MASTERCHEF “Top 4 Compete” Season 2, Episode 18 – It looked like the final four MasterChef competitors were rather disappointed to discover they weren’t being flown somewhere exciting for this round of eliminations. Instead, MasterChef brought three guest judges from MasterChef France, MasterChef Israel and MasterChef India to sample the best of America’s home cooking.
I was somewhat surprised by the results of the team challenge. I wasn’t rooting for Suzy and Christian to win, but the gourmet spin on a Thanksgiving dinner seemed to garner equal amounts of praise and criticism from the judges as Adrian and Jen’s lobster and prawns dish. Sure, it didn’t help that Christian was undermining his own team in front of the judges, but Chef Ramsay and Bastianich seemed to put a lot of weight onto the Red Team’s inability to work together.
I’m still having a hard time getting over the fact that the Blue Team won the challenge despite serving unclean prawns in their finished dish to the entire panel of MasterChef judges. Somehow, serving a prawn with an intact intestine filled with a mixture of sand and the little decomposing sea creatures that prawn munch on in the ocean (let’s just be honest, it’s an intestinal line filled with soon-to-be prawn poop) was less offensive an error than an uninspired Thanksgiving dinner? Really?!
In any case, that meant that Suzy and Christian would have to battle it out in the MasterChef Pressure Test Challenge. They were given 90 minutes to prepare a beautiful lemon meringue pie and I think most of us assumed Suzy would have it in the bag. Her pie ended up looking really bizarre and nothing like the sample pie they presented. I’m surprised she didn’t seem to notice that there was something really odd about its appearance even before she put it in the oven. Christian, as usual, was totally confident in his ability to put out a beautiful pie and in fairness, it looked great.
After the judges cut both pies, Suzy’s seemed to have most of the flavors and textures down, but her proportions were way off and her pastry was undercooked. Christian’s pie was solid and proportionally accurate, but his meringue and custard were both inconsistent. Ultimately Suzy was sent home and I was only mildly disappointed because I like her just a little bit more than I like Christian – and not by much.
The passive aggressive smack talking between the contestants was upped a notch and all four of the remaining contestants had moments where the things they said to the cameras just seemed so belligerent and rude. Christian, however, is completely graceless and there’s a growing feeling of entitlement that I’m picking up from him that I don’t like at all. Maybe I wouldn’t feel that way if he wasn’t such a complete jerk to Suzy before and after the Pressure Test challenge. Jen said that she was hoping Suzy would be able to serve him up a slice of humble pie in this challenge. Suzy couldn’t do it, so I’m hoping Jen or Adrian will be able to do it on tomorrow’s MasterChef.
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