MASTERCHEF DRAMA: Four And Twenty Rejects Baked In A Pie


Buckle up, dorks. Because last night’s episode of MasterChef was a freaking marathon.

We arrive at ELIMINATION DAY which of all the MasterChef challenges is clearly the most metal. Black aprons. Broken hearts. Bloodshed. It’s got it all. m/


Quite smartly, Billie immediately uses her Immunity Pin for its primary function – its secondary function, it should be noted, is using it to prick the other contestants in the eye before running for the daggum hills whilst flailing your arms like you’re a murderous Kermit the Frog. The more you know.
Honestly, if you know you’re going to use the damned pin, why try and hide by dressing in Elimination Black? I know it’s TV and there’s suspense to be built. But goddamn. Everyone – everyone – knows you’re going to use it. Show your hand. Rock up in jeans, a bomber jacket, and a pair of get fucked heels and own that shit. Strut in the door with it above your head like you’re Ali walking into Zaire. Billie bomaye.

With the black apron off of Billie, we’re down to the condemned four – JessieSara, Rose, and Matthew. The Hungry, Hungry Judges have lined up, and tease a challenge that involves something they’ve only seen a handful of good attempts at in seven years. Matthew guesses it’s a risotto challenge. If that were the case that’s just straight-up cruel; a nasty producer’s trick to maximise tears in a short amount of time.
But lo, it’s not that. It’s pies. We’re cooking pies today.
Suspicions that the judges have gone to a pre-Thursday night football function and rocked up to the set absolutely maggot: Rising.
They’ve got no restrictions over what goes into the pie, and Preston describes what’s required as “a pastry bottom, pastry sides, a pastry top, and filling in the middle.” Matt Preston today being dressed by No Shit Sherlock Sartorial Supplies.
Everyone immediately begins banging away on their pastry, except for Jessie, who starts on the filling and asserts “I can get the pastry done in an hour,” which is one of those rare fundamentally terrible sentences that everyone says once in a while; kinda like “I can jump that far,” “That chilli can’t be THAT hot,” or “I know I’ve had 13 beers, but I still reckon I could knock an apple off your head with this knife. WILLIAM TELL, BITCH.
Matthew is killing it, and is the only one out of the four to use an actual pie dish. Sara and Jessie both have little tart trays out, and Rose is going with a snap lock tin, which in theory is kinda like kitchen punk rock, but in reality is just gonna produce a pie tube more than anything.
Sara‘s pastry is, not to put too fine a point on it, shitty. Really shitty. Like she’s been listening to far too much Kansas, because that shit’s basically dust in the wind.
Meanwhile, Matthew is still killing it.
Rose is bringing some middle eastern flavour to the dance, which I cringe at for a moment until I realise that anything – literally anything – is amazing in a well cooked pie. Doesn’t matter what it is. I’d eat a shoe boiled in treacle if you put inside a crispy pastry shell. DELISH.
Meanwhile, Matthew is still killing it.
Sara’s pastry just manages to come together, but it’s shortcrust pastry that’s literally been drawn so short I actually think I heard it ask her what she was talking about, Willis. With 40 minutes to go, it’s at this point that Jessie finally decides to get cracking on a pastry. There’s no jokes to be made there, truthfully. It’s just a disastrous decision.
Meanwhile, Matthew is still killing it – how is this happening.


In the dying stages of the challenge we get the unique situation of the judges having to ramp up tension from 15 minutes out. Because the last stage of cooking a pie is putting the top on and dobbing it into the oven. But because we can’t fill 30 seconds of TV with people staring into oven doors, we’ve got four contestants who are making pointless sauces to accompany the dish. M8s, it’s a bloody pie. If that sauce doesn’t contain the words “Big Red” in the title, leave it the hell off the plate.
At this stage, Jessie’s still probably got just enough time to pissbolt down to the 7-Eleven and grab a lukewarm Four’N Twenty from the warmer and throw it on the plate, which would probably have gotten her a better result.
The uncooked pastry does nothing for no one, and her chances of survival are slim.
Matthew’s magnificent looking pie just about sends the judges into fits of orgasmic joy. Seriously, the pie boners that filled the screen here were bloody overwhelming. Gary actually moaned “Oh, maaaaaate” as the knife went through the pastry. And let’s not even get started on the mysterious glass of red wine that Matthew served up with it.
Suspicions that the judges have been in the pantry all challenge shotgunning cooking sherry and are now Captain Cooked: Rising.
Jessie’s slopfest is judged the worst dish of the day in the Elimination Challenge. But the phrase “you’re going home” isn’t actually uttered. THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION, JESSIE. STOP HUGGING EVERYONE. YOU’VE GOT HUG DEAFNESS.
Instead of giving her the boot straight away, we’re bringing back in all the Eliminated contestants. Look at them! All your old favourites! (Hi Fiona!)
But you know what this means…
No. No it… It can’t be…
Holy shit, alert the authorities.
John’s back in the kitchen.

The idea here is that all 14 of them will cook off, with the winner facing off against Jessie 1-on-1 for a spot in the final 10. With so many cooks whipping up culinary storms, we’ve only got time to feature a small handful of the better dishes/stories.
That handful mercifully does not include John, who in cooking a Pork Kilawin showed blatant disregard for his own personal brief.

Of the 14 Eliminated, we focus in on three – Kristina Explains It AllStephen the Bland, and… uh… Kha(n).
I’ll get me coat.
Stephen initially has designs on serving up an entire salmon as is. Nothing else. Rock up to the judge’s table. *WHOOMP*. Big fish. Enjoy, fuckos. Except the judges come over and do that “What you’re doing is terrible but I can’t tell you that outright so I’m phrasing it as a question to make you think shifting course away from the Shit on Toast you’re currently concocting is actually your idea” thing. So he instead decides to dive back into the thing that did him in initially and goes for a seafood medley. In the process turfing his badly butchered salmon, who gave its life so a reality show contestant could have a half chance at getting back on said reality show for an extra episode or two. Sunrise, sunset.
Stephen is summarily judged to be the winner, partly because of the dish he put up, and partly because between him, Kristina, and Kha, he’s probably the one that’s most likely to be found in five years in a mock setup of the MasterChef Kitchen that he’s constructed in his basement, where he hosts entire seasons of the show featuring himself and a group of caged field mice – each one named after his fellow former contestants.
*a Rat wanders into the room* “IT’S MARCO PIERRE WHITE WEEK, YOU GUYS!
So in the third complete cook of this episode that doesn’t end (for it goes on and on, my friend), we’ve got Stephen and Jessie now battling it out mano-e-Jessieo for the right to slip back into the competition that Jessie technically hasn’t left yet, and that Stephen’s been out of for a grand total of about 2 days now. Seriously, he’s still wearing those bandaids from where he last cut himself on Tuesday. His best, plain Fred Perry polo is still drying on his line at home.
Stephen goes for a dessert, despite openly admitting he was never a dessert guy when he was in the contest in the first place. What could possibly go wrong there. Unless he’s found a Matrix-like jack to learn how 2 sugar in 48 hours or less, I’d say his Apple maps are directing him to Shit Creek against the tide.
Jessie, smartly, recognised that the judges are both:
  1. In the mood for seafood. And;
  2. All magnificently wankered on ouzo.
So despite Stephen’s more than acceptable Lemon Verbena Parfait – which at one point had him running outside to the driveway (Seriously m8, what are you doing? You can’t freeze custard on the road ya dickhead lol) – Jessie wins through by grabbing the business end of an entire Lobster and throwing into a vat of butter the size of Scrooge McDuck‘s vault.
The judge’s get that artery-clenching burst of endorphins they’ve been chasing all day, and Jessie is back in.
So the elimination challenge ended up with absolutely no one being eliminated, and the Judges congratulating them on being 2015’s Top Ten, even though there’s been ten of them there for a solid pair of days now.
This show, people. It exists purely to give me tension headaches.
NEXT WEEK: A Mystery Box so mysterious it has mystery on its mystery! You’ll never guess what’s coming! Maybe it’s got leftover curry in there. Maybe someone will have to whip egg whites with an oar. Maybe it’s an endless black hole that will suck everyone down into it and consume all matter, zooming out until our world and solar system are just microscopic dots in a universe that grows smaller and smaller until we zoom out far enough that we see DNA strands and electrons and such and finally arrive in the cells and fibres of what turns out to be the same Mystery Box we just uncovered rendering all life and existence an endless existential loop from which there is no escape.
WHO KNOWS! MYSTERY.

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