And the winner is…the one on the right

Seven weeks ago, I volunteered to watch and recap MasterChef Junior. At the time, it seemed like a fairly promising opportunity. MasterChef was, after all, a bizarrely fascinating nihilistic celebration of pettiness, frequently indulging in some highly edited feuds between home cooks with way too much time on their hands. Adding kids to the formula could only result in some heinous, Honey Boo Boo level shit, right?

Wrong. Because, for some reason unfathomable to anyone save some Fox marketing executives, Gordon Ramsay made MasterChef Junior into his only classy American television show. Not classy enough for the competition to actually be worth a damn – I’m still not convinced that the kids actually cooked everything on the show – but classy enough to suck all of the misanthropic joy out of MasterChef.

Basically, what it comes down to is this: if you find kids absolutely freaking adorable, you probably loved MasterChef Junior. If you, like me, don’t particularly like little children, then all of the precocious bullshit, the gumming up for the cameras and the pussy-footing judges added up to one of the dullest television experiences conceivable.

I guess picking MasterChef Junior was a bad idea. Who would’ve guessed that?

Tonight’s finale was mercifully finite. Perhaps the only virtue to this first run of MasterChef Junior was its brevity. Though I didn’t form any attachment or resentment towards the contestants, at least I only had to watch seven episodes instead of the standard fifteen or show agonizing hours.

On the other hand, that meant that the stakes felt really, really low for the entirety of the hour. Dara’s grotesque red bow was pitted against Alexander’s rouged cheeks in a culinary fight to the death: three dishes, ninety minutes, violence allowed.

In a surprising twist, the actual cooking process creating almost no drama whatsoever. Even on MasterChef Junior, kids would frequently start bickering about who got to hold the knife more or whether or not the handle is too hot to handle.

By contrast, last night’s finale only had Dara suffering a brief panic attack followed by a cut to commercial break…ANNNNNNNNNND she’s fine.

We then moved to the judging portion of the episode. Judging is always an inherent weakness for cooking shows, as watching people eat is not only visually uninteresting but can be downright off-putting. MasterChef Junior doesn’t really have a neat solution to the problem, save for some overly dramatic music and frequent cutaways.

Of course all of the judges praised the crap out of the kids. Dara’s three course, vaguely Asian meal included an anemic looking tuna appetizer, a murky prawn dumpling curry dish and miso poached pears.

Alexander’s dishes, on the hand, came across as much stronger if far less coherent. A tomato shrimp thing was followed by a veal chop on gnocchi dish with a cannoli napoleon for dessert.

The judges deliberated over the course of several commercial breaks, as is their wont, before deciding a winner. Allegedly chosen with the thinnest of margins, Alexander gets the trophy, $100,000 and external glory while Dara has to make do with her bow collection.

Alexander may have won the competition, but, really, I win.

I win because I never have to see Dara’s hideous collection of ambiguous bows. I win because I never have to watch Troy’s pre-teen Cali stoner act ever again. I win because I never ever have to watch MasterChef Junior ever again.

Tidbits:

  • They wheeled out the winner of last summer’s MasterChef to be part of the peanut gallery. Luca, as always, looked like he just came out of a Fellini movie. I guess we know how he spent his prize.
  • Regarding a shrimp dish, “this is something you’d find in the woods.” What woods have you been visiting, Elliot?
  • When Ramsay said “old fart,” I thought he said, “old f—k” and was briefly interested.
  • “Do you know what I was doing when I was 13?” “In a jail in Glasgow?”
  • It was gratifying to see that all of the cutaways to Bastianich showed him in roughly the same slouched over, dead position I had adopted on the couch.
  • Fox is recruiting for season two of MasterChef Ju-NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. No.