * 7) Ben from Season 5 is now morbidly obese with type 2 diabetes. He is the first to go even though the blue team wins the first dinner service not based on his performance that night but because Ramsay deems him too unhealthy to keep on the show.
 * 8) Ashley from Season 15 is struggling with the loss of her brother, while her grandfather is on his deathbed. She is in that stage of grief where she gets lost in her head easily, and it ends up costing her and making her the second one out of the competition.
 * 9) Giovanni from Season 5 comes back at the age of 47, which is too old for Ramsay to realistically choose him to win. He is also eliminated early on (see below).
 * 10) There are some very questionable elimination choices, with some chefs suddenly disappearing after one bad night while others are forgiven multiple times for poor dinner services.
 * 11) Giovanni is the casualty of the Cook for Your Life challenge for using too much spaghetti and not enough sauce when recreating Ramsay’s dish with spaghetti inside of oysters, when nearly all the others also chosen for the challenge have arguably worse attempts than him; for example, Milly’s has one oyster less than his should have, Robyn accidentally cuts through her oysters, Elise oversalts hers to the point no one can eat it, and Barbie also has too much pasta and not enough in her recreation of the dish. After Giovanni is eliminated, Ramsay makes a comment about his age, which is super hypocritical given that the latter was 50 years old at the time.
 * 12) Although Van has greatly improved since Season 6, he does not get a black jacket the second time around, going after only one nomination by Ramsay himself and not his team when he appears to be hungover during the dinner service after the blue team had won a trip to Las Vegas. While a valid case can be made that Ramsay would not want someone who would get carried away to the point of not being able to conduct himself professionally the next day, there are many other instances of chefs being hungover for the dinner service after a major challenge win reward and not being eliminated for it, including the winner of Season 9.
 * 13) * Additionally, this is the first time Ramsay calls up one team’s nominees without asking for other’s too when both sides lose a dinner service, so it seems he just wanted Van gone without considering anyone who had actually been nominated.
 * 14) Dana also only gets one chance; she abruptly goes home after a single horrible dinner service performance.
 * 15) Even though Jennifer never gets nominated during this season, she ends up narrowly missing out on a black jacket due to the recent format change with the black jackets being decided by a series of challenges rather than a dinner service.
 * 16) Nick, also with zero nominations this season, ends up in third place, not picked as one of the final two by someone other than Ramsay himself with no explanation as to why.
 * 17) On the other hand, due to the favoritism Ramsay shows toward the high-drama contestants, Elise and Robyn stay after many nominations for mediocre performances, with the latter even getting the last black jacket over Jennifer.
 * 18) There is also major character derailment of certain previously likable members of the all-star cast.
 * 19) Josh is much more in-your-face obnoxious than he was in Season 14. He ends up getting ejected in the middle of a dinner service early on when he tries to reenter the kitchen after Ramsay had kicked him out for a horrible performance on garnish the first night after he had been switched to the red team.
 * 20) Jared makes creepy comments about both teams scoring points in a challenge “being like kissing your sister,” and then fakes cutting himself in order to get off a station he is struggling on.
 * 21) While Barbie was usually the more reasonable one in the catfights that Season 10 is known well for, here she retaliates a lot more toward her teammates, making insulting comments both behind their backs and in their faces during elimination nomination meetings and even dumping out her meat milkshake so everyone will have to finish theirs during the punishment for the red team losing the exotic meats challenge. When she is eliminated, she goes on a snotty passive-aggressive rant about how “[i]t is what it is.”
 * 22) Milly accuses others of racism multiple times for nominating him for elimination, even when they are justified in doing so with his subpar performances those nights.
 * 23) Michelle succumbs to the drama generated by Elise, and eventually gives up trying to handle it in a mature way.
 * 24) Ramsay shows a tremendous amount of favoritism toward Michelle, even though she is roughly the same as she was in Season 14 performance-wise.
 * 25) She is kept after a few major mistakes that could easily be elimination-worthy, even though she does not get nominated as much as the others mentioned here.
 * 26) When Benjamin from Season 7 and Nick are both better than her at running the pass, Ramsay announces it will be a three-way finale for the first time in the series, with all three creating their own menus and the final two being decided by others in the restaurant group. Nick’s is the one not chosen, leaving her against Benjamin, who is now over 40, for the final dinner service.
 * 27) Even though Michelle needs Nick to do much of the leading for her within her brigade while Benjamin only struggles with Robyn for the most part, she still wins over him in the end.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Benjamin, Nick, Jennifer, and Van appear to have greatly improved from their initial seasons.
 * 2) Benjamin is much more likable here than he was in Season 7.
 * 3) There are some hilarious moments and lines.
 * 4) Josh eats a suspicious breakfast enchilada, which makes him suddenly throw up when Ramsay is about to tell the contestants what their challenge is one morning.
 * 5) The look on Barbie’s face when she yells, “How ‘bout I get that spinach, Michelle?!” is priceless.
 * 6) Milly points out that Benjamin is Irish and not French when his constant quip of, “Oui, chef!” starts to get on his nerves.
 * 7) Elise cries when Michelle wins.

Reception
Hell’s Kitchen All-Stars is relatively low-rated on IMDb, with the premiere at a 6.4/10, and the finale at a 7.3/10, resulting in an average of 6.7/10. It usually places toward the bottom in lists ranking Hell’s Kitchen seasons.

Fans have complained about the elimination order believing that Ramsay was protecting Elise, Robyn, and Michelle, the fact that certain chefs who were not in good positions in their lives to compete again were back, and Michelle winning when Nick and Benjamin arguably both deserved it more than her. They have even attempted to reorder the ranking to reflect a more accurate placement of the chefs chosen for the season.

Trivia

 * This is the first season only one member of the red team gets a black jacket, as Robyn had been switched to the blue team at the end of the fourth episode.
 * This is the first season to have a “three-way finale,” which consists of Michelle, Benjamin, and Nick.