MasterChef Australia – Sun 7:30pm; Mon-Fri 7pm, Ch10
http://www.masterchef.com.au/
Previously on Masterchef, Ben missed out on his chance for immunity as he, Andy and Emma cooked off against Dan Hong. Tonight, the contestants are let loose in two high end restaurants as their owners are punished for perceived slights against George and Gary.

Morning in Sydney and the contestant get about doing contestanty things: Wade is shaving; Lydia is applying makeup (who?), Tregan is letting down troubled youths. Tregan tries to wake up Sam by indecently assaulting him but it’s no good because he’s a very heavy sleeper. Emma reveals they’re all going to Kings Cross for some kind of a challenge, but hopefully not the one where you have to guess which one is a dude. Kevin oozes slime as he reminisces about some of his own Kings Cross adventures.

Then they’re all walking somewhere, so it must be somewhere that public transport dare not go. It’s the Cross, so close, a place to which so many have yet to venture. The lamp posts have been polished and the hookers put away for the occasion, as the contestants are told they are running two restaurants. Hungry Jacks and McDonalds at 4am? Unfortunately not. Instead, it’s actual restaurants on Bayswater Road.

Alice has her goofy big glasses on, but this time they’re shaded, so we’re left wondering whether they’re Polaroid or she’s actually dim enough to spend money on at least two pairs of ridiculously oversized glasses.

Emma and Andy are made team captains as reward for making Ben lose the day before. Emma begins to cry with joy, while Andy holds Ben’s hand for comfort. Andy compares captaining a Masterchef team to captaining a basketball team, and plans to serve customers by throwing the food into their mouths.

Emma and Andy have to choose their teams. Emma chooses Ben and breaks Andy’s heart. Andy chooses Sam because he looks more like Ben than anyone else. Emma chooses Kylie, etcetera, etcetera, until Lydia is last. Even they don’t know who she is. Lydia says being picked last is poopy. And it is poopy. However, she is greeted with the news that because she was picked last she gets to choose which restaurant Team Andy will cook in, and this causes Lydia to become cross eyed. It’s definitely not poopy anymore. She focuses enough to choose Concrete Blonde. They get blue aprons and George as mentor. Team Emma gets red aprons, Gary and the chance to cook in Ortolan.

At Concrete Blonde Alice takes extensive notes because she has glasses on and feels she has to use them. She’s not just a pretty face after all. She’s a pretty face with enormous glasses. Andy starts allocating roles according to flavour. Sam get’s meat, Amina gets fish, Julia gets sweet and Alice gets asked to remove her glasses.

Over at Ortolan, Team Emma are saying words at each other as their brain storming session gets underway. Then they decide that brain storming isn’t very PC because it may offend people who suffer from epilepsy, and so begin a thought shower session. They allocate 5 people to service front of house: Big Kev, Matt, Wade, Dalvindra and TK. Kylie gets desserts, and she says life’s not fun if you don’t take risks, as she splashes lighter fluid all over the kitchen floor and waves a lit match in the air.

Back in Concrete Blonde, Julia is head of desserts, while Alice has been relegated to checking the herbs for bugs. Hopefully those glasses are not just for show. Oh wait, those glasses are just for show. Then Andrew and Alice are sent to the streets of the Cross to sell something. Alice knows selling, because Alice can sell ice to Eskimos, or so she’s been told. But those Eskimos were tourists Eskimos in Australia for a summer holiday and were in desperate need of ice.

With 3 hours to go Ben says time has gone really quickly, but I’m feeling the opposite. There are no prawns in Team Andy’s kitchen to go into their prawn pasta. So they decide to use scallops instead. George is concerned about the pasta and asks Mario, Lydia and Andy a number of times whether they’re sure they want to do that, before dragging them into the freezer and showing them where the prawns are. In the draw marked ‘prawns’. Now that they’ve found prawns they can do prawns but Lydia is still not convinced they’re doing prawns. “Yeah prawns” says Mario, eyes wide with rage.

George and Gary meet up to discuss their respective team captains. Gary is concerned that Emma, rather than leading her team, is out the back scrubbing potatoes, cleaning them up so she can carve little faces into two of them and call one Ben and the other Andy and then smash them with a mallet. George thinks Andy is directing well. Gary can’t find any positives in his kitchen but then the camera operator tries to show us one down the front of Mindy’s top. Emma is explaining to camera how her team will pull it off before mercifully she is consumed by cleansing fire. Then George is telling us to grate butter, so long as it’s Western Star butter, that wacky funster.

When we come back, there is only 10 minutes to go before the customers come in, so Gary decides this is as good a time as any to tell them how a kitchen works. Kevin starts an argument with Emma about the benefits of devaluing the Euro, before the doors are even open, while things seem to be running more smoothly over at Concrete Blonde, who start taking orders. Andy leads with aplomb as he fires orders at the rest of the team.

At Ortolan, the stress is showing as Emma hides her head in a bucket. But Kevin can see her legs and asks her for someone to help him. The first orders begin coming in and Emma mutters them to her team. The amount of orders coming in and going out, possibly more than three has Emma melting in her socks. No one is answering her, because they don’t respect her anymore. Food is going cold because the waiters are all on a smoke break. Kylie recognises that the whole point of the challenge is to get money in the till but no one has checked if there is even a till there. Then former Masterchef winner Kate Bracks is showing us how to use a dishwasher. But not a till.

Matt and George sit down for a couple of Team Andy’s dishes and are suitably impressed. Suddenly Julia is already being asked to serve a dessert, which is undercooked. In Ortolan, Gary and Matt try some entrees and have no complaints. Team Emma is starting to run like a well oiled machine. However, Gary’s steak is undercooked, but I’m no longer sure whose restaurant he is even in.

With half an hour to go, it’s time to get the food out and the bills paid. Team Andy’s dessert problems continue as the fondant spreads across the plate and onto the table. To compound the difficulties, Lydia, in a Masterchef extra, explains that in her culture you don’t put parmesan on seafood, because that’s poopy. Back in real Masterchef time, George and Matt get their desserts from Andy, but are more worried about the numerous customers drumming their fingers and trying not to stare at the cameras.

Then time is up and Team Andy hugs as one and Team Emma hugs as individuals. George says that he was really proud of the way Andy handled himself and Andy earns a slap on the shoulder from Sam. Gary tells Emma that he was really proud of her and Emma says they she was really proud of her self before Gary repeats that he was really proud of Emma before she cries. Then her whole team say how proud they were of here.

George says he was mesmerised by the way Tregan persuaded people, purposely avoiding the word proud, and Tregan cries tears of joy. Audra is applauded for her pork belly, but Julia is criticised for her fondant. For Team Emma, Ben’s scallops were well received and Matt admitted to being wowed by Kylie’s desserts.

But the taste of the food, let alone the level of stress in the kitchen, mean nothing. It’s all about money, and the team with the least amount of money will face off in an elimination challenge. Big Kev thinks Team Emma made $3500, while Andy thinks Team Andy probably made $3501, which would be a stunning coincidence. In fact, Team Emma made two thousand, two hundred and thirty two dollars, and Team Andy made two thousand (pause) seven hundred (screams drown out rest) dollars. The shocking news of the loss causes Emma to cry.

Tomorrow, a challenge involving pasta, as in, is Masterchef pasta it’s used by date yet?