Breakfast Of Champions

Not much new under the sun with the challenges this week -- a breakfast Mystery Box, followed by an elevated-TV-dinner elimination test -- but MasterChef works best when it's not trying to gin up drama from the structure of the competition. Derrick, the winner of the MB, smartly chose Christopher when given the opportunity to force one other home cook to sit out the first 15 minutes of the elimination cook: he's strong competition, but will also take it personally and get in his own head, in theory. In practice, that didn't work out for Derrick, led to some hilarious crabbing from Christopher, and proved that letting the competition be what it is generates narrative just fine without assistance.

Too bad the judges may have sent the wrong contestants home, dragging out that decision while several home cooks got almost no screentime. Who brought home the bacon and who got scrambled? The episode menu, first to worst.

1. Blue manicures
   Too bad the best shot we get of Hetal's is when she's crying into her hands after a terrible judging sesh.

   Olivia's gets a more positive showcase, but this is the most time we spend with that breakfast tart.

2. Phallic phoods for your inner phive-year-old
   Hee, "blood sausage."

   ...Hee!

3. Gordis Ramsley V: The Devil's Own
   
4. Christopher
   If Derrick only picked him to generate classic MC quotations, I'm with that. He starts off with a deadpan "I don't like the kid no more," followed by an equally dry "I'm not talking to you, thanks, 'preciate it" when Derrick sarcastically wishes him luck. Then he kills it -- I guess; the plate looks like a B to me, but it's head and shoulders above others who had the full hour -- despite not having time to taste the final product, and notes in a talking-head, "I'm like Godzilla. Run, Tokyo. Run."
5. Derrick
   Winner of the Mystery Box and savvy in his choices of TV dinner (he picks the one that's hardest to elevate and most likely to trip up certain home home cooks) and Christopher (though that doesn't work out). That said, the plating the judges adore is overpraised, IMO.

   Grading on a curve for the show's patented overlighting, which the dish may have sat congealing in for who knows how long, but I can almost hear that saucing seething. No thank you. His snarky "I don't really think of deviled eggs as breakfast?" comment on Nick's dish is likely a suggested remark from a PA, but: that's the point, bro.

6. Nick
   Hate the hat; think the breakfast deviled egg sounds delicious (though it looked a little dried out on-camera).
7. Amanda's scarf-enhanced expressions
   I think her headscarf sets her face off somehow, and makes her elastic reactions more hilarious as a result.

   They're also gorgeous.

8. Olivia
   Has never heard of Salisbury steak and is actively disgusted by it, but pulls it out with some mini-meatballs and a lemon-chili broccoli.
9. Katrina
   Hat tip for making a blood sausage look appealing. I disagree with the assessment of the stuffed tomato as too much of a good thing; it sounds delicious, and if anything she should have made it more the centerpiece of the dish (mostly because it's the thing I can eat on that plate, heh).
10. Other people
    I guess we'll get to know Sara next week...when she'll go home at the end.
11. Veronica
    Thanks for telegraphing her ouster with another bitchy "um, you're not hearing us" moment from Christina Tosi, show, and I can't say the watery broccoli made me want to elbow Gordon aside and try it, but is it really that much worse presentation-wise than Hetal's, or other dishes we didn't see (like Tommy's, which we can safely assume was Too Much despite his announcing that he's pulling back)?

    It's sloppy and misportioned. I'm not convinced it's that bad. But since she's gone, a little love for her Mets-colors blouse/eyeshadow story here:

12. Hetal
    I'm rooting for Hetal, but her dish looked more like "Vegas BOO-fay" than Veronica's, dry and lifeless; she probably should have gone home. I don't have a ton of sympathy for vegetarians who go on cooking-competition shows without having practiced at least a few basics first, either. Know how to cook a strip steak. Know how to roast a chicken. You can't think you won't have to do that shit; gather your carnivore friends once a week and work the kinks out.
13. Jesse
    He's probably fortunate not to have pulled Tosi as his walk-through judge, as he'd surely have gotten the "what did we just say" treatment -- not that it'd have done any good, as his venison is bone dry, and between the carpaccio-squid...thing happening on the plate

    and his obstinate "I'm sorry you feel that way" response to the crit, he's out, though again I'm not sure he's worse than Hetal. At least he tried something and didn't get overmatched on the parts of the dinner he could have brought into his wheelhouse.

14. Tosi
    Reliably cute dress

    does little to make up for reliably not-cute attitude and delivery. Needs to expand her positive-feedback repertoire from a mere "de-LISH-ious" to include more specifics instead of just BS-ing about sweet and savory elements, because it makes her seem like she doesn't know what she's talking about, and that in turn makes her seem snotty when she's reminding Veronica that the challenge is to elevate the TV dinner. It was clear to me that Veronica hadn't really gotten that they weren't really supposed to replicate it in any way; a pointed "no, we want you to expand on the dish, not copy it" is fine, and helpful, but a bitchfaced "um, you're not getting it?" is not. Something about her attitude just runs a blue fingernail down my mental chalkboard.