S12.W14 (E58-60): Finals Week

[Athena]

Begins July 13, 2020.

[Niuxita]

Random question: Where did Reynold get the peppercorns? Were they part of the Mystery Box and I just missed Gordon mention them or were they part of the under-the-bench staples? It's such a stupid detail but it was really bugging me.

EMELIA!!!!! Happy to see a not at all predictable result in terms of whether or not Reynold would be crowned the best in the episode yet again. There IS some justice left in the world, after all. Her reaction of utter disbelief that just did not go away was adorable. 

"Dare I say... the choux fits!" I love you, Melissa.

[katisha]

Well, I might have prepared for Callum to be the one to go, but it still sucked to see it happen because of the way it happened.  I'm sorry but not for a second do I believe Reynold really cooked the best dish in round one.  In fact, I was expecting it to be between Callum and Laura as to who was number one and I thought Reynold would be in the second round for sure.  His dish, to me, was by far the least impressive.  He did fish on the inevitable hibachi with a bit of a tartare and a kohlrabi flower.  Big deal.  Look how much Callum did in the same amount of time, AND they said it all worked.  Even Laura's dish was a little simpler but I think she deserved credit for an interesting concept executed well.  So the cook-off for elimination probably shouldn't even have involved Callum so I think he has a right to feel hard done by.

Emilia brought the comedy again tonight.  After Callum got tearful at the end of the cook, Reynold looked at Emilia and said, "Are you crying too?" With tears in her eyes, she said, "No, YOU'RE crying!"  Cracked me up. 

As of now I'm Team ABR (Anyone But Reynold).

Edited July 14, 2020 by katisha

[dippydee]

2 hours ago, katisha said:

Well, I might have prepared for Callum to be the one to go, but it still sucked to see it happen because of the way it happened.

So much of this! I thought Callum’s first dish was the dish of the night. It looked amazing and seemed a lot more technical than both Laura and Reynold’s dishes. Reynold’s dish was kinda meh to me. I thought part of the fish skin looked burned and the flower might have been pretty but it was just basic. Callum was robbed.

Oh well, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the impossible miracle of an Emelia/Laura final with an Emelia win. In them meantime I’m joining Katisha on team ABR!

[SnideAsides]

Emelia FTW. Failing that, murder hornets FTW.

[TVbitch]

[TVbitch]

No fucking way was that square of what looked like underdone fish in a puddle of wine sauce with a bit of kolrabi and a blob of cavier better than that amazing looking dish Callum put up with all those complex flavors perfectly balanced. He cooked his ass off. He made his own salt for fucks sake! That dish was gorgeous. I am furious! FURIOUS!!!!!

PS. Did I mention that was total bullshit. 

 

[babs1226]

I am sad now, and I agree that Reynold's dish was no way the best of the three.  I'm hoping for an Emilia or Laura win.  As far as I'm concerned, Reynold doesn't belong in the top 3.  What I can't believe, which has been talked about in here before, is that, even when Callum was leaving, they still never mentioned the fact that he won the last All Star season.  I did like hearing Mel say that Callum's name is synonymous with MCAU.  I guess that will have to do. 😞

[Aerobicidal]

"Wouldn't it be amazing if Reynold won the first round with bonito since it eliminated him last time?"

Ten minutes later: "OMG Reynold won the first round."

Stop insulting my fucking intelligence, judges and show. I could make those kohlrabi flowers. 

Also, judges, stop screaming. Are there viewers watching this who enjoy that?

All that being said, I don't think even the show's desperate promotion of Reynold can stop the freight train of cooking that is Emilia. 

[katisha]

1 hour ago, Aerobicidal said:

All that being said, I don't think even the show's desperate promotion of Reynold can stop the freight train of cooking that is Emilia. 

I don't think so either but a quick scroll through Facebook comments on the MC AU page on any given night shows that Reynold is by far the most popular of the three left so I hope they're prepared for a tsunami of negative comments and backlash when (hopefully) Emilia wins!

[dippydee]

2 hours ago, katisha said:

Facebook comments on the MC AU page on any given night shows that Reynold is by far the most popular of the three left so I hope they're prepared for a tsunami of negative comments and backlash when (hopefully) Emilia wins!

The Facebook board is terrible sometimes. I remember the amount of hate Sarah T used to get on there during her series for no real reason.

I sometimes check out the reddit section and while Reynold is probably the most popular I’ve started to see signs of people noting he frequently makes the same dish and that there’s not a lot beyond that. Of course there were also a lot of people defending his fish/sauce/fancy flower plate today so I imagine there’s probably going to be an outcry there too if Emelia wins.

[babs1226]

I posted on FB that I personally thought Callum and Laura cooked superior dishes to Reynold in  round 1, but I guess the bonito redemption made better tv.

[Niuxita]

Yeah, no way Reynold's was the best dish. That fish looked raw AF. I wouldn't have wanted to eat that if you paid me, and raw fish makes up one of my country's most renowned dishes. But I suppose the allure of the Callum/Laura "we've been mates for years and now one of us is going to be the reason the other goes home" angle was just too strong. That, or having Reynold in the second round probably would have taken all the suspense out of it. ANYWAY.

16 hours ago, katisha said:

Emilia brought the comedy again tonight.  After Callum got tearful at the end of the cook, Reynold looked at Emilia and said, "Are you crying too?" With tears in her eyes, she said, "No, YOU'RE crying!"  Cracked me up

I know! It both made me sad and made me giggle. Also when she started saluting like the queen. 

Make some more room for me on team ABR. However, unless he somehow suffers a concussion in the middle of the cook and presents, IDK, a fish with sugar instead of salt, it doesn't seem very likely. I would be STOKED to be wrong, though!

[katisha]

21 minutes ago, Niuxita said:

I would be STOKED to be wrong, though!

Spoken like a true adoptive Aussie, @Niuxita! 😁

[misgabi13]

17 hours ago, katisha said:

So the cook-off for elimination probably shouldn't even have involved Callum so I think he has a right to feel hard done by.

I totally agree!

I missed watching it in real time and wretched TenPlay still hadn't put it up by 11pm last night (and had a worrying 'placeholder - watch Callum' notice) so I decided I'd give it up for the night and watch first thing this morning but logged into Face Book and saw the result!  This didn't make watching him go any easier - and it made it all the more obvious that his first dish was far better than Reynold's dish with that really watery looking sauce and only cooked on one side fish!  He really should have been in the gantry for round 2!

I shall now simply soldier on until Sunday where I too will be ABR (per Katisha's post) and be cheering on Emilia as now I really, really want to see her win (although I must admit to liking Laura more now than I did in the beginning).  Reynold always looks so bloody smug all the time (reminds me of our prime minister!!) which is really off putting!

Don't look at Face Book comments - some really deranged conspiracy theory nutters there!  After Poh left they directed their hatred to everyone who wasn't Reynold!  Weird! 

13 hours ago, SnideAsides said:

Emelia FTW. Failing that, murder hornets FTW.

  Will the murder hornets be cooking or cooked by Emilia?   😀😀

[katisha]

6 hours ago, misgabi13 said:

After Poh left they directed their hatred to everyone who wasn't Reynold!  Weird! 

The Facebook Reynold fans are a very fanatical bunch, I've found. If you don't agree he's a cooking god they jump on you like a ton of bricks.

Meanwhile, this Insta post about Callum makes me even more of a Mel fan. Awwww!

Edited July 15, 2020 by katisha

[TVbitch]

I think Mel wrote that cuz she probably feels guilty and knows Callum should have gone through. I still hold her culpable for going along with "let's all pretend Reynold's dish is the best and announce him totally amazing and redeemed and through to the semi-finals even though we all know that Callum's gorgeous dish blew Reynold's ugly raw fish in puke sauce with kohlrabi rosette away"!!!! 

By the look on Callum's face, he knew he was being thrown under the Reynold bus and even making a dish the judges could not find fault with was not enough to stop it. That must have been heartbreaking for him.

Edited July 15, 2020 by TVbitch

[katisha]

On 7/16/2020 at 12:24 AM, TVbitch said:

By the look on Callum's face, he knew he was being thrown under the Reynold bus and even making a dish the judges could not find fault with was not enough to stop it. That must have been heartbreaking for him.

Yes, just like Tess just against Poh and Reynold - she just KNEW she wasn't going to survive that contest, and she was right.

Meanwhile, on the Facebook page there's a photo with the tagline "Who will win?" and at this stage I'd say the comments are 90% in favour of Reynold, 5% in favour of Emilia and the rest are people complaining about who's not made it.  It seems very clear nobody really wants Laura to win!

[dippydee]

12 hours ago, katisha said:

It seems very clear nobody really wants Laura to win!

Lol!! Poor Laura. She has grown on me a lot this season (I found her very young and annoying in her season), mostly through her friendship with Emelia. She’s also clearly a good chef who has put up some amazing looking dishes but I just don’t know anyone who has her as their favourite. 
Emelia became my choice to win after both Jess (1st choice) and Tessa (she wuz robbed last year and again this year)  left but I’ve always liked her. 

[limecoke]

I’m trying to watch the episode with Callum’s elimination but I’m not sure I can do it.  What an amazingly humble, classy and talented guy.  There is no way anyone can convince me Reynold is a better and more well-rounded chef than Callum.  Anyway, this whole season reminds me of Top Chef in the US.  It’s a pretty good show but after several seasons they created an All-Star season with the sole purpose of giving Richard Blais a win (he’d lost in a previous try).  This feels the same.  I will be over the moon if Emelia (or Laura) can pull this off but Jock seems to be driving this train and we know what he wants.

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by limecoke

[xchouchoutex]

19 hours ago, katisha said:

Yes, just like Tess just against Poh and Reynold - she just KNEW she wasn't going to survive that contest, and she was right.

Meanwhile, on the Facebook page there's a photo with the tagline "Who will win?" and at this stage I'd say the comments are 90% in favour of Reynold, 5% in favour of Emilia and the rest are people complaining about who's not made it.  It seems very clear nobody really wants Laura to win!

I tried to comment sometimes on some posts in a facebook group of MCAU , everytime i say something about how Reynold is making the same thing people start attacking me and accusing me of the fact that i’m jealous because i can’t make similar plates 🤣🤣 i don’t know what’s wrong with people we can’t even tell our opinion  

[akr]

The end of the season is always a little frustrating because some people have gone too early & others lasted a bit too long, but I'm not going to hold it against any of those remaining. I'd prefer Laura or Emelia over Reynold, because I prefer dinner to dessert and they seem to be better all-around cooks. Although Reynold has frequently been bested in the dessert category by people like Emelia who excel at flavors. I think it's reasonable that he's in the mix & I never buy into the conspiracy theories. It did not shock me that Callum was out, as it seemed another example of sort of overthinking what he was doing - cooking for competition rather than for taste. Nothing was bad but sometimes it was muddled because too many things were going on. I doubt he does this in the real world; it seems more a matter of, under pressure, thinking he had to add elements to be fancy enough for competition, but then not having the time to get it all quite right (edit) at the end.

It seems obvious that more time in the industry is extremely valuable. I'd love to see Tessa, Khanh, & Sarah T, for example., face off in five years, & would have loved a final four with those three & Poh (final 6 to include Laura & Emelia, & no particular order amongst them for the finish; Callum & Reynold top 8 I guess, & realistically I would expect the newbies to falter before the old hands at the end). I find the Jess-Reece-Brendan group a little exhausting, even though they're clearly all nice people. It makes me feel like people will think I'm kicking a puppy if someone else is more to my taste. But they're all somewhat limited still (Jess the least, I think), & I'm not actually particularly interested in what they're going to do next (although I'd be happy to try Brendan's dumplings or other Mauritian-Chinese fare, or Reece's tarts, & really anything from Jess, but I expect her focus to remain desserts, & I prefer simpler desserts - taste over presentation - so I don't care how many fancy things she can do.)  

I'm glad Celebrity Masterchef UK is on to ease the transition to no cooking competitions. They've got nothing on these guys, of course, but it's good-spirited & some of them have some promise. I'm not British so the only person I've heard of is Judy Murray, (Andy Murray's mom) which probably helps. I don't come in already annoyed at any of them. I'm guessing

Spoiler

the Olympic gold medalist (Sam Quek - field hockey) from a week or so ago

will go far - that competitive spirit has held up well in this competition before & she comes in with good baseline skills & a good palate. 

[Rosenrot]

Well, poo. 

I haven't been watching since Khanh left, but I've been lurking here and reading all of y'all comments. Now that Poh and Callum are gone, there's no one for me to root for and let me just say that this is the exact top 3 I was dreading for since episode one. I (still) can't stand Laura and Reynold's comments made me lose all the respect I had for him. Emelia I can just about watch without rage filling up my insides, but I wouldn't quite call it equivalent to "rooting". Still - as unfortunately I suspect there isn't going to be a last-minute surprise episode where all the eliminated contestants come back (how marvelous would that be!) - if one of those three has to win, I hope it'll be her.    

Still lusting after Jock. Still not getting it. 🤷‍♀️

[TVbitch]

@akr! How dare you come in here and be calm and measured!!!!!!! 

To be fair though, Reynold overthinks his contraptions too a lot of the time. And Callum specifically put all those flavors in that first round dish cuz he wanted to prove to the judges he COULD balance a lot of ingredients, which he did. They all agreed it was an amazing, balanced dish with great flavor, but they picked Reynold for the win. I still think Reynold's dish in that round was not as good, and was certainly the worst looking. 

I am a week behind in Celebrity Masterchef, but will catch up!

[displayname]

Meh, Callum should've been the third one in. The three best chefs this season were Callum, Laura, and Emilia, to me. Sad that the judges let Reynold in.