Kitchen Nightmares is in the enviable position of not having a damn thing to worry about. The show got one of the earliest renewals of the season and with the writer’s strike on it will be one of the few shows that have fresh episodes in the coming weeks. So I guess we will have to give it a few breaks as it tinkers with its formula. This week’s episode was just all over the place as Chef Ramsay went into an establishment that had only ONE real problem: its owner.

The place was a restaurateurs dream with a great Hollywood location, clean facility, great staff…but a horribly inept and misguided owner who really had no clue how to take advantage of what he had. As a former restaurateur myself, I was hitting my head from the opening minutes as I saw this ego driven fool wasting one of the greatest opportunities with a large and confusing menu and subpar food.

Once again, FOX’s Kitchen Nightmares has dispensed with detailing much of the operational fixes in favor of the shock, conflict and drama as Sebastian the owner would flit from angry outbursts to tears and then back to the outbursts. Ramsay came across as if he had given up very early on and continued with that attitude through to the very end. I half expected Ramsay to drop everything and offer the entire staff jobs at one of his own restaurants as they were just about all that good!

I got the uneasy feeling that I was watching a twisted episode of Extreme Makeover during this episode except here the recipient of the shows help wanted nothing to do with it! Who contracted with KN to be the subject of Ramsay’s assistance? I can hardly believe the owner made that phone call as he didn’t seem to think anything was the matter…except that he was losing money! The show ended abruptly with Ramsay predicting certain doom for the future of the restaurant.

Okay. That’s where the UK Kitchen Nightmares would have jumped to a few weeks later and showed us what indeed had happened. But here on FOX’s US edition…nothing. This has got to change. I am again calling for an end of season wrap up special where all of the restaurants get a revisit to check on their status. This would be a ratings winner and FOX is stupid not to consider it. I understand that Ramsay is busy with more US Kitchen Nightmares, two new sets of Hell’s Kitchen, the UK’s the F Word and even filming a few new UK Kitchen Nightmares. This doesn’t even count his restaurant empire which is the foundation of his celebrity.

Let his film crews go in and revisit these restaurants while Ramsay does voice overs and I’ll be a happy camper. Kitchen Nightmares airs Wednesdays on FOX.

This post was Authored by Rob Walley, Our Resident Authority on all things Kitchen Nightmares