Why MasterChef 2012 didn’t quite hit the spot

July 26th, 2012

Ovens & Cooking

You know that thing where someone you love cooks you dinner, and it just isn’t very good?

“Mmmm,” you say, dabbing politely at your mouth with a folded serviette. “This is… just… uhmmm… do you have any wine?”

You want to like it, but sadly nothing can make up for the fact that it tastes like a particularly inexpensive brand of cat food.

THIS was precisely the experience I had watching this season of MasterChef Australia. It looked good, and I was certainly hungry for some deliciously mindless television consumption. But ultimately it just left me feeling unsatisfied and, to a certain extent, in need of a shower.

So, what went wrong?

Too much crying

The crying, oh my gosh, the crying! Holy hell, I don’t think I’ve seen so much crying outside of a maternity ward, seriously.

What’s wrong with these people?? I mean, I appreciate that being imprisoned inside the MasterChef House and being made to cook ragù in under 3 minutes using only your elbows is perhaps a little bit more stressful, than, say, lying on a beanbag and scratching yourself, but I honestly doubt it was enough to warrant WEEPING LIKE AN ESPECIALLY DISCONSOLATE TODDLER FOR EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY EPISODE, OMG.

And this person! Don’t even talk to me about this person:

Emma cried so much, she never needed to season her food. All she had to do was stand over a pot, think about kittens, and hey presto – her squid ink linguine would be bubbling away before you could say ‘dude, R U OK?’

To combat this problem, next year I think they should replace guest judge Matt Moran with Chopper Read. Instead of asking contestants about their food dreams, he’ll stand there armed with a semi automatic and threaten to shoot anyone who even thinks about getting in touch with their emotional side. Harden the @%&$ up, amateurs!!

The use of the phrase “food dream”

What does “food dream” even mean, anyway? Sure, I have food dreams, but they usually look like this:

Even worse was that the excessive use of this particular phrase was almost always accompanied by crying.

Blah-ing on about their dumb families

I ask you: how many times have you gone into a nice restaurant, and asked for your lunch to be served with a sob story about how the chef’s father was a cross-dressing walrus and how this particular dish always reminds him of fun times he had as a child applying mascara to dad’s walrus whiskers until one fateful day when an evil witch turned him into a tortoise and he never got to beautify his dad’s whiskers EVER AGAIN?

That’s right, zero. (Well, there was maybe that one time, but that’s a story for another blog post, boys and girls…)

Anyway, when most of us go to a restaurant, it’s because we want to EAT DELICIOUS FOOD, not because we want to hear an epic about some bozo’s third cousin twice removed. SHUT UP! JUST COOK THE FOOD!! I MIGHT DIE OF STARVATION IN THE TIME IT TAKES YOU TO SERVE IT AFTER YOU’VE EXPLAINED EVERY BRANCH OF YOUR FAMILY TREE RIGHT DOWN TO THE AMOEBA THAT CRAWLED OUT OF THE PRIMORDEAL SEA THAT KIND OF HAS YOUR NOSE, ARGH! *dies*

Terrible, terrible advertising

Look, I realise that advertising is commercial television’s lifeblood, but there was just something about the frequency, volume and repetitiveness of the commercials screened during MasterChef that made me want to pull this face:

Also if I hear “there’s no freshness like Coles freshness” one more time I will personally hunt down Curtis Stone and force him to eat Coles brand lettuce whilst yelling “So you like Coles freshness, eh? Well have all the Coles freshness in the world, HA HA HA HA!!”

That stupid fireball

And the winner of this challenge is…

And the person whose MasterChef journey is coming to an end is….

And the secret ingredient is….

Fireball. It’s always fireball. WHEN IS IT NOT FIREBALL?!

Honestly I think it’s intrinsically flawed to repeatedly screen an image of a fireball in such a manner as to cause extreme levels of annoyance and frustration. I mean sure, continue to choreograph-in silly invented cliff-hangers (in lieu of, like, a ‘plot’ or an actually engaging storyline) to your heart’s content, but my advice would be to replace the fireball with something more soothing, such as a calming manatee:

Or an insanely cute kitten:

In conclusion…

Contrary to the impression I’ve probably just created, I actually do love MasterChef. Which is why it annoys me so much to see a good concept get ruined by a bunch of things that could have easily been avoided.

I want to love you, MasterChef, but you make it so darned hard! *sob*

Fingers crossed that MasterChef All Stars ends up being watchable – shall we start taking bets?