Masterchef Recap: Pray for Death

The steaks could not be lower

This episode has no purpose other than to fill in space so the series can last another week, so I am, for once, going to treat the show and its participants with a certain amount of disrespect.

We begin with a close-up of flowers in the garden, as a reminder that, like flowers, human beings are beautiful but doomed to fade and die in a short space of time. Death will be a constant accompaniment to the proceedings in this episode, as all involved show on their faces the knowledge that they soon will die.

The final three, Petro, Vinnie and Aaron, enter the kitchen to be informed that they are not cooking today: rather, Poh and Jean-Christophe will be cooking and they will be judging along with Sofia. The finalists are overjoyed, as cooking is the one thing they truly hate.

Sofia tells Poh and Jean-Christophe that they will be cooking “mano a mano”, which of course means “hand to hand” - they will be beating each other senseless with whatever utensils they can find. Then a truck pulls up. It has potatoes in it. The chefs have to cook with potatoes. Thrilling, isn’t it?

They have 60 minutes to cook a potato dish, but for anyone watching it will seem much, much, much longer. Poh runs to the pantry to shove whatever she can into her waistband to take home. Jean-Christophe looks in the oven to see if anyone is hiding there - he’s been shivved by too many midgets in ovens to take any chances these days.

Poh announces that she is going to cook the dish she was eliminated on in Season 12, which was the second season that she competed in and the second season that she didn’t win in, making one wonder why she got the job of judge in the first place. I mean, I have as many Masterchef titles as Poh does, and I wasn’t even considered for the gig. Anyway, she’s going to see whether in the last six years she has learnt how to cook pasta.

In the pantry, Petro pesters Jean-Christophe, taunting him with wisecracks about pretentious cooking and the shame of the Vichy regime. Sofia meets with the three amateurs to discuss the challenge and why the hell any of them are bothering. “What do you want to see?” she asks. The lads admit that they would really like to see the building and everyone in it burn. Petro adds that he’d like something that he’s never had before, like happiness or a sense of self-love.

The show goes on and on and on. Nothing important happens, even by Masterchef standards. Poh rolls some dough. The people on the balcony laugh. The dough is green because it has been flavoured with human mucus. Her dish is called curlurgione, a name Poh made up, and it originates in Sardinia, a place Poh made up - she got the idea from a tin of sardines in her eyeline.

“I cannot let Jean-Christophe beat me,” says Poh, but I think she’s selling herself short. I genuinely believe that if she puts her mind to it, Poh can let herself be beaten by almost anyone.

Jean-Christophe is excited by potatoes, but then he has been drinking since dawn. He puts butter in his pot with the wrapping paper still on, because honestly he is past caring about anything. He pours booze in the pot and sets everything on fire. He stares into the flames, lusting for the sweet agony of his future in Hell. Sofia comes to his bench. Jean-Christophe tells her she looks great. Sofia says duh, she knows that. Jean-Christophe explains that he is cooking some bullshit with potatoes or whatever.

“I have no idea what Jean-Christophe is trying to make,” says Aaron, “because I wasn’t listening and I don’t care.” This feeling is shared by everyone in the kitchen and also everyone watching at home. Most of the people on the balcony are taking a nap. Sofia has popped out to see a movie. Petro is darning his socks. The camera crew wanders off to film some butterflies for a bit.

Jean-Christophe explains that he is using the juice of the potato to thicken his sauce. He then begins leaping around the kitchen waving his arms and making Daffy Duck noises, heightening the suspicion that the potatoes have been infected by some mind-altering fungus. “What the hell am I doing?” he asks, not rhetorically. Nobody can help him. The judges begin a GoFundMe to try to raise the money to get him the help he needs.

Meanwhile Poh is making a Jerusalem artichoke veloute, in one of the least interesting developments in television history.

With minutes to go, Jean-Christophe begins adding new ingredients to his dish. “What is he doing?” asks Luke, not understanding the rudiments of bomb-making. “Where’s my glasses?” asks Poh - she has accidentally sauteed them.

“I feel like I’m at the circus watching JC,” cries Dot, as Jean-Christophe leaps onto an elephant’s back and begins hurling confetti in the air. And then, suddenly, time is up, and everyone sits back and reflects on just how meaningless this experience has been.

Jean-Christophe has made a thing called “around the world flying with potatoes” and why not. It’s got “chicken mousse”, which sounds pretty revolting, and a bunch of other crap. It is apparently very good. Hooray, everyone yells.

Poh has made a thing called “a riff on a Sardiniain dish called culurgione”. Grace exclaims “Poh’s dumplings look so beautiful and so refined”, but unlike Grace I have been paying attention to Poh’s cooking, so I have no opinion on that. Apparently the dish is nice. We weep with joy.

The winner of the irrelevant contest is Poh, showing the power of pity. And so we come to end of…

Oh sweet Jesus no, we are still going. There’s a round two. The three finalists are going to cook a “finals feast”, against Poh and Jean-Christophe. This means another half hour of this, giving new meaning to the phrase “fucking hell”. Sofia’s co-judges will be Dot and Luke, because they are the most likely to throw up during tasting. “This is honestly a dream come true,” says Luke, and…really? This is your dream? REALLY? THIS?

“Any words of advice for our cooks today?” asks Sofia, and Dot does indeed have some words of advice, although none that are worth writing down.

The challenge begins. “It is Poh and Jean-Christophe against our top three,” says Grace, although she does not manage to fully capture just how uninteresting it is.

On it goes. And on. And on. The cooks pick up meat. They pick up vegetables. They pick up eggs. They talk. They place pots on stoves. They say things like “proteins” and “butterfly” and “prawns” and “dessert”. Time passes like treacle. People clap. People shout. People glaze over. “Gratin dauphinois,” says Jean-Christophe, who has given up on the show and is teaching Poh French.

With forty-five minutes to go, I begin having periodic blackouts. Losing consciousness for unknown periods of time, I find that each time I wake up, nothing has happened. Hannah observes that Poh has made “sick floating islands”, so I guess the tedium has induced hallucinations. “I’ve steeped mandarin into the custard,” says Poh, throwing words out at random. Sofia and Dot ask Jean-Christophe what he’s doing. He refuses to answer. He does, however, claim to be making a dessert. Poh is also doing a dessert. Jean-Christophe is surprised to hear this. Sofia asks Poh if she knows that Jean-Christophe is doing a dessert. Poh doesn’t care, so she’s really caught the mood of the moment. Dot is stunned to observe the complete lack of communication between the two chefs, but it’s amazing how all the rules get tossed to the wind when you genuinely have no interest in what you’re doing. For example, here is a list of actors who have played Dracula:

• Lorne Greene

• Bela Lugosi

• Gary Oldman

• Jack Palance

• Christopher Lee

• David Suchet

• Mark Gatiss

• Tony Todd

• Lewis Macleod

• Frederick Jaeger

• David March

• Thomas Studley

• Orson Welles

• Sean Cronin

• Denholm Elliott

• Joe Flaherty

• Claes Bang

• Graham McTavish

• Ken Marino

• John Carradine

• Aldo Monti

• David Niven

• Paul Askonas

• Patrick Bergin

• Rutger Hauer

• Peter Stormare

• French Tickner

• Frank Langella

• Stephen Boyd

• Leslie Nielsen

• Richard Roxburgh

• Judd Hirsch

• Daniel Day-Lewis

• Gerard Butler

• Nicolas Cage

• Caleb Landry Jones

There are others, of course. Anyway: Masterchef

Vinnie is making potato gratin. He’s never made it before, so it’d be a brave move in any exercise that involved consequences of some kind.

“We’re not really a team,” says Poh, but “I think it’s going to be OK actually”. She is correct: it is going to be OK because nothing that happens in this kitchen today matters. To emphasise this, Jean-Christophe drops some acid and stares at a magpie for ten minutes.

A quick look at the clock reveals that it is actually starting to move backwards. The time before this challenge began is a dim shadow, barely discernible through the mists of memory and regret. Petro’s cake is too warm, which means that in any meaningful sense, his life is over. He takes the top off his cake, an ancient symbolic ritual intended to express sorrow and beg forgiveness from the gods. They do not show him mercy, insisting that he must stay in the kitchen until this episode is over.

Time is nearly up and everyone is trying their best to act like they give a damn. Finally it is over, but of course not really: we still have to go through the judging. But the cooking is over, and the people on the balcony breathe a sigh of relief because soon they can sit down.

“It’s amazing what you can do with no communication,” says Poh, inaccurately.

Sofia, Dot and Luke eat Poh and Jean-Christophe’s food, which is chicken and ratatouille and potatoes and red peppers and fennel and radishes and parsley and “ile flottantes” which are something or other. It is a lot of food but luckily the judges have been purging, so they are ready to take it on board. The food is good and so forth. Luke and Dot are very complimentary, which means very little to Poh and Jean-Christophe because who cares what losers think? “Poh, I want to pour this cream all over my body,” says Sofia, which is a pretty brutal insult: if you like a dish you want to put it in your mouth, not all over your body. But anyway, that’s what Sofia wants to do, and Poh makes a mental note to meet Sofia after the show to pour her cream all over her body. It’ll be available as an online extra on 10Play.

The three finalists serve their food, which is definitely worse than the professionals’ but could win because of the judges’ innate bias. The food is steak and cake and potatoes and prawns and things. “That jus belongs in the Louvre,” says Luke, meaning it tastes like paint. Apart from that though it is nice, though Sofia does not wish to cover her body in any of it, which is obviously a letdown.

And so finally, after one of the longest episodes ever, coming in at just under fifteen weeks, it is time for the judging. The judges have won, and isn’t that just so incredibly fucking thrilling for us all?

Tune in tomorrow, when something that matters might happen.