PREVIOUSLY ON MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA: The Top 24 was arbitrarily locked in via the great Second Chance Saloon, with a group of what TV’s approximation of “Normal Looks” given aprons and that one guy who kinda looked a bit like an ogre shown the door because his cooking skills weren’t up to scratch and no other reasons.
No other reasons whatsoever.
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AND NOW, LAST NIGHT.
Boy oh boy. This show isn’t even bothering to wait around before it sends me totally off the deep end, isn’t it?
Inside the first five minutes of the episode we learn that:
- The four winners of tonight’s challenge move on to tomorrow night’s Immunity Challenge
- That Immunity Challenge has a *guaranteed* Immunity Pin on the line
- No one will be going home this week
- We’re apparently trying to turn Tim’s “I’m crappin’ my dacks to be honest” line into a bloody catchphrase.
Look at these braying, hooting morons bullying old mate into dropping the line again. Look at them.
“SAY THE LINE, PEASANT. IT WILL AMUSE US.”
George in particular is in an unusually good mood for the entire episode, even pausing mid-challenge to become a living Instagram caption.
I dunno man, I haven’t managed to escape jail for systemic wage theft and assaulting a teen at the A-League Grand Final, so you bloody tell me.
The entire episode and challenge slides off a giant cliff after everyone hears the brief – “your desert island, could eat it every day for the rest of your lives dish” – and immediately misinterprets it. I-M-M-E-D-I-A-T-E-L-Y.
This is supposed to be the dish that, should you find yourself stranded helplessly on a remote desert island, you could gladly eat every day for the rest of your life and be happy. In that scenario, AT BEST, you’ve got coconuts, some free growing herbs, maybe a tropical fruit or vegetable, and perhaps a flock of chickens that you’ll have to implement a sustainable breeding and slaughter strategy for.
There’s no blast chillers on a desert island.
There’s sure as shit not a goddamned ice cream maker.
And if you can show me any uninhabited desert island on the entire Planet Earth that has a KitchenAid casually sitting there ready to go, I will eat my own whole ass.
But even assuming the island has all these things at the ready, committing to outrageous, over-the-top dishes for your every day for the rest of your life dish is pure lunacy.
Chicken nuggets.
Toasties.
Bloody sausage and mash.
Any of these would have been acceptable: An ordinary dish you can knock together in 10 minutes on days you can’t be fucked, and fancied up significantly on days where you want to put in the effort.
Have I significantly over-thought this? Maybe. But tell me I’m wrong when you look at the mess poor Larissa had to dish up.
Every day. The rest of your life. That.
Come on.
It gets even worse when you consider the dishes that actually won. Sure, Dee goes through because her literal mountain of curry looks like heaven and even my crabbiness about a made-up parameter in my own own can see that.
But what’s going on with Mandy‘s Shish Barak dish?
Is your desert island contained entirely within downtown Beirut or nah?
And Tim‘s! Tim’s!!!
Nice to know your desert island has a once-great rock pub that’s been recently renovated by rich fuckwits, m8.
But the most egregious missing-of-the-brief comes from Joe, who might well be the biggest nerd to ever step foot in a MasterChef kitchen.
Joe, bless him, heard the “desert island” brief and apparently interpreted that to mean cooking like he was roleplaying as both lead roles in The Blue Lagoon.
For those of you playing at home, that’s Braised Chicken with Marsala Cream. That dish hasn’t been seen since the Falklands were invaded. The last time that dish was on-trend all clubs were named “Electrotheque” all men had nicknames like Scooter and Ice Man. That dish was so of-its-time you could probably catch VD off it.
That thing barely made it off the pages of a faded Woman’s Day Dinner Party cookbook, let alone into a place where someone would be happy eating it every day for the rest of their lives.
And yet, for reasons I absolutely cannot fathom, the idiot judges deem it one of the four best of the day. In fact, every one of the above dishes gets a pass through to the Immunity Challenge: Dee’s admittedly banging curry, Tim’s pub chops, Mandy’s Menulog special, and Joe’s 80s chook in cum soup.
That leaves poor Steph out of the mix, despite the fact that she was the only one that hit the brief right in the bullseye by cooking a perfectly fine-looking plate of spaghetti bolognese.
What’s wrong with that? Tell me one thing that is wrong with that dish: You cannot do it. That is an ideal desert island dish. Look at it bubbling away in the pot there.
You could cook that anywhere! On a campfire, on a stove, on hot rocks, probably in direct sun if was hot enough. It’s the only dish of the day that could, feasibly, be cooked on an actual desert island.
And yet we’re rewarding time slop and pub glue instead.
Great show we’re running here, guys. Big fan of it.
Great work all round.
BONUS ROUND!
Hey kids! It’s time to play this year’s edition of WHO’S DOING THE WEIRDEST THING IN THEIR INTRO CLIP?
Is it Mandy, throwing what appears to be fairy dust into the ether?
Is it Monica, laughing maniacally into pure fire?
Is it Simon, doing the same thing but seductively brushing a corn at the same time?
Is it Sandeep, who nearly takes half his arm off while wilding swinging a cleaver and not looking where it’s going?
No! It’s not any of them!
This year’s winner? Larissa! Catching a perfectly sliced half orange that’s been thrown at her for some reason!
You know! That normal, relatable kitchen thing that everyone does!
NEXT TIME: We give someone an Immunity Pin in episode four and Curtis Stone can barely hide his anger about it. It’s a good show – great, even – and I love it.
