MasterChef Australia – Sun 7:30pm; Mon-Fri 7pm, Ch10
http://www.masterchef.com.au/
Last night on Masterchef, an extraordinary event occurred when the person deemed least likely to cook anything resembling edible food bettered a person thought by many to be a serious contender for the title of best amateur cook of 2012, as Dalvinder, and not Andrew, was sent home after elimination. Tonight, it’s that lovely jubbly f***wit from the UK, Jamie Oliver, as Tregan, Alice and Jules battle it out for immunity and a pin!
Dawn over Sydney as a lone paddler paddles and Alice irons her sheets after another night of indiscriminate bed wetting. She explains how stupid she and her team acted when they won the challenge by acting stupid. Then we finally discover what Jules does for a living which is baking apple pies with other people’s grandmas, because they’re too busy to do it themselves. Tregan is wearing her bandana to combine her love of food and love of social work and her love of being a wanker. Alice comes out and flaps her arms to confirm they’re still there after sleeping on them the entire night.
They arrive at HQ and they have no idea what’s before them, apart from a motor scooter, its presence remaining a mystery. Perhaps the landlord has left it there. Perhaps not. Gary chases the girls down the aisle and they chase him back in scenes reminiscent of the halcyon days of Benny Hill. Perhaps Jamie Oliver has come to Masterchef to perform a Benny Hill retrospective. Perhaps not. Whatever happens, you can be sure it will end with Gary in tights and a suspender belt. Or perhaps you can’t.
They’re competing as individuals, says George, but there are three immunity pins. Because there are three of them they needed to bring the big gun, says George. Preston says things very slowly so they don’t miss a thing. Everyone starts to tear up as they realise it won’t be Peter Russel Clarke after all, but as a consolation it is Jamie Oliver, as everyone screams their disappointment. Alice is so disappointed it’s not Peter Russell-Clarke she wets her pants several times over.
Jules says Jamie is a hero. Gary calls Alice baby. Alice says something about standing on the shoulders of giants. I vomit. Kylie reveals that she has stolen one of Jamie Oliver’s signature sanitary napkins.
They have to cook a Jamie Oliver signature dish, an antipasti platter. Antipasti literally means “before the meal” and is designed to be eaten before the main meal to stimulate your appetite, which is the stupidest thing since Jesus thought “I’ll teach these sinners a lesson by getting myself crucified”. Jamie asks the girls to gather their planks and their thoughts and one second later Alice has her thoughts gathered and compartmentalised alphabetically.
After a break it’s time to start. Jamie takes them into the pantry and shows them his “ministry of food”. “Let’s take some artichokes, and put them in the bin” he suggests. Jules doesn’t listen.
They’re off as Jamie calls Alice sweetheart. She says her plan is to get as much on the platter as possible. Jules says she needs to prove that she deserves to be there, while Tregan says it’s a dream come true and she’s flabbergasted to the max, mixing old world lexicon with modern linguistics. “Antipasti is an assembly” says Oliver, ignoring the rules of grammar. Matt Moran reminds them there is three minutes before Jamie starts, but starts what remains ominously unsaid. Then he begins by flicking his tea towel over his shoulder in a trademark move, before wandering around aimlessly questioning the meaning of life. But then, BAM, he’s cutting zucchini (courgettes) like you wouldn’t believe. That’s right, badly, all the pieces uneven. “They all could get immunity if they do a really good job today” says Oliver to stunned silence. It’s that easy apparently!
Alice says she’s “annoyingly getting peas out of ice”, but that’s just her default setting. Meanwhile Oliver calmly remains calm. Moran quizzes the girls about their food. Tregan forgets what you call the hot thing with a door until Moran reminds her it’s an “oven”. Embarrassingly Oliver doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to call the scampi in the antipodes. But he covers his tracks by ordering the camera man around as if this is his own show.
Tregan fingers her squid for a minute of a half, while Alice also considers squid, but only as an afterthought. Meanwhile, Oliver has now created 15 separate dishes and saved a small American town from eating its children, deep fried. Alice has decided to smash peas in honour of Oliver, as the 5 minute warning is called. Everyone starts plating up, or planking up as the case may be. Kylie gushes over Oliver from the balcony. Jules hopes she gets a pin, but Tregan worries she won’t get a pin, while no one offers to stick a pin in Alice.
Moran calls out two minutes to go, as Oliver assembles his masterpiece. Jules says she’s feeling a lot better than she did 10 minutes ago, when she was suffering from dysentery and had also been struck by lightning. Oliver crowds his plank dangerously, without getting the requisite permits from the council, and with 30 seconds to go Alice’s glasses start to fog up. Everyone counts down from ten and Jamie and the girls plank up JUST IN TIME! Again! Oliver hugs the girls and is amazed at the different looks and feels, either of their food or them. Oliver says he’s happy to be bettered by three beautiful girls, but remains silent on Alice, Tregan and Jules.
Jules plank goes out first and the judges love it, seeing it as a useful implement for punishing recalcitrant apprentice chefs. They also enjoy the food. Gary thinks it’s some of the best food eaten on the show, combined with some of the worst eating, as they mark their scores.
Plank number two belongs to Alice, and Matt thinks it’s sexier than the first one, as he books a return to rehab for his plank fetish. Alice’s calamari impresses Gary, but the smashed peas are a letdown. They score, and we know Alice hasn’t done as well as Jules.
Plank number three belongs to Oliver, and the judges marvel at the amount of food he has managed to fit on. But for Gary it’s a double edged plank: it’s not that neat. George loves the simple food, and Preston can tell it’s been thrown together with confidence, possibly bordering on arrogance. Then they score.
The last one belongs to Tregan, and it is conspicuous by its absence of things such as food. It’s quite sparse, but that’s not its biggest fault. The scampi is raw, and George is disgusted by the calamari which is also undercooked. Preston likes the broccoli, but it’s not going to be enough as they write down their scores.
They assemble to deliver the verdict, as Oliver explains “this is torture”. To emphasise that there are people in the world who suffer under regimes that employ actual methods of torture, he is taken out the back and water boarded for 7 hours.
After a break to allow Oliver to be dried off, the scores are revealed while George does his best impression of a chimpanzee, which surprisingly is quite poor. He explains the process for the contestants who arrived late for their immunity challenge. Jules get’s an 8 from Gary, a 9 from George, and an 8 from Matt. Alice gets an 8 from Gary, an 8 from George and an 8 from Matt. Tregan gets 7 from Gary, a 7 from George and a 7 from Matt, because 7 is the traditional sympathy score.
Oliver admits in a roundabout way that his testicles are crossed as he is raced to RPA for corrective surgery. When he comes back, he gets a 9 from Gary, a 9 from George, and a 9 from Matt, an imperfect score making it likely that he will never come back on this show. To guarantee it, he suggests that he would have enjoyed being spanked by the girls.
Tomorrow night, full frontal nudity! Or perhaps not.