Masterchef

Like Hells Kitchen tis show is about a cooking contest and it's entertaining but also not very complex. It's a fun short bit of entertainment. Nothing less and nothing more.

First .. i thought i had written a review for this before .. but apparently not?

Masterchef as well as Hells Kitchen are TOTAL guilty pleasures for me. I am fully aware how terribly aweful they are .. and i mean really, REALLY aweful in terms of cringeworthy or just pitiful.

Then again, i kind of like 3 dudes shout at a "random" assortment of nobodies.

But lets get to the details...

Masterchef is - at its core - a VERY good concept .. but the network is too cowardly to really adhere to the idea and instead makes it a meaningless soap opera or worse .. a telenovela.

The idea of professional cooks to judge homecooks on increasingly higher stakes and more difficult "challenges" .. great .. i would call that a winner .. and NOT a guilty pleasure if they actually did that.

Sadly though the quality of the food and the skill of the contestants is obviously irrelevant compared to what can only be called "drama potential". That does not mean that the finalists are not good cooks ... but the judging becomes a fárce early on .. when it becomes just too blatant that they do not judge on the quality of the dish at all.

The selection of characters to compete is usually interesting enough .. but follows typical focus group results. You get a sassy black woman, a bossy white male, a shy woman, a tough guy/girl, a very young and innocent girl and of course someone who causes the maximum drama by being antisocial or just a loudmouth with no filter. Now it is not even clear that this is actually the case, cause the episodes are edited in such a narrative .. but it does become old quckly.

What is good about it?

Aside from watching food ... there is a certain narrative of character progression. I caught myself being quite invested in start to around the end of the 3rd forth .. and then not caring much who actually won.

The challenges are often quite nice .. but it would have been interesting to see how the contestants actually prepare for them, cause they certainly do not spontanously come up with their dishes .. so there must be a lot of learning in their spare time and interaction (something that might be interesting and that Hells Kitchen does show a little more of...)

Well, but why a 9/10? that is an awefully high score i hear you exclaim!

Yes, yes it is .. and it is also a totally biased one. I just have fun binge watching this garbage sometimes. I can switch my brain off and rant at the rediculous jingoism, the pitiful veneration of military and american values, the cartoonish drama and the godlike bossy chefs that hover over everything like saints, resolving everything with amazing authority and skill.

So, its just fun .. mindless, stupid fun.

Objectively it is terrible though ....

I've watched both the British and Australian versions of Masterchef which were never perfect but the US version just elevates them in comparison.

It feels like a contrived soap opera with random, forgettable people screeching about for no rhyme or reason. There are no master classes, over the top sob stories, scripted drama and predictable judges. The show has the least amount of episodes but they're the most tedious. It gives me a headache to be honest.

This show is only for people who have short attention spans and no interest in food.

It seems like every single time an episode airs, the hosts try and outdo themselves in theatrics. When you watch the US version and then watch the UK cersion, it's night and day. Watching Gordon Ramsay throw a hysterical temper tantrum and literally throw food against a wall should shame him off of the show. Watching Joe treat a piece of undercooked meat like it's the end of the world is ridiculous. Arron Sanchez isn't bad - he doesn't pitch a fit. He's good and fair, but doesn't act like a petulant child. Ramsay and Bastianich could learn a thing or two from Sanchez.

The UK version is for adults - children left at the door.

US MasterChef, what can I say about this show? I only stumbled across it recently whilst channel surfing. Being from the UK and knowing and loving the original MasterChef, I was intrigued to see what it was like. At first, I enjoyed the different format, but once I saw a few of the episodes, it frustrated me more and more.

The overly dramatic music; the over-the-top contestants and pathetically staged bickering between them; the judges constantly ripping into the "home" cooks as if they were professional chefs; the constant reminders of the contestants' backstories and them always crying; and finally, the way in which contestants are eliminated, where you see stronger ones being knocked out and weaker ones surviving. The show's a bit of a guilty pleasure, but I do not consider it a serious cooking show. To use an overly used phrase on the show, "make the food the hero of the show, not the fake drama.

If you want to watch a decent MasterChef show, watch the UK one, or surprisingly the best one IMO, the Australian MasterChef, which mixes the best parts of the UK and American show.