Whipping boy(s and girls)
This week’s installment marks a slight improvement over the last two, if only because MasterChef Junior seems to have found new (to this show) ways to degrade its judges.
The episode opens with a whipped cream contest between the top three contestants from last week – Alexander, Gavin and Kaylen. It’s literally a test of who can whip the best cream, or, as Graham Elliot put it, “produce the stiffest peaks.” [Insert dirty joke here.]
To test these creations, MasterChef Junior takes a page out of the Nickelodeon playbook and has the kids hold their respective bowls over the judges’ heads. The one that lasts the longest wins.
Alexander, with his unbelievably rosy cheeks and slightly suspect smile, pulls ahead with a confident, erect bowl of whipped cream which he intentionally lathers all over Elliot’s head out of spite. Gavin appears to have divined his fate from the start, so he just shakes his bowl over Joe Bastianich’s head without any pretense of trying.
Poor Kaylen’s bowl is still mostly liquid, so poor Gordon Ramsay gets slimed and has to change out of his dress shirt in one of the clumsiest dissolves in the series. For creating the “stiffest peaks,” Alexander gets to choose all of the teams for the tag-team challenge.
Each team will have to assemble a Beef Wellington, a dish familiar to fans of Hell’s Kitchen as the one dish that will reliably cause a Ramsay breakdown. Both members of the losing team will be eliminated. No sweat, then.
Alexander’s choices are mostly boring and seemingly arbitrary, although, amusingly, Dara is forced to suffer through Sarah’s boundless nine year old energy. The challenge proceeds about as expected, with a few classic MasterChef misdirects thrown in for good measure. Alexander and Troy argue about mustard, Sofia botches her first stab at mashed potatoes and Sarah drops the Wellington. Everyone forgives her because she’s nine.
Much like last time, the winners get very clearly separated from the losers at the judges’ table. Alexander and Troy, despite Troy’s mishap with the mustard, create what Ramsay describes as a perfect dish. Dara and Sarah follow that up with what Ramsay calls an even more perfect dish. Cut away to a shot of Alexander looking absolutely devastated.
Gavin and Sofia round off the top three with a dish that earns Elliot’s “B+ or A” and a few minor criticisms from Ramsay (which, obviously would have been plenty cause for a verbal spanking in the adult MasterChef).
On the bottom are, disappointingly, Jack and Kaylen – for a soggy pastry and not enough mushrooms – and Jewels and Roen – for seriously over-salting the dish. Jewels and Roen earn the harshest criticism given on the show yet, as Ramsay can’t seem to get over how salty their Wellington is. Jewels and Roen have also been given the most boring edits of the show thus far.
It’s no surprise, then, that the two kids left in the challenge are the more interesting duo of Kaylen’s pre-pubescent sass and Jack’s pre-pubescent Wes Andersonian neurosis. The fairly bland Roen and Jewels are, with much pussyfooting from the judges, shown the exit.
The essence of MasterChef has always been the queasy spectacle that comes from cooking show which shamelessly plugs Wal-Mart. Nothing in MasterChef Junior has come close to fill that blue and yellow void, but the whipped cream is a heartening step. The children may be off the table, but the judges’ dignity isn’t.
Tidbits
· MasterChef Junior would like to take a moment to remind viewers that MasterChef is now recruiting plebeians for season 5. Think you can cook? More importantly, think you have an even bigger ego than Joe?
· The weird thing on Dara’s head started freaking me out even more now that it appears to change colors between confessionals. It’s definitely a bow, but what the hell is it made of? And, more importantly, is it carcinogenic?
· Jack wins the award for most hilarious breakdown pose, as he leaned on his elbows, hunched over the stove while Dara’s busy bear hugging Kaylen.
· With MasterChef Junior, it’s really the little things that really bug me. The show’s habit of changing fonts between title cards and sets is really starting to irritate me.
· Each time the judges cut open a Wellington, the editor loses his shit and cuts the scene like the opening of the Ark from Raiders of the Lost Ark. No one’s face ever melted because of an undercooked Beef Wellington, dude. Unless, of course, this was on Hell’s Kitchen.
