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Hi Trashies!
Shockingly late, but unfortunately I’ve been laid up in bed for the last four days unable to move. An old knee injury caused an attack of arthritis in it, and the bloody thing swelled up to the size of a cantaloupe melon. Its now only the size of a couple of tennis balls so I can hobble about and get to my desktop.
So its the finale, both for MJ season 4 and TG. On the latter, I’m sad to see him go as he was the most pleasant judge, and least likely to set up contestants for a judging fail by pointing things out to them he knew they wouldn’t do (ahem, Gordy). On the other hand, I doubt it’ll over worry the show runners. Robo-Tosi has proven they could get a chimp to stand next to Gordy as a judge and the show’s premise stays intact. The other option is they might not bother replacing him at all, leaving judging to Gordy and Tosi – as its the producers mainly making the judging decisions and the on-screen judges are just the warm props delivering the news it won’t matter at all.
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Just to remind Gordy which of his flotilla of shows he’s on
Gordy claims this is the culinary battle of a generation. Until next year presumably.
Addison gets her entrance first, and a recap of her exploits over the season.
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What I was hoping would happen to her
The Annoying one gets a potted history that portrays her as a top competitor, and Avery the underdog.
Avery gets an entrance and the lighting technician shows their usual excellence.
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Avery is under here somewhere
So the format is the same as ever. The crowd get progressively more bored as they realize they are actually going to watch two people cook for six hours, making a three course dinner. With set breaks and so on.
So with less preamble than usual they’re off. Addison is making Shrimp, seaweed and seabean salad, puffed rice, entree is miso black cod shittake mushrooms and coconut ginger broth. Dessert is a green tea panna cotta, crumbled cookie and plums. She claims its ‘wordly’, although it only really gets as far as Japan, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It doesn’t sound that exciting though.
Avery is going Cajun. Starter is cream of asparagus soup, smoked oysters and craime fraiche, main is lobster and crispy ochre, dessert rhubarb shortcake(?). Something like that.
Both of them show a nitpicking technical ‘chef’ failure – in a three course dinner you wouldn’t follow a fish course with a fish course. On their choices, I’d rather go have a cheeseburger as I despise fish in general and can’t face multiple plates of them. Better for them to be cooked though than left roaming the sea’s making their fishy plots against humankind.
Its clear though that Avery is ‘staying true to her roots’ whilst Addison;s narrative is going pan-Asian.
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At least they have enough room this year.
Former contestant Ian pumps up the hyperbole by saying its gonna be bigger than the Super Bowl. I might not know anything about Sports, and even less about American Sports, but that doesn’t quite ring true. Still its nice that Ian is committing to it and enjoying himself in his slightly goofy way.
The parents start commenting now, as the girls are just cooking and that’s not very exciting to watch. Addison’s Dad comes across as pleasant, sane and reasonable, saying something along the lines of ‘she’s passionate and focused and I think she’ll do her best.’ So Addison’s Mom is the psychotic Tiger parent that mercilessly drives her child to suceed and get on TV no matter the cost.
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Married to a psychotic?
Avery’s Dad reveals something interesting that makes Avery go up in my estimation. Avery has a motorbike.(That’s not the part I like, as Doctor friend once said – ‘Motorbikes and rain mean we’ll be getting the spare organs we need any minute now’) Presumably one of those mini-motorbikes – but it has a clutch, and that’s the bit I like. As it has a clutch it must be a manual gear job – why anyone would drive anything automatic is a mystery to me. Automatic gears give you far less control over the vehicle, through not being able to control the gear shift and also providing less power to it as well. I’m not sure its sane to let a nine year old with a limited sense of self-preservation loose on one though.
Something else that has been raised so far, it’s going to be a girl winner This was apparent last week as absolutely inevitable – unless Gordy flips out and runs off with the trophy screaming ‘Its mine, ALL MINE!’. So 50/50.
The judges discuss the menus. This involves Gordy holding forth as ‘the big guy’ with a few comments by TG and Tosi. Suddenly it seems easier to see why TG left. The upshot is, the menu’s will be hard to make.
After that mind shattering revelation, Gordy goes in to give his advice. Which to Avery is basically ‘don’t overcook those shrimp or they won’t taste nice’. You can almost sense the producers wishing for a disaster to happen to break up the tedium.
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God knows I want to break free
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The previous contestants all really wishing the girls well.
It is the moment that the 100,000 dollars that could have been theirs sails over the horizon, so its a bit cruel to make them watch. I’m glad they did.
It gets so exciting that at one point we’re shown Addison tasting her broth. Actually she has started to look far less like she’s playing to the crowd, as she was at the start, and far more focused and intent now. Avery, like the tiny bulldog she is, has been focused in since the start.
Addison then makes a slip up and cuts herself. Easy enough to do, and I don’t think I’ve seen any season of any cooking show where this doesn’t happen at least once. Question is, how bad is it?
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I thought that last shrimp looked a bit like my finger
Addison lets out a short growl, looks up, and Tosi attempts to display an emotion. Before calmly walking down to help.
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I screamed ‘Medic’, not ‘Baker’
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Addison a second after cutting herself.
The fact she looks up, and not at her bleeding finger in horror, and that Tosi of all people rushes to her aid, makes this a shenanigans event. If a child really is in danger on set, they get swamped in para-medics – I think they have about one per bench for Junior. I have zero pain tolerance and if I get cut I want medical assistance not a cupcake. Tosi would be welcome to don a nurses uniform and help with the aftercare though. God that was seedy, it wouldn’t have been out of place in a ‘Carry on’ Film. Its the painkillers.
Its serious enough that a band-aid is enough to fix it up, so obviously deadly serious. The two minutes it took now have put her at risk of losing! Gasp! This bit of ‘can she come back from this’ idiocy bodes ill for Avery.
In a flurry of excitement the cooking ends – all courses are done in 90 minutes. Still ages to go though, so judging is going to be a long drawn out snooze fest. On the upside, XCOM 2 unlocks in Europe at 11pm GMT and that’s only four hours away now, so the pain will be a distant memory.
I had forgotten that the Juniors only make one dish that the judges have to share. I suppose even Gordy is only allowed to enslave children for so long.
Addison is up first.
I have to row back a long way here, this looks really good. Shes also presented it in groups of judge friendly groups of three, which is smart and also breaks it up nicely. TG redundantly says ‘if this is overcooked, we’ll be off to a bad start.’ It isn’t. Whut? The rest of the judging is similarly ‘If you’d added too much ginger this would be a disaster. if you’d chopped up liver and sprinkled it on top that would have been bad too.’
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‘If you’d infused dog poop into this dish, it’d taste horrible. You haven’t.’
I know pointing out the possible fail points is a common thing, but they are stretching it here.
Avery is up.
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Whose taken a bite out of my bread?
It looks good, maybe too much Craime Fraiche dotted over it. I’m on Team Avery without any doubt, but I think Addison is edging ahead so far.
Gordy has a go at her doing a soup for an appetizer. This is a bit out of left field, you aren’t going to have soup as a main. By the way, an Entree outside the US (and I think Canada) actually refers to a dish before the main course, not the main course itself, which is why I often start correcting myself over terms and use both the European and American ones to cover myself. Neither term is more ‘correct’, they’re just different but I thought I’d explain my habit of switching terms all the time.
Anyway that distracts us from Gordy slagging off Avery’s starter, in a low key way. TG comes back with a very positive ‘best you ever made’ line. Gordy thinks the oyster is overcooked though, albeit ‘slightly’. Tosi gets some brownie points by pointedly mentioning her oyster was perfectly cooked.
So onto the Entree, or main.
Avery is up first.
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It looks all well and good, and it’s hard not to be impressed by the pair of teeny chefs today. Apart from my Avery bias, I’d prefer her menu as its got some spicy heat in it, as opposed to the ginger/soy approach of Addison. Gordy makes a big deal of the lobster cooking, and declares it well cooked. In fact its starting to look like the other judges might not get much to eat. TG tries it and loves it.
Addison presents her miso black cod.
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Gordy rants on about how she only cooked one piece of fish so has no idea how well it is cooked. It’s cooked fine though, and he jokes about how he has to share it with the other judges. Again, Addison seems to be ahead. TG even jokingly offers her job. Not such a great idea TG to ask 9 year olds to do things for money.
The tension between Gordy and Tosi ramps up as there is a rare onscreen disagreement, as Tosi supports Addison’s main and Gordy argues that she’s been blinded by aesthetics and Avery’s lobster is technically more impressive. Is this just an attempt to put at least the possibility of Avery winning into the mix? Probably.
Addison presents her panna cotta, with ‘two outs, bases loaded and I gotta hit a home run.’ Presumably this means its quite important, but unless she starts using boxing analogies I’m never going to understand a word she says.
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It’s presented very well, but I don’t like the sound of green tea panna cotta. . Gordy doesn’t like the visual presentation. This causes another argument between Tosi and Gordy, and maybe TG left the room so he wouldn’t get in the way of the sexual tension. Chikka chikka waugh
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It doesn’t look as sophisticated as Addison’s, but it gets a good report. You can’t go too far wrong with a good strawberry shortcake, but I have my doubts it’ll stand up to Addison’s effort.
As usual, the standard is higher than any previous year, its closer than any previous year, and Addison is going to win. I’m still on Team Avery, not least because I think she’s going to grow up to be a maniac so I want to play it safe, but I fear she’s lost. I mean Kya should have won, but that’s a bit irrelevant now.
The judging carries on, and they agree on a winner. There’s the ‘switch places with the judges’ bizarreness that I always fail to see the point of. The winner is Addison. Oh wow, that was a shock.
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The last known picture of Addison before the Space Monkey Attack of 2016
Thank you Space Monkeys
It would be nice if they stopped telegraphing their favorites so early on and just let things roll, the only real surprise this season was that it was Avery losing to Addison and not Zac. Gordy showed last week though that if he’d had any way of keeping Zac in and making it look slightly possible he would have.
I can’t find it in me to be happy for her as she’s too bloody annoying. The fault for this lies more with the producers than Addison herself, as they have flooded the show with her to the expense of others, to make her ‘story’ more meaningful. Did I see her they hand her a check with the prize money on? Does anybody still use those? I haven’t replaced a check book since 2001 -it’s still half full. 2001 Redmeph bought some weird shit based on the stubs. That really denotes my excitement here, the finale has caused me to go balance my check book from 2001.
Maybe next year they’ll get it right, and I’ll actually do things on time. Not likely on either count really. Although in the end, this Masterchef Junior season was better than the main show this year.
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