My Kitchen Rules FINAL RECAP: All Are Punished.
So it has come to this: Amy and Tyson, the siblings who were briefly considered the villains of the series before everyone realised that Josh was the actual antichrist and remembered that David and Betty say “hashtag” out loud, pitting their culinary skills against Valerie and Courtney, the mother and daughter team who people generally think are basically OK really all things considered.
This will be a battle royale of two pairs of people who are at the very top of their field: that field being “people who can cook reasonably well as long as you don’t compare them to professionals at any point”. The MKR finale has been anticipated ever since this series started, back in 1943, and all expectations are that it will literally never end. Let’s begin…
The voiceover guy says something like, “Where there’s dreams, there’s sound”, and the decision, made against my better instincts, to listen to the voiceover guy immediately looks disastrous.
Obviously the finale begins with a montage showing us everything that’s happened so far, not so much in case we’ve forgotten as in case there’s anyone who wants to be reminded. “Australia, your MKR grand final starts NOW!” growls voiceover guy while passing a kidney stone.
The teams enter Kitchen HQ. “I never pictured us here,” says Amy, displaying her sad lack of imagination. Amy and Tyson are dressed in black while Valerie and Courtney are dressed in white, which is symbolically significant but in all other respects completely uninteresting.
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” says Amy. “We’ve worked our butts off, so to win the grand final would be the icing on the cake.” This is a wonderful sentiment made all the more poignant by the fact it doesn’t mean anything.
Valerie says something about her father, a subject that went stale several months ago in terms of entertainment value.
The judges’ main job in the finale is to drag things out as long as possible to make sure Seven doesn’t need to schedule any more shows for the rest of the year. Manu and Pete do this by asking banal questions as slowly as they can. Manu in particular is showing off the latest iteration of his accent, which has become so ludicrously and unconvincingly thick that he’s now speaking in the Kobaian invented by prog-rock band Magma.
Both teams must cook five courses — which is, obviously, too many for a “packed restaurant”, except that it’s not a restaurant, it’s just Kitchen HQ with people from the show in it. The countdown to entree begins, and Tyson and Amy start their prep by talking to each other about what a momentous occasion it is. Eventually actual cooking shows signs of taking place. On the other side, Valerie and Courtney are talking nonsense about journeys to the East.
“We’re not gonna settle for average,” Tyson says, a lie that he has repeated often this year, usually mere seconds before he settles for average. The only way to ensure he doesn’t settle for average is to deliberately be awful, but as usual the snivelling little coward lacks the courage of his convictions.
Amy begins teasing her brother by suggesting that to prepare for a career in professional kitchens he should start saying “yes chef” to her. The joke is that Tyson is a contestant on MKR and therefore will never have a career in professional kitchens.
Suddenly there is uproar in the kitchen as a spectral old man bursts through the doors. Turns out this is not the vengeful spirit of Valerie’s father, it’s just her husband, who happens to be eight thousand years old. In fact, both team’s families have shown up, and there are lots of tears and hugging and a deep hole where feelings should be. It’s a joyous moment but it’s ruined when David and Betty arrive.
Then all the other teams. “I’m so happy to see them again,” says Valerie, but fails to explain this absurd statement. Nobody in their right mind could possibly be happy to see these horrible people. Which I guess is why Valerie is.
The finale has been going for about twenty-five minutes, so only eight hours to go until the first course is halfway finished.
Cooking bits. Etc.
There’s a comment from Mark and Chris, whoever they are.
“Valerie and Courtney have their secret spices, their cookbook. We’ve got white truffle,” says Tyson, in the manner of someone who is planning to poison Valerie and Courtney by injecting them with white truffles with an umbrella.
“I’m just getting some plates out,” says Amy. It’s these little glimpses behind the curtain of haute cuisine that make the show so riveting.
Tyson is shaking a kitchen implement. This causes Karen to suffer some kind of full-body seizure in a cutaway. Which is a great opportunity to mention that Ros’s shoulders are, as always, nude.
There are people on the balcony I don’t recognise. I guess they’re either family members or teams who got eliminated so long ago I’ve erased them from my memory. Everyone on the balcony is clapping and whooping for literally nothing. Nothing is happening to justify clapping and whooping. Everyone here has some kind of plate in their heads.
Time is up and the pointless whooping reaches fever pitch. Valerie and Courtney serve up their small stacks of things, and Amy and Tyson plate their small bowls of things.
Judging time. Manu and Guy are wearing tuxedoes. Colin and Pete are vulgar low-class boars who can’t even be bothered. The judges taste Valerie and Courtney’s. Karen says it’s “sheer brilliance”. Manu says something you can’t understand because of his fake accent.
The judges taste Amy and Tyson’s. Colin says it “packs a poonch”, and drinks a few more bottles of whisky. Pete wishes the dish had had a piece of crispy bread, explicitly betraying everything the paleo movement stands for.
The teams begin making their main course. Amy and Tyson are doing things with pork and peas. “There’s no time to get complacent,” says Tyson, but really getting complacent hardly takes any time, they could definitely fit it in somewhere.
Valerie and Courtney are doing things with salmon. And peas. Where the modern obsession with using peas as food comes from I do not know, but I disapprove. Manu comes into their kitchen to slow them down. Pete does the same to Amy and Tyson.
Amy hopes her pea soup has enough flavour, because Valerie and Courtney’s will. Though you’d think it’s possible that she’d hope it has enough flavour anyway. I don’t know what kind of circumstance would cause Amy to not give a shit whether her pea soup has enough flavour or not.
Meanwhile Tyson is getting stuck into some pork back fat, and providing some expert high-end commentary. “Pork back fat is exactly that,” he says, and we all nod in comprehension.
They’re still clapping and whooping and nobody knows why.
More cooking stuff.
Amy and Tyson’s brother has a weird moustache. Everyone in that family has problems.
Time is up, and second course is served, and it’s only 8.51. The show is scheduled to go till 10.24. This feels ominous. Something terrible is going to happen at the end of it all. We cut to a break and the voiceover guy promises drama, but at the last ad break he promised the teams were going to crack under the pressure and they didn’t, so we can’t believe anything he says anymore.
Time for the judges to crawl out from under their foul rock again. First, Amy and Tyson’s pea and ham soup, which looks revolting, but to be fair, it’s pea and ham soup so it’s impossible for it not to look revolting. “These are ingredients I loov,” says Colin, fighting desperately not to slide under the table. “A faultless dish,” says Pete, planning to include the recipe for it in his next cookbook for babies.
Valerie and Courtney’s salmon tikka skewers in pea soup. The judges drop a bombshell by revealing that their dish is different to the other dish. Nobody can really believe such a thing has happened. Whatsherface with the blonde hair is very impressed. Guy is hallucinating about spice markets and has to be chloroformed to stop him talking.
Back into the kitchen for the teams, and more cooking rubbish.
Tyson keeps telling Amy what he’s doing, as if she cares. She doesn’t care, she has marrons to boil or something. Meanwhile Valerie thinks her fish will be perfect with the sauce, and she invites her husband down into the kitchen to taste it. Her husband, although in his heart yearning to return to the peace of the netherworld, consents to his wife’s unreasonable demands.
Up on the balcony, Josh expresses doubts about Amy and Tyson’s cooking, so they can be sure they’re on the right track.
“On-joy it!” yells Manu. A bit late for that. “Well, it’s round three,” Pete tells him. Manu can’t argue with that. Manu announces that there’s ten minutes left. The balcony erupts in rapturous applause, because they’re all huge fans of time measurement.
Karen and Ros make some awful comment about childbirth. Someone should bounce them out of the damn building. Valerie and Courtney are using native limes which for some reason is supposed to be interesting. I’ve never met these limes before. I’m not invested in their backstory.
“Judges aren’t going to give us two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for doing nothing, Ty,” says Amy, putting her finger expertly on one of the key elements of the MKR experience. Having ruled out doing nothing, Tyson and Amy proceed to do something, a satisfying experience in comparison.
Valerie and Courtney’s third course isn’t exactly what Valerie hoped it would be. Valerie’s husband must therefore remain tormented on the mortal plane for some time further. She just hopes the judges like the flavours. Yet is this possible, with judges so sour and detached from humanity?
The judges taste Tyson and Amy’s marron. “Marron is one of Australia’s most beautiful ingredients,” says Guy — leaving unspoken the fact that the others are the Minogue sisters and sheep. Apparently the marron is good. Josh is crestfallen to discover that the rhubarb works — which his wife finds sadly ironic.
Guy finds Valerie and Courtney’s balance is out. The native limes aren’t enough. Meanwhile Tully is violently choking, either on the food or on Josh’s personality.
Time to prepare fourth course, which is a ridiculous thing to say, because “fourth course” is a dumb concept.
For fourth course Valerie and Courtney are making blah blah and Amy and Tyson are making etc.
“This is the course we’re most worried about,” says Tyson, watching his ingredients fall in with a bad crowd. Tyson and Amy are cooking sweetbreads. Tim confesses that he hates sweetbreads. Fortunately for Tyson and Amy there is absolutely no reason to give a flying fuck what Tim hates.
Meanwhile Valerie is talking about her dad again and everyone just sort of stands around awkwardly. Valerie bursts into tears. This isn’t helping anyone, Valerie.
The breadcrumbs are slowing Tyson down. Tale as old as time, true as it could be…
“Breadcrumbs, so simple, yet it seems to be causing Tyson trouble,” says Josh, musing on how breadcrumbs are for Tyson what basic motor skills are for him.
Remember the awful women from Wollongong? Yeah they’re here too.
Tyson is swearing at his breadcrumbs. They have betrayed him for the last time. A woman who might be Tyson and Amy’s mother is crying on the balcony. Or maybe she’s Pete’s mother. I bet Pete’s mother cries a lot.
“Tyson, look at your plate!” shrieks Karen like the useless bint she is. “Look at your plate”. What the fuck good will that do, dickhead?
Tyson and Amy have rushed their plating and are therefore bad people.
The judges try the fourth courses. They love everything, the unoriginal halfwits. Blonde thingummy is confused and wonders where she is. Karen says Tyson and Amy’s dish is the best she’s tasted in eight years. Not just in MKR, either — she’s been unhappy in her life for a long time. Meanwhile that stupid girl who was really stupid tells herself that sweetbreads are chicken nuggets. And she believes herself because she’s stupid. What was her name? Dumb Becky or something.
Ros’s shoulders are bare even in ads for dishwashing tablets.
Time to make fifth course, or “dessert” as sane people call it. This means Tyson and Amy have to shout at each other about every single little thing they’re doing. They are making something minty that sounds pretty awful but everyone will probably love it. Valerie and Courtney are making a traditional Indian dessert. Valerie asks Courtney whether it’s a traditional Indian dessert. Courtney agrees that it is indeed a traditional Indian dessert. Consensus has been achieved.
They’re making dessert and putting bits of food together with other bits of food I guess. I dunno. No cooking show has ever made cooking look so painful, uncomfortable and uninteresting. It’s an art really.
Contestants’ voiceovers start to talk about how unbelievable it is that they’ve come so far and they’ve learnt hard lessons and become better people and someday they’ll all look back on it and laugh and sue Channel Seven for emotional distress.
The teams overcome the handicap of having the cretins on the balcony screaming at them and manage to plate up dessert.
As the heat death of the universe approaches, the judges convene for the final judging before re-entering cryostasis. Colin opines that food is about childhood memories, so he’s pretty far gone. Pete thinks Amy and Tyson’s dessert is perfection even though it will make him autistic.
Also they like Valerie and Courtney’s or are pretending to, which is the same thing really.
Time for the final judging, which goes for fucking ever because it’s MKR.
“You both should be very proud,” Pete lies to the teams. Manu tells Valerie and Courtney that he intends to join their family. Amy tells Pete that her team’s secret weapon was “helping each other”. Everyone talks and talks and talks for ages.
Highlights of the scoring: Pete saying “that was one of the best pea soups I’ve ever had”, not revealing he’d never had any before tonight; Guy waving his hand around as he descends into a curry-induced madness; Valerie’s husband smiling despite the exquisite agony of existence; Guy naming a list of ingredients in lieu of an opinion; Colin saying “umami”; Guy saying “There’s not much to say about it” at the end of a five-minute speech; Manu saying, “rich, bitter, sweet, cream, smoothy” purely to show off how silly his accent is; the blonde lady refusing to reveal who she is.
And then there’s an ad break.
And then everyone talks a bit more.
And then Amy and Tyson win. Hooray!
Tune in next week when the 2018 season of My Kitchen Rules premieres on Seven.
