It might seem weird that I’m doing a recap of the MasterChef finale.

For one thing, I’ve watched none of the preceding season, or really any of the show ever. Another issue is that I’m massively cursed with food intolerances, meaning that not only can I not eat any of the culinary masterpieces concocted by the contestants, I hate them for cooking poison and I hate how good it must all taste. Perhaps if there was an ‘eggs and eggs alone’ round, I’d get on board.

But when I was asked to recap the finale, I said yes, because of one important reason: for people like me (TV writing nerds) recapping MasterChef is kinda like our MasterChef. Careers have been built off recapping MasterChef, and I want my slice of that sweet pie. So let’s get into this and make me column-worthy famous.

The Steaks Are High

Considering the show has already had about 500 episodes this season, I thought there would be more to catch up on. But luckily, everyone seems to have been trained to speak in a kind of meandering, self-referential narrative summary of their lives. About two seconds in, I already know everything pertinent about everyone on screen, and have already harshly judged them.

First we have Diana, who is focused and able to make big flavours quickly. As this episode goes on, it’s very clear that she is fucking hungry (LOL) for this. She will work hard and will obviously succeed at whatever she does. She’s the kind of person who you’d trust to be a doctor or a pilot, because she knows what she’s doing. As someone who idolises efficiency and drive, she is immediately my favourite.

Then we have Ben, who has an absolutely gorgeous jawline, and seems to be heavily into ice cream, which makes me feel like if chefing doesn’t work out, he could probably make a killing by just turning up at people’s houses after a breakup. Ben is clearly lovely and sweet — but unlike the ice cream he’s known for, he’s also warm. (That was my best try at food writing, I hope it was palatable.)

Ben also has children, which ups his personal narrative into ‘adorable’, and makes me Google if DILF has an age limit, and if not, if perhaps it should?

Both Diana and Ben immediately start off the episode with some unconscious food puns.

“It’s really bittersweet going up against Ben,” says Diana, as if she doesn’t KNOW just how loaded that word is.

“It’s just chalk and cheese,” says Ben, both using the phrase incorrectly and conjuring images of a meal challenge that only uses chalk and cheese as ingredients. Although to be honest, sounds just about bland enough that I could safely eat it.

Round 1: Mystery Box

For some reason George Calombaris is the MasterChef judge I know best, because once an Uber driver stopped outside his restaurant to swear lightly at it for a while, before telling me lots of things about George. George starts off the first round by bringing up how the contestants are good friends, seeming displeased by this fact, and then relishing how once cooking starts, they can no longer be friends. I don’t want to get sued, but I’m going to say on the record that George Calombaris hates friendship.

ANYWAY, the first challenge is to make a meal using a mystery box. Each of those mystery boxes have been used in previous episodes of the show, so we got a flashback to all of them. I am starting to be concerned about how long this show goes for.

I have about seven pages of notes from this challenge which are just quotes that I found mildly funny because of the egregious and constant use of the word ‘box’. Side note: I am the same age as the contestant Ben, who has perhaps two children and a cooking career and is an adult. Just bringing that up for no reason.

“Smash your boxes!” crows George Calombaris while I cackle. But then they do a flashback of Curtis Stone saying, “I always like to think outside of the box, when I look INSIDE the box” and I hated it so much that I never found the word ‘box’ funny ever again.

What happened with the cooking? Well, Diana made something out of leaves from a plant that’s in my grandma’s garden, and they referred to it as a “green juice” for the entire challenge. “Ah,” I said wisely, “it must be a green JUS”. I am cultured and worldly. But no, it was a green juice.

Ben made icecream, yummo!

Ben also cut his thumb really badly, and I spent the rest of my time watching closely for hygiene breaches.

At the end of this challenge, George Calombaris says, “You two are the best of the best, and we want your best” and I basically want to bludgeon him to death with a thesaurus.

Round 2: Three Identical Plates Of Food

So, round two features the inspired choice of cooking whatever you dang want, but the trick is making three identical plates of it. It’s at this point that I start to get all mystically involved in the repetition of threes in the show — three meals, three rounds, three cackling judges whose hosting chemistry can only be likened to ‘Shakespeare witches’.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that George Calombaris, Matt Preston and The Other have definitely set up this whole arcane challenge as a way of luring in youth and manipulating them via sorcery and wiles to feed their appetites for food and mischief.

The whole thing is actually very dramatic. I can’t stop watching and listening to the people on the mezzanine, who spend their entire time hooting and hollering at the contestants. There’s one blonde lady who bleats “you can do it” and “come on get it done” and “you need to move” in a flat, hateful voice. This arena is diabolical. The contestants are being both haunted and taunted by the ghosts of their defeated foes.

As someone who absolutely hates to give verbal encouragement or being forced to participate in things, being up on that balcony seems like my worst nightmare. Some poor idiot screams “Come on Diz, pump them full of flavour!”

Everyone loves screaming “watch your fingers” to Ben, who famously cut himself up a treat only a few hours early. By this point, I would have turned around and thrown knives at this flock of hateful ravens cawing at me.

Both the contestants cook stuff — oatmeal prawns for Diana, ice cream again for Ben. George seems pretty into Ben, and is giving him lots of what passes as emotional encouragement between men. The best way I can think of describing this is that you say something nice and heartfelt, but do it in a perfunctory and annoyed voice. Like imagine the TV dad from Full House, but he’s saying all his lines while someone cuts him off in traffic.

Round 3: The Lil Stinker Challenge

Even I know that the MasterChef finale always has a final task that’s best described as the Lil Stinker Challenge, in the sense that it’s pointlessly annoying to make.

Wasn’t there a golden goose egg and a tower of custard at some point? Whatever. In this round, they have to make three pieces of fruit out of chocolate. The Chocolate Wizard comes out, and reveals a diorama of three pieces of fruit artfully arranged with a glass of brandy and some candles and plates and junk.

Already realising that this is going to be inherently stupid, Ben goes a little crazy and starts thinking everything is made of chocolate, even the judges, even the entire studio — even his own memories, just chocolate confections forever.

But before we can get into the six-hour chocolate fruit-making challenge, the three witches magnanimously reunite the contestants with their family. I scream at my laptop, rolling my eyes at the sheer volume of awkward dad hugs I’m watching. But then, as I see them all sobbing together, I have to wonder: how long have these evil witches kept these poor people in the chef factory away from their families?

So, these stupidly complicated pieces of fruit are made using chocolate and other sweet junk. Ben, God bless him, immediately exposes how ludicrous this challenge is by tasting one of them: “I absolutely loved the pear…” he enthuses. “It had so much pear in it, that it really tasted like you were eating a pear.”

You know what else tastes like eating a pear, and is almost 100 percent pear? A pear. Pears are gross anyway. The whole system is gross! My God, I’m tired. I too have been drawn into the time-stealing web that the food-witches have woven.

“These are three INCREDIBLE fruits!” states one of the judges, which is a good description of me and two of my friends.

At one point, there is a dad hug so awkward that the dad whispers “good boy”, as if his handsome son is a golden retriever who just wanted to open an ice cream restaurant.

The cooking is dramatic, as much as cooking can be dramatic I guess? Diana immediately goes into a laser focus, her minor setbacks, such as the early crystallisation of one of her cores (which sounds like a Star Trek plotline) only serves to make her work harder. Ben, however, is a mess. At one point his kitchen is literally on fire and when warned by the screeching Greek choir above, he looks at it and says “it’s meant to do that”.

The Chocolate Queen wanders over at this point and asks the helpful question: “Why… why are you doing that?” She will continue to offer these sage hints as he continues to fuck up. But he rallies, and eventually his fake fruit is looking a million bucks, and he gives this beautiful description of his candied pear:

“It’s coming out of a very small hole and I’m pushing with all my might and one pops out and it’s just beautiful”. Hehehehehe.

I’m wishing for an early night of sleep, and perhaps an early death.

“I’ve just got to paint my chocolate apple,” says Diana, and I throw my hands up in the air. I’m all for pointless wastes of time — I’m an author after all — but any food that you have to paint is ridiculous and I’m against it.

Diana, who I love, then literally screams “AAAAAAAAAAARGH” up at the mezzanine, probably in response to the monotone instructions she’s getting. “Get it done,” they drone spitefully. “Buff that mandarin”.

Then they finish. They present their SIX-HOUR CHOCOLATE FRUIT CREATIONS to the witches.

“Not only was that really challenging, but that was long,” says the Chocolate Queen, talking about the challenge but also echoing my feelings about watching MasterChef.

There’s a lot of blather and Diana wins, as she clearly should. But Ben is so lovely — truly a golden retriever turned into a man — that I almost want him to win. It was close, with only one point separating them, but I am glad that Diana won.

To borrow MasterChef speak, I truly went on a journey with this episode — a journey in which I questioned a number of my choices in life, a journey in which I ordered Thai food because perhaps ironically I was too busy recapping MasterChef to cook my own food, a journey in which I aged 1,000 years. But most of all my journey involved realising that, in spite of my bellyaching, MasterChef is a show about three voracious witches who taunt their victims into creating marvellous food and becoming the best chef they can be. Of course I love it. And isn’t that the greatest journey of them all?

–

Patrick Lenton is a writer and author. He tweets at @patricklenton.