PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: Remember Elena Duggan? She managed to outwit, outplay, and outlast a raft of other hopefuls and hoist the glorious Sliver Prop Plate of victory, forever etching her name in glory and gifting her a host of opportunities in the culinary world. Marco Pierre White rocked up for a week to mess with everyone’s dreams, and somehow we got through an entire season of the show without the word “adobo” being uttered once. It was a blessed miracle.
Fast forward almost a year (!!!) and finally Channel Seven has run out of ways to keep stringing ‘My Kitchen Rules‘ along; the energy Pete Evans gains from giving pisspoor health advice has waned, and the real cooking show can begin for another year.
Hold onto your butts, folks. It’s MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA SEASON NINE.
AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
We open this excruciatingly long debut episode by immediately spoiling everything that’s gonna happen in the ensuing 80+ minutes.
They don’t even wait around. Straight into spoiling everything. Because fuck you.
An entire episode dedicated to figuring out who will wind up in the show proper begins with a supercut showing us the people that wound up in the show proper. Cool. We also discover that at some point Heston Blumenthal is gonna show up to scare the living piss out of at least one person, and at some stage we’re shipping everyone off to Japan, because the exchange rate against the US Dollar has fallen down the toilet since the last time production rolled.
A swarm of hopeful chefs arrive at the glorious MasterChef Kitchen at the beautiful, picturesque Melbourne Showgrounds, the lingering smell of metal kid sweat long since faded thanks to Soundwave Festival‘s inglorious collapse.
The hungry, hungry judges enter to rapturous applause: Matt Preston, resplendent with a new beard looking like Baron von Brunswick St, Gary, whose surname I utterly refuse to learn to spell, and George Calombaris, who should probably be in jail.
Preston reveals what we’re playing for today, what’s on the line, the golden ticket into the competition: A MasterChef apron. Having had an entire off-season to work on his technique, Matt comes in hot with the apron reveal, and boy howdy is he ever chuffed about it.
The crowd goes understandably nuts, but one shot in particular stands out.
While it’s certainly cute-as-heck that the small child from ‘Lion‘ has decided to come have a look at proceedings this year, what in the blue sodding hell is old mate on the left doing? Is that some sort of super-concentrated game face? Did half of his scone suddenly go numb?
It’s the neck beard/neck scarf/jacket combo that’s really doing me in, above all else. Two minutes into the 2017 season and already Sir Licky Lips is the biggest mystery of the year.
George explains to everyone that in order to succeed in MasterChef you have to “trust the process.” What putting faith in Joel Embiid will do for your chances when you’re wrist deep in a risotto is beyond me, but then again I’m not a chef.
The call for volunteers to cook first goes up and it gets… nothing. Duck eggs. A big ole’ bagel.
The whole place turns a magic show at football club on a boozy Friday night: No volunteers.
But because we’re not allowed to kick the show off with a dud, the judges stare deep into the crowd and pluck out 19-year-old Mich, who proceeds to WRECK THE FUCKING CURVE FOR EVERYONE IMMEDIATELY.
Homegirl, 19-years-old and self-taught via freaking YouTube videos, casually marches up and spits out a Golden Chocolate Ball with like… gel and raspberries and cream and white chocolate and all kinds of shit that should not be possible inside an hour at the end of the competition, let alone on day sodding one.
It’s so goddamned good that all it succeeds in doing is making George F U R I O U S.
There absolutely is footage of at least one of them taking a bite and immediately blurting out “oh fuck off.”
How in the hell are you supposed to follow that? Where do you take her from here in terms of the competition? Why the shit did they give her an apron as opposed to hiring her on the spot? This is ridiculous.
At this rate we’re gonna have to start auditioning contestants still in the cradle if we’ve got any hope of finding people who meet at least one bare criteria of the phrase “amateur cook.”
Fortunately all is not completely lost, as in walks Mama Italiana whose dish of pasta and cheese is not only sufficiently home chef-enough to actually warrant coming on this show in the first place, but fucks George, Gary, and Matt up on gorgonzola so much that they blindly put her through on the spot.
She’s also got that kinda fun Mum energy, too.
And she’s always just so happy to see you two.
With such a long-ass episode and so many godforsaken aprons to give out, anyone without a skerrick of backstory is tossed into the churner as the editing room minces out some blessed montages. That they didn’t set any of these to a rad 80s soundtrack is a tragedy of Biblical proportions, so go ahead and hit play before reading on.
In the first MONTAGE OF APRONS the judges send through a series of hopefuls through in quick succession, none of whom possess the ability to stand still long enough for me to take a decent screenshot.
Firstly, meet Mandarin Dumplings, who narrowly avoids blowing George’s head off by easing off the spice pedal at the last minute.
Next, a delightfully cheery lady who brazenly tacks 20 years off her own age and bubbles around with all the energy of a Christmas Nan messed up on sherry. She looks like she might well be the wholly positive Yin to Bea Smith from ‘Prisoner‘s Yang.
Then there’s this exuberant chap, who I could’ve swore I’ve seen on Gogglebox before.
And finally, the blokiest hippy to ever grace Jah’s green earth. A very spiritual g’day to you, Yeah Namaste.
Almost immediately this is back-ended by the companion MONTAGE OF FAILURE, because this isn’t a show about people over-achieving and reaching their goals, this is about one lucky person being gifted the keys to the kingdom while the dreams of others are mercilessly crushed.
The difference between this year and years prior is that no one really screws up completely, they just kinda… fall short of the mark.
There’s the Princess of Persia, whose traditional rice dish lacks the crust necessary to send her through. The judges demand higher levels of crust. Like… 50-patch battle vest/dog on a rope lead/photocopying its own zine for free at the library levels of crust.
The dishes by those kicked to the curb don’t really inspire much from a visual sense, unless “pile o’ stuff” or “thing with green shit” sounds like your cup of tea.
And then we meet Pete.
Pete’s from Perth.
Pete works as a crane operator on FIFO mines, and he bloody loves two things: Cookin’ good food, and his girlfriend.
He’s a no frills, salt-of-the-earth, knockabout sorta bloke who casually wanders in and kicks a confit salmon in the dick so damned hard it makes Matt Preston throw fire onto the screen.
Pete, it’s only early days, but I reckon you and I are gonna get along just fine this season.
That very convenient ad break leads us headfirst into MONTAGE OF APRONS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.
Time to hit play again, folks.
INTRODUCING INTO YOUR TOP 24!
Guy Smiley, who professes his Dutchness and ability to cook so clearly that he might as well be James van der Leek. Head like a kettle, this bloke. Hard as a rock.
Whiskey in the Jar, who smartly figured out that any shortcomings in your own cooking can be overcome by getting the judges rip roaringly drunk. This competition isn’t about pure skill, folks. It’s about playing smart.
Then we have Dr. Ridiculous, who should pick one very difficult career to get shithot at and stick with it, thank you very much.
He smugly declares that his dish is “bacon and eggs,” despite the fact that there is very clearly no actual bacon; a crime that should be considered light treason if there were any justice in this godforsaken world.
Then there’s Soup of the Day, whose dish looked so dang good that I kinda zoned out for a little bit; lost in the majesty of raw meat and Vietnamese beef water.
And finally, the first real solid backstory of the show comes in the form of The Comeback Kid, who fell victim to a horrible injury the literal day before last year’s auditions, apparently.
He could’ve served up undercooked toast and he still would’ve gotten through. The EMOTIONS, my god.
The final montage of the evening covers the remaining aprons left who, bless ’em, aren’t that super interesting. We stop short of gifting out all 24 tonight though, because after all we’ve gotta fill at least until Wednesday night before we can actually jump into anything proper.
MONTAGE OF APRONS 3: REVENGE OF THE WHISK doesn’t pack quite the punch as the others; perhaps at this point the editors were simply running out of steam.
But of the few highlights we now have this bloke…
…who 100% has to be a direct clone of season two runner-up Callum Hann.
And this guy, whose face I am dead certain looks the same upside down as it does right side up.
It’s like a Rorschach test.
But the big, final one-two punch from the episode comes firstly from a Melbourne-based nurse who is also an artist who is also a shithot cook, which either makes her Florence Nightingkale or Salvador Barley, depending on which way your pun meter swings.
She manages to craft a beetroot sorbet so incredible it makes George break the fourth wall.
“Shaun’s in the MAZE!“
Then there’s an 18-year-old musical theatre dork who not only manages to give us the perfect GIF that encapsulates the whole MasterChef experience…
But uses his nous for the dramatic by pulling a bit of misdirection on his apron reveal.
A culinary kid into musical theatre, ayy? That’d be… ah… Guys n Rolls? Chicago (Deep Dish Pizza)? The Fresh Producers?
It’s a long season, pals. You’re not getting the A-material on Day One.
NEXT TIME: Those ditched into purgatory via the MONTAGE OF MEDIOCRITY get to duke it out for the final aprons!
Who will make it through! Will it be I Don’t Know Where Your Accent Is From, a man who has a head so run-of-the-mill it’s shocking someone didn’t try to churn flour out of him?
Or maybe it’s Permanently Cosplaying As Egon From ‘Ghostbusters’ who gets another run?
Or maybe it’s this bloke, who tucked all his food onto one side of the plate in his first go around, leaving me no choice but to anoint him None Pizza Left Beef?
Either way, let’s just cross our fingers and hope this Nan who uttered the phrase “fingered the pie” on national TV gets brought back for a more permanent role.
That’s pure entertainment. You’re can’t teach that.
HELL YEAH MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA IS BACK, BABY.
Photo: Channel Ten/Facebook.
