Masterchef Australia Recap: Porky’s IV

After the euphoria of the first night, the crushing disappointment of the second night. The contestants face the horrifying prospect of a friendly, non-abusive Gordon Ramsay with nothing to protect themselves except their own desperation. Their challenge: to remember who Reece is without looking it up on Wikipedia.

On a bright sunny morning the contestants arrive at HQ. Dani, newly pinned, is feeling like a superhero. One of the ones without any good powers. Hawkeye, probably. Inside, Jock asks them if they’re feeling good, as if that’s any of his business.

Gordon tells them that they created history yesterday. His explanation of why this is proves to be fairly unconvincing and anyone who concludes that they didn’t create history yesterday has a lot of evidence on their side. He then announces that today they will be doing a full service, and he will be running it. “I’m expecting one of the best-run restaurants anywhere in the country,” he lies: as someone with experience of running restaurants, he knows that there is zero chance of this happening.

The contestants will be split into teams and forced under threat of violence to make three courses for 120 people. Each course must feature one of three ingredients: potato, ginger and black garlic. “You have two and a half hours before the first entrees begin leaving the pass,” says Jock, probably confusing the shit out of Gordon, who’s spent many years making Hell’s Kitchen in America, where they call main courses “entrees” because they are stupid.

FUCKING STUPID.

The teams rush to the kitchens and immediately begin jabbering mindlessly at each other. Khanh says that he doesn’t want to be the green team’s captain. The rest of the green team are comfortable with accommodating his desire. Amina steps up to take control because she is a nurse, a job that has nothing in common with this at all.

On the blue team, Ben — not the ice-cream Ben, the other one — is the captain, as if being best friends with a judge wasn’t enough for his ego.

The blue team’s Laura decides she’d like to do a beef carpaccio for entree. “I’ve done something similar with kangaroo before, but there’s no kangaroo,” she says, risking her team’s fortunes on her insane experiments.

The green team is forced to pause for a moment while Amina flashes back to her depressing life at home, where she is forced to do everything in slow motion due…