Finally, here we are. Who would have thought, way back when this series started, that one day it would end? Yet tonight, MasterChef 2014 reaches its finale, a no-holds-barred culinary extravaganza that if expert predictions are correct, may end before Australia Day.
More importantly, the grand final will reveal once and for all what’s better for cooking: having your hair in a topknot or having it in a sort of coiled snake thing on top of your head.
We begin, naturally, with Laura walking through a greenhouse in slow motion, suggesting she is about to be attacked by giant caterpillars. Brent is also walking in slow motion. This opening sequence is really hammering home the message that the finalists got to where they are by being extremely slow.
A voice-over says Brent and Laura “are about to discover that making the final was the easy part”, which is a pretty insulting thing to say. The voice-over also promises there will be a dessert “that makes the snow egg look like Child’s Play”, although it’s a mystery how anyone could make a dessert look like a movie about a demonically possessed doll. But such are the eerie ways of MasterChef – nobody really knows anything. Why do Laura and Brent arrive at the kitchen in the middle of the night? Impossible to say.
Once in the kitchen, the finalists ruminate on how much they want to see their names on the MasterChef trophy, not realising that any professional engraver can put your name on a trophy for a reasonable fee. What a waste of time all this cooking has been.
The final is three rounds. Matt explains that the first round will require Laura and Brent to meet an old friend. Two men bring in wooden boxes – Matt has dismembered their old friend as part of his sick game. Oh wait, I get it – the mystery box is their “old friend” because oh dear god. Anyway, there’s nothing in the mystery box and they get to choose their ingredients from a selection on a bench, so this whole bit was pointless. Moving on.
They get to take it in turns to choose ingredients. “Ladies first,” says Brent, in typically sexist style. Then Brent and Laura proceed to select various ingredients while flirting so shamelessly that it feels like they’re re-enacting 9 ½ Weeks.
George begins cooking time by saying “Boom shake the room”, but you can tell his heart wasn’t really in it. Somehow, boom shaking the room has become stale and hollow for George.
From above, Emelia watches and plots her revenge against these clearly inferior chefs, as Laura closely examines her scampi in an attempt to determine what the hell a scampi is.
Distracted by such abstract philosophy, she grabs a hot saucepan and, being far too young to have learnt what heat is, drops it in agony. Her garlic is all over the floor and creating a bitter metaphor for her future.
Brent chops some garlic and some anchovies and throws them in a pan, an action that proves completely pointless when he immediately burns them. Brent’s garlic and anchovies join Laura’s hand in the burns unit, as the evening continues its gruesome trajectory.
Angry at the world and seeking an outlet for his destructive fury, Brent tears the heads of some innocent crustaceans, and soaks them in what appears to be urine. Hard to tell though, as all we’re getting is a series of close-ups of mysterious bits and pieces of what may or may not be food. It’s like an A-Team montage as the pair plate up.
As far as I can tell, Brent’s first course is a small pile of garbage taken from a bin out the back of La Porchetta, while Laura has cooked a chest-buster from Alien. The judges taste the chest-burster. George compliments her on being true to herself, in her capacity as an employee of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Meanwhile Gary practically licks the plate, having not eaten for days. From above, Emelia smiles, visualising the day when she will bite Laura’s throat out. The judges also taste Brent’s dish. Gary loves the sweetness, but he might be referring to Brent’s personality rather than his food.
"I think Brent will score higher than me in this round, and if he does that will put me on the back foot,” Laura says, displaying a better grasp of arithmetic than anyone gave her credit for. And it turns out she’s right – Brent leads 27-25, leading to an utter orgy of uplifting strings on the soundtrack. When the actual winner is announce they’ll need to bring in a fifty-voice choir.
On to Round Two, which requires each finalist to take charge of their own chef’s table. George tells them they’ll be cooking not only for the judges, but for three very important people. He’s lying though – it’s just Brent and Laura’s families. I was hoping it’d be members of the AFL Hall of Fame, or One Direction or something. As the finalists are reunited with their loved ones, Amy wipes away a tear on the balcony, reminded of how the MasterChef producers still haven’t returned her own family.
Laura’s mother says words can’t describe how proud she is, but unfortunately for us all she tries to make them. Brent’s dad says he was shocked when he saw his son cooking – he couldn’t believe what he’d done with his hair.
Brent is making a Lancashire hot-pot, a traditional northern English dish consisting of a lamb stew arranged into a portrait of the Gallagher brothers. He wants a really rich, deep dark sauce, which he achieves by using a score by Hans Zimmer and casting Crispin Glover as the carrots.
Meanwhile, Gary is interrogating Laura. “How does lobster and mushrooms and autumn make sense?” he demands of her, remembering that terrible autumn when he lost the only lobster he ever loved. Nothing makes sense to Gary anymore – the world is full of pain and lobsters and mushrooms.
“It’s good that your families are here, but remember there’s only 45 minutes to go,” bellows George, reminding both cooks that no matter what joy they experience in life, it will always be transitory and ephemeral as the foam to which the Little Mermaid returned.
Coincidentally, the Little Mermaid was a good friend of many lobsters, much like the lobsters Laura is attempting to cook as she explains to Gary and George that failure in MasterChef will cause her father to stop loving her. It becomes clear how high the stakes are here – the loser will not know happiness again.
Brent is in big trouble – he’s burnt his potatoes. He begins making another batch while George pops over to let him know that burning his potatoes wasn’t a good thing to do. Brent thanks George for his assistance.
Meanwhile Laura’s dad is questioning Matt on whether Laura is doing her dish right, pretty obviously hoping Matt will say no so he can point and laugh at his daughter. Also Brent’s burnt his potatoes again. In fact he’s burning everything.
As police arrive to question Brent regarding a series of suspicious fires in the area, Laura is weighing up whether to slip some strychnine into her father’s lobster. As it is, the lobster is undercooked, and dad has his face in his hands, wondering how such a failure ever sprung from his loins. Over the other side, Brent has burnt his potatoes for the third time.
Ironically, put Brent and Laura together and they might actually be able to cook something for the correct amount of time.
Round Two is finished and the finalists must be judged, in the deepest sense possible.
George is impressed that Laura’s grandmother ate it all, because his grandmothers are his harshest critics and he assumes every old woman on earth is exactly the same. Gary says it’s a tasty dish, but you can tell he’s still thinking about that autumn.
Brent’s potato-less Lancashire Burntpot is a hit, but Matt scolds him for not serving burnt potatoes. He’ll think twice before he assumes that burning food is bad in future.
Laura scores 24 for Round Two, and Brent scores 21, which means Laura leads by one, and in an unprecedented development, a MasterChef final is extremely close.
And now, of course, it is time for a montage of desserts from every other season of MasterChef. Matt tells them that Peter Gilmore, creator of the legendary snow egg, has returned. Brent is terrified, knowing that in this challenge he’s not allowed to ask Emelia to do it for him. Sarah can almost see the guys’ hearts sinking, but luckily there’s nobody on earth who cares what Sarah thinks.
Peter informs them that this dessert is twice as hard as the snow egg. Perhaps it’s two snow eggs? No, in fact it’s…it’s…it’s…oh my god it’s…
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude? It’s called a “chocolate ethereal”, a dessert cunningly designed to cease to exist as soon as you touch it. Basically it’s chocolate and caramel and toffee and milk and sugar and cream and nougat and starch all mixed together to make something that looks like it was made to keep intruders out of the barbarian chieftain’s hut.
Immediately, Laura and Brent set to work, a fatal mistake as the real challenge was to see who had enough sense to not bother trying, and by attempting to make this insanely complicated thing they have both failed.
This next bit isn’t that interesting because it’s mostly cooking. Until Laura stuffs up by reading the recipe too quickly and combining honey and sugar where honey and sugar should never be. If only she’d remembered the old schoolyard rhyme, “Sugar without Honey will make you some money/but Honey with Sugar just tastes like a booger”. Alas she did not, and so Peter approaches, to taunt her with cryptic syrup-themed riddles before wandering off.
Just before Laura pours her syrup into the mixer, Gary stops her and shows her she’s stuffed up. Which is a bit unfair, really – these guys are supposed to make it on their own, why do they get Gary stepping in to prevent them making terrible mistakes? Gary didn’t run over and take Brent’s potatoes off the heat.
Anyway, Laura is in tears but Gary reassures her by telling her that “sometimes it’s hard to read recipes”, and we all have a good laugh.
As time ticks on. Tracy has no idea how they’re going to pull this together, but that might just be because Tracy has no idea about things in general.
The action is heating up. Brent’s nougat is hard as a rock, and it’s not the only one if you know what I mean. Especially when Laura starts rolling her own nougat, which isn’t a euphemism but at the same time sort of is. Goodness me.
There’s more cooking stuff here, which is a shame.
Then Laura does something wrong again. Her chocolate isn’t tempered properly. Gary and Peter imply she’s been letting water into her chocolate. “What’s the biggest enemy of chocolate?” Gary asks. “Water,” Laura replies, but actually the answer is “peer pressure”.
Laura feels like giving up. She also feels like all the people on the balcony shouting encouragement at her are incredibly annoying, so she tells them to shut up, thoughtfully providing a valuable service to the viewers. George offers Laura a little pep talk, reminding her of her contractual requirements. “What are you crying for?” he asks, having slept through the last two hours. Up above, Laura’s parents look down at her, wondering if it’s their fault their child turned out such a disappointment.
Amazingly, Laura’s chocolate has tempered, and as long as she doesn’t make any more major mistakes, or as long as the major mistakes she does make are mitigated by the unnecessary intervention of biased judges, she’s still in with a chance. Meanwhile, Brent has burnt himself three or four times, purely for the fun of it.
With five minutes to go, the MasterChef grand final enters its eighth month and Brent realises he doesn’t have time for his butter sheet and Laura is pulling her chocolate and nobody is speaking English any more and then it’s OVER. Brent and Laura hug with their severely burnt, tear-stained arms, and everyone claps, and Brent says he and Laura are both winners already which is loser talk if ever I heard it.
Wait, they have 20 minutes to plate up? Well what was everyone clapping for? They’re not bloody finished, are they, Jesus.
“Good luck, Brent,” Laura calls sarcastically as Brent serves up his ethereal. Gary is impressed that it looks like a sailing ship, for some reason, even though it was clearly supposed to look like a bunch of big sharp shards of stuff. Peter thinks that as an eating experience it is very impressive, although as an erotic thriller it is disappointing.
Laura plates up and straight away stuffs up again. Her nougat is in a big log instead of cut up. Or something. Surprisingly, none of the judges rush out to tell her what to do. The viewers in the balcony call out “Come on Laura”, but none of them call out, “Hey Laura, maybe you should cut that nougat so you don’t lose”, so their sincerity is severely in question.
Laura’s ethereal is chunkier than Peter’s, which is a problem for a group of judges as keen on body-shaming as this one. In fact there are many things wrong with Laura’s dessert, but the judges wearily say some positive things just to keep up an illusion of suspense. The finale has just celebrated its fifth anniversary and everyone’s a bit tired.
OK, time for the scores, for which a six hour block has been set aside. The details are unimportant, apart from Gary saying “woody” while scoring Laura, which seems inappropriate. And the fact that Brent wins pretty easily because Laura spent more time crying than cooking in the last round.
And so Brent takes it all: the money, the trophy, the book deal, the acclaim of a grateful nation, the love of his family, and a gift certificate for a professional hairdresser. As the fireworks go off above MasterChef HQ in what is, not for the first time on this show, a scene strangely reminiscent of the end of Annie, all that is left for us all is stagger into the dawn’s early light and wonder: just how do we reintegrate into human society?
