For all the brouhaha that MasterChef: Back to Win made about the Immunity Pin handed to Dani Venn in the season’s premiere episode, the whole shebang is now over with the barest of whimpers.
Proudly touted by the series’ new batch of judges as the “only” Immunity Pin this season, Dani managed to tip-toe the line of catastrophe by wearing it on her black apron through several elimination challenges, before finally eating shit last night in a cook that sent her home without using the pin.
So what the hell do they do with it now? Is that it? Is it over? Have we built up a hyper-valuable show dynamic only to burn it before it can be used? Or are we going to manipulate the “only pin this season” line and put it back up for grabs by saying it’s the only physical pin that will be floating around this year, but there’ll be multiple opportunities to win and play it?
Either way, with so much of the series already shaken up for the Back to Win format, one as-yet unused option remains damningly clear: Producers should hide the Immunity Pin somewhere in the kitchen and send cooks on wild goose chases trying to find it.
MasterChef should, without question, start hiding Immunity Pins around Kitchen HQ like Survivor hides its Idols in the jungle.
Better still, they should tuck clues alluding to the pin’s whereabouts away as well.
Look me in the eye and tell me it wouldn’t whip ass to watch Hayden, struggling dearly with the latter stages of the competition, suddenly find a mysterious scroll wrapped around the power cord of his ice cream machine.
You cannot possibly tell you wouldn’t eat up vision of him scratching his head as he tells a confessional that the scroll says the location of an Immunity Pin can’t “be leeked.”
And then when the penny finally drops in his brain and he abandons 10 minutes of his remaining cook time to dive through the pile of veggies in the pantry, emerging pin-in-hand with just enough time left to plate something up? Greatest MasterChef moment of all time, hands down.
Hide the pin in the depths of the kitchen. Make them crawl over each other trying to get their hands on it.
I don’t care where you put it. Tape it to a tub of ricotta. Shove it up the guts of a kingfish. Stick it in a carton of milk and have some idiot not notice it was in there until they accidentally feed a pin-laced gelato to Jock.
I do not want to see four idiots in white smocks crisping fish skin to get a sniff at the pin. I want to see bloody Chris Badenoch tying twenty wooden spoons together and trying to knock the pin down from the big ass M on the front of the building.
Hide the Immunity Pin somewhere. Make them literally fight for it. It will amuse me.
