"She crumbling under the pressure": Fans react to chef Tara Ciannella's breakdown on Hell's Kitchen

Hell's Kitchen season 21 aired a brand new episode on Thursday, December 1, 2022, at 8 pm ET on Fox. The one-hour episode featured the remaining chefs as they gave it their all to create incredible dishes and do well in the service challenge to impress customers and legendary chef Gordon Ramsay with their food. While some managed to bring out their best, others suffered criticism for their mistakes.

On this week's episode of Hell's Kitchen, Alex switched his punishment pass with Tara, leading to the latter's breakdown. She was frustrated at him and felt like everyone was against her. Fans, however, felt that Tara was breaking under pressure and wouldn't last in the competition. One tweeted:

The official synopsis of the Hell's Kitchen episode reads:

"The chefs step up to compete one-on-one in an ingredient game show, where contestants who win can either choose the fate of that ingredient or sabotage the other team; chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo join Gordon in the dining room."

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Alex switches his punishment with Tara on Hell's Kitchen

On tonight's episode of Hell's Kitchen, the cast members began by talking about their journey when Tara went into a separate room, as she was the only woman from the former team (chefs in their 40s). After fellow member Mindy's elimination, Tara felt that the youngsters were against her, leading to her having an emotional breakdown.

The chef, however, picked herself up for the challenge. In the episode, the contestants had to play two games, "Spells Kitchen" and "Kitchen Sightmares."

For the first game, they had to guess the word on a board showing jumbled letters. For the second, they had to guess the ingredients from a zoomed-in picture. From the ingredients they would guess, they could either put up with three proteins or send them to the other team.

The Red and Blue team in Hell's Kitchen had to work with three proteins - duck, boar and venison, as well as the correctly guessed ingredients from the game. The women came up strong and gave a few mismatched ingredients over to the Blue team to work with their venison. That worked in their favor as they won the last point, giving them the well-earned reward.

The Blue team with the men had to face punishment for the day. They had to get two gallons of olives ready for the service. However, Alex used his "punishment pass" to switch with Tara from the Red team. This infuriated the latter, as she was already feeling down and feeling like her own team was against her.

The Hell's Kitchen contestant felt defeated after Alex picked her as a replacement. She voiced her concerns to fellow cast member Abe and felt that it was unfair of Alex, who was previously on the oldies team, to come up against her as he should have understood what she was feeling, being the only old member of her team. Although Sommer tried consoling her, she didn't feel better.

Sommer then went up to the others and voiced Tara's concerns. While her teammates didn't feel that they were against her, Alex felt bad about choosing her and went to talk to her. However, the chef didn't want to talk, and left him alone to go to her own room.

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Fans react to Tara's behavior on Hell's Kitchen

Fans felt that Tara was feeling alone, leading to such extreme reactions after Alex switched his punishment pass with her. Check out what they have to say.

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The stakes for the competition are only getting higher with each passing episode. As elimination looms large every week, the contestants have to give their absolute best in order to keep steering forward until one of them wins the coveted title and gets to assist chef Ramsay.

Keep watching Hell's Kitchen on Fox.