June 20, 2013 | Posted in EPISODE RECAPS, REALITY TV | By sockii
A “Glee”-full challenge for the remaining 14 contestants
MasterChef Season 4 – episodes available to view at Amazon Instant Video.
The remaining Cheftestants are headed to Sunset Boulevard and Paramount Studios for a team challenge. They find themselves on a set that seems quite familiar to some contestants…the set of “Glee”. What a surprise – another FOX tv show they can shamelessly promote! Bri is unsurprisingly especially excited about this challenge as it turns out they are going to be serving lunch to 100 cast and crew members.
Krissi and Jessie are team captains. This is going to be Jessie’s second time as captain so she’s feeling confident. There’s a twist, though, as the captains won’t get to pick their team members: Glee cast member Jane Lynch will have the honors. She says Jessie looks like Beauty and Krissi the “Beast”, so she’s going to pick teams based on that theme. After first sorting everyone out, she says she doesn’t like how the teams look so she switches a few people around. At the end of this Krissi’s Blue Team ends up with James, Natasha, Bime, Jordan, Bethy and Jonny. Jessie’s Red Team is Bri, Savannah, Eddie, Luca, Beth and Lynn. Jessie is especially glad she has Lynn on her team.
They have 90 minutes to prepare and 1 hour to serve picky eaters menus that must contain fried chicken, grilled salmon, and a vegan lasagna as options. Red team is doing a pesto sauce for their vegan lasagna. Blue team is doing a tomato sauce on theirs, and seems to be doing well under Krissi’s strong leadership. Everyone has a task assigned: Bime is doing the fried chicken. Jonny is making cole slaw. Jordan is on salmon. Bethe and James are on lasagna and Krissi and Natasha are doing the potatoes. In contrast, Jessie’s Red Team seems to be under a lot of pressure – Jessie is doing the scalloped potatoes and cuts her finger on the mandoline. “Medic!” she calls quickly and seems to be ready to pass out from the blood.
(I need to add a side note here that I’m watching this episode with my partner who is a doctor, and he’s rolling his eyes and calling fake on the whole finger drama. “You don’t bleed like that,” he says, and thinks it isn’t even Jessie’s real finger. I’m just putting that out here, not making the call myself!)
While Jessie is out of commission, the Red Team is struggling with their prep while the Blue Team seems to be sailing along. Their lasagna is in the oven, so are the potatoes. Joe says Bime’s chicken tastes good. Jessie comes back in to cook with twenty minutes to go. Troubles continue with Red Team as their salmon which is sticking to the grill. Their Asian-style soy glaze is causing it to stick. Joe wants them to switch to the flat top instead of the grill. The judges don’t think the Red Team can turn it around unless they really pull out some great flavors (do we see where this is heading? Almost always, the team that seems to be down the most ends up winning…)
Serving time begins. Each cast/crew member will get a plate from both teams for the dish they want: chicken, salmon or lasagna. For the fried chicken, the Blue Team has a classic southern buttermilk while Red Team has gone for a Latin-style spicy chicken. Blue Team’s salmon is balsamic marinated whereas Red Team has an Asian soy glaze for theirs. Both team stuck with their original plans on the lasagna, a pesto sauce for Red Team, spicy Tomato for Blue.
Very quickly a problem arises for both teams – they’ve underestimated how many people will pick the chicken and are running out. As always, if only one team gets a plate out, the vote has to go for that team (even if the recipient isn’t crazy about the dish. Krissi is pushing Bime to get the chicken out and they do, but there’s a problem (we can just see this coming): the chicken is still RAW!!!
Halfway through the service and the votes start coming in. Both teams ran out of chicken but the Red Team has a fresh batch ready. The raw chicken going out definitely set the Blue Team back. Krissi is seriously annoyed at having Bime on her team and thinks it’s all his fault. Jane Lynch arrives for her service and of course, wants the fried chick. At first she thinks the Red Team “killed it”, but then she wants to change her vote to the Blue Team.
It seems the entire contest is going to come down to the fried chicken. There’s a little show and dance from the Glee drum corp and then Jane announces the winner, with 90 votes versus 37, is in fact the Red Team. Jessie has come out a winner again!
“How the f— is that even possible?” Krissi says.
It’s time for the elimination test as the chefs are back in the MasterChef kitchen. Jordan is happy to see Krissi at the bottom, but he’s up for elimination too. Krissi thinks the chicken was definitely the main problem…aka Bime…yet the judges announce they actually solidly beat the Red Team on getting chicken out and whose chicken tasted better. Seems like vindication for Bime, right? The salmon portions however, was where really failed, mostly due to Jordan. Krissi gets to make the decision on who is safe and who is up for elimination since she was team captain. She must save at least one person and at least two must compete, but beyond that it’s entirely up to her. Jonny is safe, she says. And while Bethy did well, Krissi wants her in the elimination. So she also wants James, to try to take him out of the competition. Natasha, surprisingly, she picks as safe. She thinks this is some kind of strategy move, that she can take out Natasha later.
Despite making the one dish that really shone on the Blue Team, Bime will have to compete. Krissi just doesn’t like him and wants to see him gone. Jordan must also face elimination, and of course she chooses to save her own skin. So basically Jonny, Natasha and Krissi will watch which Bime, Jordan, Bethy and James will have to prepare the elimination dish…and it’s lemon meringue pie. (Sigh, another dessert.)
The judges describe what they want to see in a good lemon meringue pie. The chefs have 90 minutes and a limited pantry to work with. Bime is screwing up early on and everyone up in the balcony safe is shown snickering. Bethy, too, is having trouble as her pastry may not have been cooked long enough before she starts adding the filling. James is leaving a lot of things until the last minute and may be having time management trouble.
Time’s up and the four pies are out for tasting – done or not. Krissi is asked what she thinks and she says it’s exactly what she wanted to have happen. James’ pie is tasted first. He’s added blood orange and lime to his lemon meringue pie. There’s raw pie crust on the bottom, and insufficient curd. The curd is actually quite nice, though, and might be his saving grace. The egg whites weren’t cooked enough, however. Joe tastes the crust alone and says it’s not impressive at all.
Bethy is next. She has made a meringue pie with lime. It looks sloppy even if the curd is tasty. Gordon says it’s badly thought out. “What a mess.” Jordan also did meringue pie with lime. Looks the prettiest, according to the judges. The crust is thin, Joe says, but the curd has the right texture and is definitely the best he’s tasted so far. Graham says the curd has a great texture, just a little sweet. Bime is last. His pie is also lemon meringue with lime. “Oh dear,” Gordon says. It looks horrible. Gordon literally pours his curd in to a cocktail glass and says “f-me”. Bime admits he completely messed up using the Cream of Tartar but it was too late to fix it.
The judges debate on who is going and who is staying Jordan is asked to step forward first, and he is safe. James is also called forward, and while it was one of the worst dishes cooked yet in the competition there were two worse pies and he is safe.
The leaves it down to Bethy and Bime, and despite her pie’s flaws, Bethy is safe from elimination. Unsurprisingly, Bime is going home.
All in all there was a lot of drama (fake or real?) in this episode. Personally while Bime was not one of my favorite chefs in the competition, I didn’t like seeing him get sent home like that. I thought it was very unfair for Krissi to put him up for elimination just because she doesn’t like him, when he had the one dish that really succeeded in the team challenge. I had just started to warm up to Krissi after not liking her early on in the auditions and first few challenges, but now I’m back to finding her a bit of a big mouth and practically a bully. She seems to use being a mom and having a kid as an excuse for whatever she wants to do in the competition, fair or not. Yet Bime and some of the other contestants are parents, too, doesn’t that matter to her? Apparently not.
OK, that’s my bit of editorializing for now. I’ll leave it up to your readers to share your own opinions here in the poll that follows.
Looking for more on MasterChef Season 4? Then check out my season Hub Page:
MasterChef US 2013: Season 4
Who will be the next MasterChef? Find out in Season 4 of the intense cooking competition where talented “home cooks” compete for the ultimate title – and prize! Learn more about the contestants in my hub for the season, share your opinions in weekly polls, and check out video highlights as well.
Related posts at Spacial Anomaly
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sockii
sockii is just your typical Jane-of-All-Trades who never has enough time in her day for all of her projects. She has written for many websites online including Squidoo, Zujava, Yahoo! Contributors Network, HubPages and Wizzley. She has been attending and vending at science fiction and media conventions for over 15 years, and for several years ran an art gallery and jewelry store in Philadelphia. Today she is happy to be living in South Jersey with her partner David and their 6 cats. Sockii is a member of several affiliate sales programs including Amazon Associates and Viglink. Products from these services may be advertised on her posts and pages to generate sales commissions.
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