So we’re back in the full swing of MasterChef already. We’re not mucking around this year. Everything’s already gone balls up. It’s madness! Insanity! It’s episode two and we’re already running a full service team challenge for a crowd of 120 that the show gathered together in a much simpler time when we could all be close to each other. Gordon Ramsey is spending his week swearing his head off about slabs of pork belly that Chris cut thicker than than a double wide ass. Reynold is smartly keeping his cards close to his chest by deliberately plating a “challenging” dessert so he doesn’t blow everyone out of the water on day two. And Poh is struggling dearly as she struggles to readjust to the time pressure of the kitchen. And yet the one burning question I want answered immediately is: What the living christ is going on with the new MasterChef opening titles?
The MasterChef titles are an institution. They are as important to the series as a blast chiller or someone bullishly thinking they’ll be the one who finally doesn’t ruthlessly fuck up a risotto.
They’re weird as shit, and they’re supposed to be. But last night, Back to Win gave us our first look at the titles for this season, only to reveal they’ve undergone a truly drastic change.
Gone are the weird-ass poses in front of ordinary kitchen equipment; all shots of people tossing flour into the air like LeBron James erased from the season altogether. In their place? A bunch of boring shots of contestants that makes the whole thing look more like the low rent intro video for a Time Share seminar.
Honestly, the fuck is this?
What the hell is going on? Why are we doing normal things in the titles now? Why are we using ordinary-ass B-Roll for them? Whose decision was it to use an off-the-shelf Keynote transition for the bloody chyron?
It’s horrible! Look at it all!
No!
No!!!!
What the hell, man! What the damn fuck!
What happened? The pandemic shutdown maybe explains why they didn’t get any shots of Harry catching a fish in his mouth or whatever, but it certainly doesn’t explain why we’ve suddenly shifted to Powerpoint-standard slide animations. The only partway reasonable explanation for all this that I can think of is that someone at Channel Ten found out that the titles had become a meme on TikTok and got scared about it, because food must apparently be dead serious at all times.
Compare all that with one of last year’s opening titles.
That’s your classic MasterChef title right there: Staring bolt straight right down the barrel of the camera, risking horrific injury by doing something completely berserk. And instead this year – in what’s supposed to be the ALL STAR year – we’re getting hippy dippy smile shots from Camera C? No. Hate it. Fix it.
