MKR Recap: Kill Them All, God Will Know His Own

After the savage brawl that was Kim and Suong’s instant restaurant, where we learnt just how easily casual racism can slip under the radar when everyone’s focused on a woman calling another woman a cow, it’s time to see how Ash and her pet motorised sex doll Matty perform. Or rather, it’s time to see whether Ash can put together a three-course meal without Matty burning the house down or accidentally swallowing a light fitting.

We begin at the beach, where Matty surfs, which he calls his “happy place”, because the only people he can really carry a conversation with are sea invertebrates. Ash reveals that she is with Matty for purely carnal reasons, and Matty reveals that he makes a living letting old women feel him up in pools.

We are on the Sunshine Coast, so named because it is the only stretch of coastline in Australia where the sun is visible. Matty and Ash drive to Coles. “We’ve gotta get in and get out as soon as we can,” says Ash, but then she inexplicably starts buying things, which quickly prevents them from getting out as soon as they can. If only they’d just run through the doors and immediately turned around.

Cut to the judges. Pete is expecting a generous amount of calamari, which is typical of white male entitlement.

Back at Coles, Ash compliments Matty on his ability to push a trolley without putting anyone in hospital, which is pretty much the best you can hope for from Matty. As they drive home, Ash avers that they are “off the a really good start”, an assertion with absolutely no evidence backing it up.

The name of the instant restaurant is “Get Hooked”, and is themed around Matty and Ash’s crippling heroin addiction. For some reason they’ve chosen to illustrate this with pictures of the ocean and surfing images.

Ash and Matty put on aprons. “I instantly feel like I’m gonna cook well,” says Matty, who believes life is like a box of chocolates. For dessert they are making espresso creme brulee, which is lie ordinary creme brulee but worse. “Matty loves coffee,” says Ash, having failed to realise that she’s not cooking for Matty tonight.

Matty cracks an egg, and is touchingly pleased with himself. Ash points out that he’s got shell in the mixture. Matty doesn’t care, he’s a big boy today. Ash says she is feeling confident, but there is a zero percent chance that she is telling the truth.

“There’s a lot of love and energy that goes into making bread,” says Ash, and it’s true: making bread is an amazing waste of time. They demonstrate this by making bread. Meanwhile Matty washes his squid: not a euphemism.

Ash is panicking because the bread doesn’t look right. Matty doesn’t know what the bread is supposed to look like, so he’s struggling to join in the spirit of the panic. Suddenly Ash realises that she hasn’t put the yeast and the sugar in the dough. Matty has no idea why this is a problem. Ash needed Matty to remind her about this, but if Ash is depending on Matty for literally anything tonight, she has an extremely disappointing night ahead of her.

The guests arrive and notice that Matty’s apron is extremely clean, because he’s spent the entire prep time standing in the corner playing Angry Birds. Everyone is very impressed by the instant restaurant. I suppose. I don’t know. Matty explains that “Get Hooked” is a play on words, in case the guests were stressing out over it.

Alex and Emily admit that they like Ash and Matty, leaving only one question to be answered: who are Ash and Emily?

In the kitchen Matty puts the creme brulee in the fridge, a task which he is almost up to. Ash puts a tea towel over the bread. Later in the night Matty will probably use the bread to dry the dishes.

In the dining room there is tension. You can tell because there is a rattlesnake sound on the soundtrack. And because everyone keeps saying that there is tension. The guests are trying to make pleasant conversation, but Roula and Rachel just keep staring around the table, either hoping to reignite the previous night’s conflagration or wondering why nobody is telling them their hair looks terrific.

In the kitchen Ash asks Matty to chop some vegetables. Matty asks Ash how one chops vegetables. Ash tells Matty he can use the food processor on the carrots. Matty asks Ash how one uses a food processor. She shows him and he reacts like he’s just seen Hugh Jackman reconstitute himself in the balcony of the theatre.

Pete and Manu show up, not even wearing ties, the filthy slobs. “Oh my god Matt it’s Manu and Pete,” says Ash. “Is it Manu and Pete is it?” says Matt. Their relationship is founded on deep conversations like this.

The guests take their menus from inside their bottles, which was Matty’s idea — the fifth idea he has had in his life. Steve thinks the menu looks great, because it reminds him of being a surf club: lots of salt and Speedos.

In the kitchen Ash demands that Matty up the pace. Matty declares his intention to put the cucumber in the food processor, an exciting prospect for him at this stage of his life. Matty immediately breaks the food processor. While he slowly and painstakingly teaches himself how to cut a capsicum, Ash rolls out her slider buns while mentally planning her escape.

In the dining room Stuss confesses that he enjoys calamari that is cooked well, but seems to imply that when it is not cooked well he enjoys it less. Josh and Nic chip in to say “calamari” a dozen times with hilariously overblown Italian accents.

In the kitchen Matty is dusting the calamari, but luckily Ash has shown him how, so he doesn’t roll it under a couch or anything. They have run out of cornflour. This is a disaster because they can only serve three calamari to each diner, and they’re proceeding on the assumption that the diners like calamari. A risk, but who knows?

Ash says the calamari represents them: “it’s fresh, it’s vibrant, it’s colourful”. Yet when it is served, Roula says the dish is horrible, so I guess the calamari also represents Roula.

“The calamari wasn’t cooked well,” says Pete, but he goes on to say that it was rubbery and a bit chewy, which I thought is what calamari is supposed to be. “The calamari was bad, but the salad was worse,” he goes on, which in many ways is a negative piece of feedback.

“I’m begging you to go back to the kitchen and make the best pork sliders that you can,” says Manu, but honestly I don’t think he really wants them to do that.

The guests try the calamari in the manner of condemned criminals. “Very juvenile salad,” says Jess, refusing to explain what the hell that means. Everyone is agreed that the calamari salad is awful, which makes everyone feel bad for Ash and Matty, except for Roula and Rachael, whose fetish is other people’s sadness.

In the kitchen Ash and Matty try their best, but Ash’s attempts to make great food continue to be hampered by the fact she is simultaneously teaching a Year Two home science class.

Meanwhile in the dining room Emily explains that there was a huge debate over whether Kim and Suong should have made their own noodles. Kim explains that you can’t make pho noodles the same day, you freaking idiots. Roula brings up what happened after the noodles, and demands that Emma apologise for calling her friend the cow a cow. Emma apologises. Roula and Rachael refuse to accept the apology, rendering the entire exercise pointless. The audience is reminded that a conscious decision was made in the edit room to include these conversations in the final cut.

Back in the kitchen Ash is making chips with the fevered expression of a woman who knows she’s hitched her wagon to a diseased mole. Meanwhile Jess is doing her makeup at the table and Rachael is criticising Jess and Emma for being obsessed with how they look, because Rachael has never met Rachael. Roula and Rachael agree that if Jess and Emma didn’t wear makeup they would look disgusting, showing an inspiring willingness to take the high road.

Ash and Matty are constructing their sliders. “We haven’t done anything like this before in our lives,” says Ash, suddenly realising why that is. They serve the main course, causing shock and consternation among the diners, who were expecting more than one slider each. “It’s too big for a slider, but it’s not a burger either, what’s going on?” says Jazzey, apparently for no other reason than she hasn’t said much tonight yet.

Manu tells Ash and Matty that their main is much better than the entree, but that being shot in your sleep is better than being eaten by a shark. “You have another disaster,” says Pete, demanding more fossils in his burger.

Matty is devastated. “I’m definitely dragging her down,” he says, correctly. But if someone’s being dragged down, is it the anchor’s fault, or is it the person’s fault for tying it to their own ankle?

Nobody likes the sliders much, although when Rachael calls it a soggy mess, she reveals the amazing power she possesses: the power to convince others that something must be good just by saying that it’s bad. Around the table there is much sympathy for Ash and Matt, and Alex and Emily come into the kitchen to console them. This is what is known as “a nice gesture”, so naturally it makes Roula and Rachael wildly angry. Dissatisfied with seeing their rivals fail, they demand that everyone also hate them on a personal level.

“If everyone scores them on their personality, we’re going to be really pissed,” says Roula, who assigned scores to Kim and Suong based solely on her own failure.

In the kitchen Matty is cutting strawberries, and Ash says she expects the strawberries to be great for reasons she does not disclose.

In the dining room Emma says creme brulee has to have a good crunch, which is really original Emma, good one. Rachael says she doesn’t like coffee in dessert, because god forbid she keep her mouth shut for three seconds. Then Roula makes some really stupid surfing references that make everyone vomit.

Ash and Matty have burnt the creme brulee, but by this stage that probably counts as a plus compared to the rest of the night. While the guests wait for dessert, they talk about phones and emojis and how great it is to be unbearable. Emma says that if she was an emoji she would definitely be the princess symbol, having apparently never seen the toxic waste sign. There is a lively discussion about which emoji everyone would be if they were emojis and you can’t help wishing that they were.

Finally dessert is served, even though who cares about anything anymore. Manu and Pete taste it. “Alleluia,” says Manu, and the soundtrack goes all plinky. Manu notes that the top could have been a little bit thinner, but says he’s not going to make a fuss about it because he was genuinely expecting to be poisoned.

So apparently the creme brulee is really nice. Can’t wait to see why Roula and Rachael pretend to hate it. The guests taste it. Nic says he enjoys the “expresso” — expresso! Italian Nic said “expresso!” LOL.

Oh but Roula and Rachael said it was disgusting, Jesus Christ don’t the producers let these people ever go off-script?

Scoring time. Rachael says the calamari salad looked like a 12-year-old girl made it, and she’d know because a 12-year-old girl is who she stole her larynx from. Roula and Rachael give Ash and Matty a three, which is the same score they gave Kim and Suong, showing just how full of it they are. Everyone gives threes and fours, which is if anything fairly generous. The guests give them 23. The judges give them 23. Matty thinks for a few minutes and works out this adds up to 46. This is a terrible score, and a testament to MKR’s stringent audition process.

Tune in tomorrow, when everything will once again be about Roula and Rachael, despite Steve and Stuss’s attempts to distract us with their general obnoxiousness.

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