All Our Lives. Watching America.

What has the US Presidential Election got to do with us here in the UK? Why should we care as much as we undoubtedly do? We seem better informed and more animated about the minutiae of our transatlantic cousins’ glitzy political battles than we do our own. Perhaps that glitziness has a lot to do with it. Our elections are quite drab in comparison. As Scottish comedian Joe Heenan so memorably put it: ‘You wouldn’t get this shite if the Americans did it the British way. Right now the President would be on a stage in a sports centre with a guy dressed as a squirrel standing behind him.’

In the US, politicians stroll out into vast arenas in the manner of WWE stars, with their own walk-on music booming unironically in their wake. One only needs to watch a highlight video of former PM Theresa May’s bizarre attempts to connect with the people of Great Britain through ‘dance’ to understand why we should never, ever, under any circumstances, abandon our reserved political discourse for the ratings-chasing, reality-TV-show grandstanding of the states. Whenever Theresa May – woman of the people – danced on camera she looked either like a drunk stork pretending to be a bear, or a shy Al Jolson trying his best to perform his act during an earthquake. Let’s stick to the drab, and let the Americans worry about the fab.

Donald Trump, of course, has turned the pomp and circumstance up to eleven. Even if the world had any choice in the matter, which it doesn’t thanks to Trump’s depressing ubiquity, it wouldn’t dare turn away from that fat car-crash in a suit for even a second: he’s got more plots than Stephen King, less shame than a back-street flasher in a face-mask, less scruples than Ted Bundy after Happy Hour, and more bullshit than a farmer’s field in spring-time. Some people out there have been watching too much television, and think they want a fictional character in charge of their country. But the qualities it’s easy to admire in an unpolished, rebellious, blue collar, tells-it-like-it-is character like Happy Gilmore, or an alpha-strongman like TV’s Tony Soprano, don’t necessarily make for a good president. Trump is a cartoon; a buffoon; a shark with legs; a great big bag of narcissistic contradictions; a circus ringmaster in Hell, who uses Twitter in place of a whip.

All of that, then, goes some way towards explaining why America has always been so grimly fascinating and strangely compelling to us, especially now, with yet another ‘celebrity’ in the hot-seat. But it doesn’t explain why we do – and why on earth we should – care so much. After all, Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden weren’t, aren’t and won’t be our presidents.

Perhaps it’s down to the Butterfly Effect. America is the heir to the British Empire’s dead hegemony. Its existence and actions have always affected us, and the world. But it’s definitely the case that how the US comports itself, and who it chooses as its figurehead, affects us now in a much more impactful, instant and targeted way than ever before, thanks to the unsleeping, unfiltered portal of the worldwide web. And what a wicked web we weave.

I remember from my youth a well-used refrain about America. It used to be said that whenever a societal trend, change or calamity took root across the pond, we should expect it to sweep our shores within six months or less. Fashions, pop-culture crazes, political skulduggery, crime-waves. We all watched the news with a sense of foreboding, wondering what would be expected of us in the seasons to come. We were powerless to prevent this tidal wave of transformation, even though we could see it coming. America was us, and we were America, bound by our shared history and language.

“Everyone in California is wearing assless chaps!” my grandmother shouted from her TV-chair one balmy summer evening*. My grandfather sighed and wandered into the kitchen to find a pair of scissors. “I’ll go get started on all my trousers,” he shouted back, before muttering to himself, “It’s going to be one cold ass winter.” But what could he do? America had spoken. *[that may or may not have actually happened]

I wonder how much of that misguided belief of ours was connected with how we felt about movies. There used to be a significant lag between a movie premiering in the states and it finally debuting here in the UK. About six months. While we waited we’d pine, speculate, get swept up in the hype and longing, before eventually – finally – getting a taste of the action.

Over the course of my lifetime the western world has become more dream-like, more cinematic, and more cravenly consumerist than it ever was; it therefore makes sense that back in the 80s and 90s we would readily conflate a six-month wait for a movie with the idea that six months after watching news reports from the US we’d be ushering in those same societal changes. American movies contained reflections of American life and thought and ideology, in which we, in turn, saw reflections of ourselves. And since all life was a movie, and we its stars, ipso facto movies and reality were interchangeable. The US electing an actor as its president went some way towards reinforcing that feeling.

Ultimately, though, we never imported all that much from America, besides the cosmetic. With the exception of the horror of Dunblane we never became a nation of school shooters. Our cities didn’t ring out with gun fire. We never abandoned our welfare state to private equity and insurance – at least not completely. In time we realised that as much as we admired and venerated and sought to emulate America, we would never be America – and that was okay. We didn’t want to be America. We didn’t need to be.

And then along came the internet, ushering in a new era of hyper-connectivity, and a new and immediate sense of round-the-clock globalism. The internet brings us together at the same time as it splinters us apart. We’re united in our disunity as never before. While the internet was initially a liberating and unifying force, it was soon weaponised by social media. Whatever power was displaced by the common man or woman having access to the world at their fingertips was soon clawed back by authoritarian governments like those of China and North Korea, or subtly redirected by shadowy organisations like Cambridge Analytica. Governments could interfere in the elections of other countries not by mobilising for war or sending spies on long-term undercover missions, but by employing a group of sun-shy tech experts to sit in a darkened room all day posing as zealots, or patriotic movers and shakers on Twitter and Facebook. Political rivals could sink an opponent not by setting a honey-trap, or paying a PI to rake through their bins looking for compromising letters and receipts, but by flooding the internet with memes of wildly fluctuating veracity, ranging from the sort-of-true-but-skewed to the risibly fantastical. The truth didn’t matter. Memes became missiles. And when you’re hit by one, the truth is a moot point.

The shadow Donald Trump casts across America falls over our land, too. His rallies and rantings and ravings don’t happen in a Stars-and-Stripes emblazoned vacuum. His opinions on race, his opposition to truth and reality, his economically-motivated scepticism on climate change and epidemiology, his aversion to culpability and compassion, have all seeped into and permeated our national discourse, and infected our cultural consciousness.

A great many of the memes we see spreading on-line – on Black Lives Matters, on the poor, on coronavirus, on the environment – carry Republican and pro-Trump stamps, and millions of Brits share them without knowing or caring that they’ve been infected by the political and ideological tussles of another country. A disturbing minority of Brits long for Trump, or someone more like him, to be our Prime Minister. Our politicians, too, have adopted the Teflon Don’s tactics of holding firm and denying objective reality just long enough for the news cycle to sweep past them onto something and someone else. Thanks to Trump’s leadership style of cult-leader cum CEO cum mad king, it’s harder than ever to hold people in power to account. We can see the effects of that even here in Scotland with the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier, a Westminster MP, who by all rights should’ve resigned after flouting coronavirus restrictions, the virtues of which she’d been busy extolling on behalf of her constituents. Ten, or even five, years ago she probably would have stood down immediately, but the lesson from America is clear: don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to the people. Tell them to go fuck themselves. Do what you like.

We care about the US Election, then, because it has consequences for us, even if we’re entirely powerless to control their direction. Like a meteor about to strike the earth. Hopefully when Joe Biden takes office a more measured ethos will radiate from the US, and spread some much needed calm across cyberspace and the world. We just have to hope that the fat, orange genie isn’t already too far out of the bottle.

Trump Campaign US Election 2020 Timetable

Oct 26

Trump arrives at a WOMEN FOR TRUMP rally with Mike Pence, and looks genuinely happy.

“How did you manage to arrange this, Mikey? There’s a lot of them to get through. I’d better get started.”

“They’re here to support you, Donald. To support you.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, they’ll need to. I’m gonna be exhausted after fucking all these women.”

“Donald, I…”

“I knew I was right to have that fifth burger at breakfast this morning.”

“Donald, look, I really want you to start focusing on the election…”

“Don’t worry about that, Pencey, I’ll be fine. I scrunched up some Viagra into my burgers.”

“Donald, I said election, not….”

“OUTTA MY WAY! MAGA SHAGGA COMING THROUGH!”

Oct 27

  • Trump attends a rally in Wisconsin dressed as Jesus, and tells his supporters he’s got a lot in common with the Son of God, except he wouldn’t have been pussy enough to get himself crucified. Besides, Jesus wasn’t that great, because how many casinos did he manage to build? Yeah, exactly, you see? Loser. “Never trust a man who can’t afford proper shoes,” he tells the crowd.
  • Kanye West is hired to dress like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn and play the flute outside inner-city polling stations. He leads all black people not wearing MAGA hats into a holding area, whereupon an angry, hysterical white lady calls the police on them.
  • Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court. Six out of nine seats on the court are now occupied by hard-line Republican judges. Trump vows to kill the three Democrat judges by the end of the year and replace them with Dracula, Rasputin and a golden effigy of himself.

Oct 28

  • The Pope issues a rebuke to Trump following his previous day’s comments about Jesus. Various Republican and conservative Catholic organisations are furious with the President. Trump reminds them that Jesus is a total loser – who never even had his own condo in Palm Springs, can you believe it? – and they should have no Trump but Trump. If they vote for him he’ll ban abortion, keep allowing churches to flagrantly disregard coronavirus restrictions, and put as many Mexican kids in cages as he possibly can. The organisations release a joint statement that simply says: “USA, USA, USA!” eighteen-hundred times.
  • Trump holds a Super Spreader event on Jeffrey Epstein’s old island. Hopes to make it a regular thing. Mike Pence points out that, a) a super spreader isn’t a good thing and, b) that’s not the kind of spreading it refers to anyway. Trump responds by pointing out that, a) shut up Mike Pence and, b) when are we stopping for burgers?

Oct 29

  • A flotilla of screaming and naked Eastern European teenagers is discovered off the coast of Epstein Island. Trump orders a napalm strike to make sure there’s no risk of coronavirus contamination, and definitely not to ensure their silence. Trump says he’s just doing his bit to keep the country safe, and shouldn’t be considered a hero.
  • Trump orders 6,000,000 hats with HERO written on them.
  • Mail trucks carrying ballots are pulled over by Proud Boys soldiers. All ballots that smell  even a little bit socialist are destroyed.

Oct 30

  • Melania escapes.
  • Trump reveals that Elon Musk is building a space station for him and Vladimir Putin in orbit of the earth. Mike Pence apologises and says Trump stayed up all night watching Elysium. Trump orders surveillance on Matt Damon, “just in case that leftie bastard ruins everything.”

Oct 31

  • At a late-night rally, on the stroke of midnight, lightning explodes across the sky’s dark canvas, and a swarm of flies erupts from Mike Pence’s mouth. A disembodied voice can be heard shrieking ‘THE TIME OF THE EVIL ONE IS UPON US!’ as Pence shakes like a turkey on a washing machine. He later blames it on a combination of technical faults, the Democrats and the gays. “I’m definitely not Satan’s representative on Earth,” he tells Fox News. “We wouldn’t have minded, to be honest,” they admit.

Trump tells 15,000 supporters at a mega-rally in Virginia that coronavirus has been cured, and is angry when they don’t cheer.

“Why aren’t they cheering, Mikey?”

“They’re all dead from coronavirus, Donald.”

Nov 1

  • Melania is recaptured.
  • Trump is asked about his record on the environment. He says he’ll probably release it in time for Christmas. “And it’s gonna be the best song you ever heard,” he tells them.

Joe Biden takes the concept of social distancing at rallies to its logical conclusion and holds a rally on the moon. Trump orders NASA to deploy Neil Armstrong to capture him.

“Sir, Neil Armstrong died in 2012.”

“I said now, goddammit!”

Nov 2

  • Walls are built around polling stations in all southern states with high Latinx populations. Trump makes John Leguizamo pay for it.
  • Trump realises Melania hasn’t been recaptured at all, and he’s been having breakfast and attending rallies with a terrified Gloria from Modern Family. With some reluctance, Gloria is released.

Trump has projectiles hurled at him while attending a rally for all three of his black supporters.

“You shouldn’t have gone on stage wearing that, Donald,” Pence tells him.

“You told me to! You said I should do a rally in the hood!”

“DA hood, Donald. In DA hood.”

Nov 3

ELECTION DAY – All indications are that Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. Biden refuses to concede, because there are still millions of votes to count. Trump whips his cock out live on TV and says, “Count that, commie!” “Zero,” says Biden.

Nov 7

Mike Pence explodes into a fireball live on-stage during a press conference. When the flames die down everyone can see that his skin is a mottled red, and a tail now droops between his legs.

“Janice Grappily, CBNFHGS News. Mr Pence, are you the anti-Christ?”

Pence thinks for a moment, and then says, ‘No comment’, as a swarm of flesh-eating flies shoots out from his penis, and strips the flesh from Janice Grappily’s bones.

Nov 21

There are various legal challenges to counting in Republican-majority states, to which Trump responds angrily. “How can you challenge counting? One, two, five… see, it’s easy.”

Dec 8

Trump buys the Electoral College and renames it Trump University 2.

Dec 9

Trump University 2 goes bankrupt.

Dec 10

US government bails out Trump University 2 and changes its name back to the Electoral College

Dec 11

Mike Pence tries to explain to Trump that the Electoral College isn’t an actual college, and he shouldn’t really have been able to buy it.

Dec 12

Trump tries to buy the Electoral College again

Dec 13

Trump gives a joint press conference to address the issue of Mike Pence being the devil.

“I just want to say that I give Mike Pence my full support, and so should you. Why didn’t you tell me you were Beelzebub in disguise, Pencey?”

Pence looks down at his shoes. Well, at his cloven feet. “I thought you’d feel threatened by my dark lineage and powers.”

“Jealous of you, Pencey? There’s no-one more evil than me. I’m the evilest. I eat cats, for Christ’s sake.”

“Brad Fanachuk, FKWSG News. Mr President, did you just say that you’re evil and you eat cats?”

Trump points a finger. “You’re toxic.”

“Mr President, I heard you say it.”

“Get this guy out of here. Pence, squirt some flies out of your evil dick at this joker.”

“Carver Sweetchuck, CBBC News. We all heard you say it, sir.”

“Well maybe you’ll hear this: JOE BIDEN IS A PAEDOPHILE AND HE’S WORKING FOR IRAN. OKAY?”

Dec 14

  • Joe Biden is officially elected President, with Kamala Harris as his VP.
  • Trump changes the locks on the White House door.

Jan 3

  • Joe Biden knocks on the front door of the White House, and hears someone shouting, “No speaka de English, senor”, then a gunshot, then Trump screaming, “GODDAMIT, WHY DID YOU SHOOT ME?” and then someone saying, “Sorry, Mr President, I heard a Mexican voice and just acted instinctually.”

Jan 4

The Proud Boys take up fortifying positions around Trump buildings all across the US. Trump tower is engulfed by violence, gunfire, gambling, raucous noise, biker gangs and sleaze. Marty McFly arrives in the De Lorean to retrieve the Sports Almanac from Trump.

Jan 5

Civil War in America. It’s swiftly brought to an end when Ant Man shrinks himself down, flies up Donald Trump’s arsehole and disconnects his brain.

Jan 8

With the help of Mike Pence’s evil, Trump turns himself into the Lawnmower Man and takes over Twitter from the inside.

Jan 20

Donald Trump pretends to be Joe Biden at the inauguration and hopes nobody will notice. He gives himself away when he pats a woman on the pussy rather than her ass.

Feb 4

  • The White House gains a mysterious new and exceptionally ugly old dinner-lady called Desdemona Crump, who says she makes “the best rice pudding, world class, they don’t make rice pudding like I do.”
  • Joe Biden chokes to death on some rice pudding.

Feb 7

Mike Pence returns to Hell ‘for a bit of peace’.

Feb 8 

Melania becomes the 47th President of the United States

 

America’s Deadly Shame: The National Panther Crisis

A Citizens’ Rights group in the United States, NAW TO JAWS, has appealed to President Trumpelstiltskin to undertake an urgent review of Panther Ownership legislation. This follows the mauling of a young boy, Jackson Towtruck, at his family home in Scottsdale, Arizona, the seventeenth accidental home-based panthering this year alone. NTJ say this latest incident is part of an ‘all-too familiar tragic pattern’ that is ‘completely unacceptable and wholly avoidable in America in 2019.’

The boy’s father, Shard Towtruck, had left the panther free to roam in the garage instead of keeping it locked in a secure steel cage. The boy’s decision to play fetch with the panther while his parents stitched slogans into their baseball caps upstairs proved a fateful one that ultimately resulted in the emergency services having to play fetch with the boy’s limbs.

Tragic: Shard Towtruck

To the shock of many in the local community, the father has not only been allowed to keep his panther licence, but has also decided to retain ownership of the panther who killed his son. He told a local news network: “What y’all, snowflakes? A panther rips my son’s face off, and somehow the solution is to get rid of panthers? Maybe it’ll give my other twelve kids a wake-up call about using panthers responsibly.”

While news crews staked out the Towtruck family home, scores of pro-panther activists crowded into the sleepy suburban street, each of them wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan that’s become synonymous with American notions of liberty: PANTHERS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO.

Protests against panthers are at an all-time high following a chain of pantherings at schools and government buildings all across America. Some schools have installed elaborate panther-mazes at their entrances to slow down any panthers that might be released into the student body by crazed assailants.

The National Panther Association, always ready to counter-protest anti-panther protests, has called for teachers to be be-panthered in class. NPA spokesperson Bolt Grundy reminded the association’s million-strong members: ‘The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a panther is a good guy with a panther.’ The former head of the NPA, the famous actor Chortles McMonkey-Chariot, last week echoed the organisation’s most famous proclamation, coined by the organisation’s founder, that they could ‘have his panther when they prise it out of his cold dead hands.’ A few days later, McMonkey-Chariot’s panther turned on him and chewed his leathery old body into a hundred different dessicated sections, after which first responders had to prise his cold dead hands out of the panther’s mouth.

The President burying McMonkey-Chariot on the White House lawn

President Trumplestiltskin has praised McMonkey-Chariot, a man he described as being ‘almost as famous as me.’ In a press conference on the White House lawn, Trumplestiltskin went on to stress his support for panther owners across America. ‘We love panthers, black panthers, but not the kind who wear those funny hats and black jumpers, and not the one from that movie, not the ‘black’ black panthers, just the black panthers, the actual panthers. Black panthers shouldn’t have black panthers, because they’re animals, and I don’t know if they have panthers in Mexico, but if they do, the wall will have to be higher, because they tell me panthers can jump. But I’m going to jump over the White House. And I’m going to do that easily. I’m the best at jumping. No-one does jumping better than me. Especially not the Mexican jumping beans. God damn Mexicans.’

The notion of panther ownership is a particularly hard one for protest groups to unpick and counter. After all, the right of US Citizens to bear panthers is written in to the national constitution. It harks back to a time when defenders of the fledging nation state were urged as a point of patriotic duty to carry a panther with them at all times in case they had to repel an invasion party of British troops, who were renowned for their deadly surprise attacks using hordes of coked-up foxes.

NTJ has been criticised by the NPA for its suggestion that citizens should arm themselves with guns to protect them from rabid panthers. ‘GUNS?’ said NPA spokesperson Bolt Grundy. ‘GUNS? Are you crazy? Do you know how fucking dangerous those things are?’

‘No, I really think the best thing we can all do is just keep on thinking and praying.’

The Recipe for Kitchen Nightmares US

Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares

I know Kitchen Nightmares is a heavily-manufactured, manipulative piece of reality TV guff, but I can’t help but love it. I also can’t help but notice how each episode is constructed pretty much identically. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But you still watch them all, because they’re immensely entertaining. God bless you, Ramsey, you angry little shit. Here’s how things go down: every single time.

  • Ramsay arrives at the restaurant, and makes some bitchy comments about the decor/menu/the discovery of a rat on the doorstep.
  • The owner tells Ramsay that the restaurant is losing money, which they can’t understand because the food is awesome. Ramsay’s concerned frown and receptive eyes betray the fact that within the hour he’ll have them in tears after shouting at them like they’re the unwanted step-child of a second marriage.
  • Ramsay orders three items from the menu, and declares each in turn the worst dogshit he’s ever tasted in his life. The serving waitress agrees with Ramsay’s assessment, and adds that the owner, her employer, is a waste of space as a human being, and a terrible manager. She’s pretty sure the owner won’t mind her honesty once the show is broadcast.
  • Ramsay rampages into the kitchen and discovers a rotting corpse beside the pizza oven. The owner gets defensive and says, ‘What’s your problem? That’s our mascot: Davey.’ Ramsay then discovers that none of the food is fresh, and all of it is kept in plastic bags beside a heater, next to a cardboard box filled with arsenic and rat shit.
  • Ramsey’s jaw muscles go into over-drive as he unleashes a volley of vile swear words at the owner. The words are bleeped so we viewers are spared the horror, but Ramsey’s such a clever curser that even the rhythm of his bleeps spells out a verbal attack in Morse Code. The owner sulks like a baby, and then tries to blame the staff/their partner/the Norse God Thor for how shit they now realise their restaurant is.
  • Ramsey gathers all of the staff together. He itemises the worst things about the restaurant: the Chef’s Specials written in dust on the wall; the fact that semen is an ingredient of the clam chowder; the twenty-three cats that live in the dining room. He then says ‘bland’ and ‘no passion’ sixty-three times whilst jerking his finger around like a conductor having a stroke. The chef says he was only following orders and blames the owner for everything, including 9/11. The chef goes on to confess that he would rather brush his teeth with bird shit and gargle a vial of AIDS than eat the diseased muck his kitchen serves to customers. ‘Anyway,’ says the chef, ‘I’m a bricklayer and I don’t even like cooking.’ He further confesses that ‘he’s never heard of eggs before.’ Ramsey stares at the chef like the chef’s just sharted on a child, and then calls him a c***.
  • The owner threatens to kill the chef and then accuses the staff of being lazy thieves who spend their time texting instead of working. In fact, it’s so bad that they text the customers asking for their orders, and then text these to the chef, who promptly ignores them. A mouthy Polish waitress tells Ramsey that the owner spends every night crying at the bar, cradling his dead mum’s ashes and throwing olives at customers. The owner throws an olive at her, but a beef olive this time. The rest of the staff just sit there smiling and blinking because they’ve just arrived from Puerto Rico and can’t speak English yet. Ramsey tells them all to fuck off, and storms out.
  • Ramsey observes a typical night at the restaurant. The owner thinks, ‘This is my chance to show that British bastard how awesome my business is.’ We all think: ‘This show’s not called Kitchen Awesomeness, you fool.’ Lots of customers pour in because they want to be on TV. They agree that each dish on the menu is dogshit, and send everything back. A feral cat jumps up and steals some salmon from a customer’s plate, which is snatched from its mouth by a rat. The rat gets involved in a salmon-related mouth tug-of-war with a cockroach, which is only ended when a waiter crushes them both under his heel. The waiter places their fresh remains on a plate and serves it to another customer. He drizzles some sauce over it and says it’s their ‘Vermin of the Day.’ Ramsey rustles up a smile that conveys both smugness and hatred.
  • In the kitchen, Ramsey sees the chef vomiting over a breast of chicken, and then chucking it straight into the frying pan. Ramsey goes bat-shit mental, and the chef just shrugs, and then scratches his balls. With the chicken. The owner, too pissed by now to walk, starts crying because he can’t live up to his dead parent’s restaurant-running standards/is about to lose his marriage/can’t afford to keep his business going/it’ll make good TV.
  • Ramsey screams, ‘Stop what you’re doing! I’m shutting this kitchen down! You’re going to bloody kill someone.’ Sure enough, a customer keels over into a bowl of spunky clam chowder. The owner drags the customer’s corpse into the kitchen and puts it next to Davey.
  • The next day the entire staff watches a film on a giant cinema screen. It features every single person in town telling them how shit their restaurant is, and how much of a cock the owner is. The owner either a) cries and vows not to be such a cock in future or b) says it’s a Jewish conspiracy.
  • Ramsey gets the set designers from Prisoner Cell Block H to revamp the restaurant. Then he devises a new menu and cooks up some samples. Every dish is now ‘rustic.’ When Ramsey uses the word ‘rustic’ we know he really means ‘microscopically tiny portions at double the price.’ The staff are like, ‘Wow, these taste so good it’s like a world-class chef made them.’ Uh-huh. Because they were. By now the audience know that there’s zero chance Chef Cum Chowder is going to be able to match that standard once Ramsey buggers off.
  • Despite some before-the-last-ad-break editing that suggests relaunch night is going to be a disaster – it’s not. Well, we can’t have Ramsey’s reputation wrecked by a bunch of filthy plebs. Ramsey tells them they achieved it by themselves, and should be proud, even though they clearly didn’t, and they shouldn’t. Ramsey hugs them all, which is tense and unnerving, like watching a cobra giving somebody a hug.
  • Ramsey strides outside and gives an awkward recap to the audience, during which he swishes his finger like it’s a fencing sword, and keeps jerking his gaze down to the ground and back up at the camera again like a serial killer battling ADHD.
  • The restaurant closes down.