Hell yes!

It really has been a pretty great series. Infighting and backbiting are always a key part of the series, but this series they've been pretty well controlled. The thing that has really impressed me has been the casting. For the first time in at least 4 years I feel like the vast majority have a real interest in the prize on offer, rather than just being attention-seekers. They've remembered that they should be filling the cast with chefs, and that's a positive. There were the obvious "personalities," the ones who're there just for their camera presence, but it's to the eternal credit of Chef Ramsay that they were dispatched with early on. From the comedian (Sebastian) to the genuinely mentally ill (Gina) to the deluded whiner (Danielle,) they were all sent packing in the first few weeks. Jessica was kind of a bitch, and kinda paranoid, but she was there to cook, and the tough-girl attitude's not a deal-breaker, or even that unusual, she just wasn't ready as a chef or as a person. She'll get there.
I think they tried to do some new stuff this season, and having Ramsay as executive producer can be both a help and a hindrance to the show. Holding off the elimination to the next show...been there. Bringing up someone to tell them to buck their ideas up...done it. Getting rid of a member of the winning team...bought the t-shirt. But, making chefs earn their jackets back.....hmm. Like it. Mind you, I have quite a British sensibility, and I'm not very high drama, so maybe more of the twists and turns, and less of the same-old same-old.
Now, we REALLY need to talk about the challenges. 12 team challenges, and the red team somehow won 10-2, with Ja'nel winning 11. Several of the challenges were won by a country mile, and very few felt like the product of luck. In fact, on the third challenge I felt Ramsay definitely tried to hand the men the win by pitting Mary against Dan in the running section. Ja'nel and Mary in particular really helped the red team to their wins, while Jon could have won multiple times had he had better backup in the team.
So now I'm gonna talk specifically about the black team, in ascending order of likelihood of winning.

5) Susan- It's not that I don't like Susan. It's just that....I don't really like Susan. No, seriously I just don't rate her much as a cook. She can't multitask very well, she's not all that creative and virtually every time she has tried to cook meat it has been abysmal. Mind you, she has been quite strong in leading the brigade when necessary, so if she can get to the semi-final she'll probably be a finalist. I just can't see her staying longer than any of the rest of the final 5.
4) Cyndi- She made absolutely no impression on me until the immunity challenge, and then she impressed Ramsay. That could be a good or a bad thing. I think she can cook, and she has a great finesse and ability to serve gorgeous food but I don't think she's the chef some of the others are.
3)Mary- I don't want to put Mary third, I love her. She's a really great chef, but I question her palate. Like Susan, she has led brigades well in the past. And once I'd got past hoping she NEVER EVER SPOKE AGAIN in Minnie Mouse's voice, I realised she is really adorable and kinda entertaining, if still a little irritating. And not pregnant, which is a positive thing.
2) Jon- Cool guy, really really good chef. I had to love "Hey mom, I'm on a chain gang!" And he genuinely has impressed at virtually every turn. He and Ja'nel made a perfect team in the last blue vs red episode, and there's a reason he's the last surviving guy. This may be the best season ever for girls, and he was the only guy strong enough to get through 17 episodes of that trainwreck of a blue team. In think in any of the last 3 or 4 seasons he would have been unstoppable.
But there is another. One who was manufactured solely to win Hell's Kitchen. She has no weakness. She has no failings. She has no human emotions. And her name is....
1) Ja'nel-O-Tron 3000 -Come ON people. Ja'nel has possibly come the closest of any chef ever in Hell's Kitchen to being flawless. Never nominated, never refused a point in a challenge, having won over 80% of them, and I don't even think I've heard her yelled at. Everyone from Ramsay to the competitors to me seems to think Ja'nel is the strongest. She's also laser-focused, but still pretty good on camera. She seems to be a likeable person, and she could so easily have got a huge head, but she seems to have maintained the same level of confidence all through the competition, while every other contestant.....pretty much ever in HK has gained or lost confidence and ended up over- or under-confident. I'd maybe compare her to Paula from Season 5, and since I loved Paula I love Ja'nel. She is a real inspiration to powerful and professional African-American women, who really don't have a great record on Hell's Kitchen (Tenille, Nilka, Coi, Nedra, Autumn, Elise, Jen and even Barbie were all either way too aggressive or bad cooks, although Coi and Barbie were actually OK.) I just wish, understandable as it was, she'd been less of a wuss about the last challenge, because until then she genuinely seemed robotic. Her palate is excellent, as proven in the meat identification challenge and the ubiquitous but important blind taste test. Oh, and by the way right from the start she slid into the role of quietly controlling the kitchen, eg in service 2 (episode 3) when she helped Mary and Danielle with risotto. Loudly declaring yourself in charge and throwing your weight around doesn't work, but doing it in a manipulative may makes you seem a puppetmaster, and Ramsay doesn't like that. She just naturally seemed to slip into the role, and she pulled it off perfectly. She really does seem to have all the skills she needs.

I have loved this series, and I think it has yielded a really strong final 5, where Mary and Jon are both deserving winners but Ja'nel is surely unstoppable. Almost such an obvious winner she can't win, but Christina won last year and I saw that coming from halfway, although I was happy about it.

In other news, Mary, when Gordon says fine chefs in the next service, he means alumni, not Michelin-star! HK has produced some amazing winners such as Heather, Danny,Dave, Holly and Christina, and I suspect that's what team black are facing. It certainly isn't some kind of iron-chef cabaret show.  Girl, like I've said, love you, would totally take you for a beer, but at times you are so STUPID!