So, do none of the Aussie contestants have relatives or ancestors?
Why must this show always do a patronising narrative of ethnic people have food passed down the generations blah blah, like they have some secret wisdom that no one else has. I’ve complained about this every season. So silly.
Further, why has every team this week said “oh damn, I didn’t read the recipe properly” when these are supposed to be THEIR meals? So obvious they’re allocated a dish beforehand by the producers (I don’t even believe they’re ones suggested by the teams any more), probably test cook it and are taught how to plate it by producers beforehand.
This has been explained before. They are asked to provide a list of 30 dishes that they might cook. Ten entree, ten Main, ten Dessert. The producers then pick whichever they like.
So some average contestants may be brilliant at cooking say two or three dishes and not so great with some of the others. It’s the luck of the draw and they may end up cooking something they have done that often which ends up in disaster. This also explains why sometimes they end up having trouble sourcing some of the ingredients or didn’t read their recipe properly.
As for the “ethnic people”. It doesn’t happen for every contestant. Some contestants don’t even mention their heritage or link it to their cooking. Then for others, it’s relevant because that’s the only thing they’re cooking at home. And the judges encourage them to cook food they are familiar with and that could mean it would be a family recipe.
And I just explained I don’t believe that any longer. Unless you have intimate knowledge of the production this season, then I’m not sure how you can be so firm in “explaining to me” something I’ve just said I’ve doubted.
So you submit 10 mains. Most people have a weeks worth of dishes in their repertoire - who on earth needs a recipe? No one cooks like that.
I use ethnic people as that is the term that Aussies use to refer to people like us. I find it so patronising. Who on earth hasn’t mentioned it? We had the Lebanese sisters mention it every two secs. We had the Indian mother and daughter mention it ever two secs and have a photo up on their wall. We had the HK brothers mention it every two secs and have a photo up on their wall. Why do we need photos of these ancestors?
I guess the producers are encouraging to do that to make a point of difference between the teams. I guess every team has to have a theme. If it’s not their heritage it’s their food choices like the vegetarians, or their lifestyles like the hipsters or their occupations like the seafood king.
The rest is probably not down to the contestants but probably the selective editing by the producers. A contestant can make one comment but it can often end up being repeated five or six times in the episode which makes it look like that’s all they’re talking about.
Because that doesn’t suit their story telling and if they did say it, then the producers would purposely leave it out.
A classic bit of dishonest editing was the promo for Sunday. One of the young contestants in an earlier episode called them the “Desperate Housewives”. It was a throwaway comment about the TV show and not necessarily saying they were desperate. She just wasn’t thinking when it slipped out.
But Seven decided that was a good/funny angle and ran with that for those contestants now.
Then one of those older contests made a comment last night said she hates people calling each other “babe” and if: Anyone calls me that. Punch in the throat. So in the promo we now have the young girls calling them “Desperate Housewives” and then the “mature” ones saying something like: Anyone calls me that. Punch in the throat. The two bits are actually not related to each other.
This is classic selective, or rather, dishonest editing. But this is the sort of tactic these reality shows seem to love. The same thing happens within the episodes. Somebody cracks a joke and you see a wide shot where everyone around the table laughs or at least cracks a smile. Then you see a close up shot of those particular contestants looking cranky or with “resting bitch face” and it looks like the’re not amused by the joke.
The finale of MKR’s US celebrity version was shown this week. The winning team was comedian Andrew Dice Clay and partner Valerie Silverstein, beating singer Lance Bass and his mother Diane.
They were shown driving a Maserati at the start of the episode. The contestants must be either contracted to drive a Holden or they didn’t want to use their own car because of insurance concerns or didn’t want cameras attached to it or more likely because there isn’t much boot space for their shopping.
Wow! Only three points separating the top four teams in this group. Unfortunately there was no standout team.
Mell and Cyn chose the top floor of Cyn’s mansion for their instant restaurant to fit its name Pinnacle, but it meant a LONG walk between the kitchen and the dining table. It would have been better to have a marquee in the backyard.
The ladies’ three dishes were all hit and miss, but their duck main with spiced orange sauce was enough to send them to second.
The feuding between Lama and Sarah affected the quality of their lamb main and their dessert: the lamb was unevenly cooked and the ice cream was crystallised. This cost them a place in the next round. However Caitie and Demi did not go unscathed: they were praised for using traditional recipes in the entree (zucchini frittata) and main (moussaka) but were panned for swapping filo pastry with cornflakes in the dessert. They were perhaps over confident.
The promo for Tuesday’s team challenge not only shows Josh criticising Duncan in front of other teams and judges, but also declaring he wants Duncan and Courtney to be eliminated. Where was respect?
They always like to have 1 or 2 “villains” in every series, seems Josh is going to be this years… Producers fear people won’t want to watch if everyone is going to be nice to each other all the time…
I think there was an article in the paper lrecently about how producers wanted contestants to “act up”, how they were being plied with grog etc, and that some contestants weren’t happy with how they were being treated - this article below is pretty much what I read.
But this is nothing new. The same sort of story has appeared in the media previous years for MKR and a lot of other reality shows too.
The fact is, the contestants actually say and do those things. The producers are certainly coaxing them into doing them and asking them them those questions which are going to get the desired effect. They whinge about being portrayed a certain way and that may be due to editing but ultimately it’s the contestants that say or do these things.
The two bits are actually not related to each other.