My Kitchen Rules Grand Final Recap: For Nothing Now Can Come To Any Good

So here we are. The moment we’ve all been waiting for. The night that Sonya and Hadil are kicked out of the sh —

Oh wait, that already happened, didn’t it? This isn’t the moment we’ve all been waiting for, it’s just the grand final. This is much less interesting, but we will at least get some closure, and a strong sense of the very nature of time itself.

We begin with the traditional reminder of all the memorable moments from this series, of which there are up to two. The reminder montage is surprisingly short, so as to fit the entire episode in before midnight. We then get a montage of what is about to happen, for balance. That’s MKR for you: living in the past and the future, but never the present.

“We are versing Alex and Emily,” says Suong, but she is wrong: they are competing against Alex and Emily, not “Versing” them. For god’s sake. “They know food,” Suong continues, and she is wrong again: Alex and Emily do not know food. Alex knows hats and Emily knows nervous breakdowns, but that’s as far as it goes.

“You are the My Kitchen Rules grand finalists,” Manu tells the two teams, in case they’re unsure of why they’re there.

“When you started this adventure, there were sixteen teams. You’ve outlasted them,” says Pete. This is accurate: they certainly haven’t outcooked them.

Emily says that today she is “weirdly Zen and weirdly chill”. But then she always is when she’s not actually cooking.

It’s Kim’s turn to talk, which is a shame, because she says, “food is life”, so nothing of value there. “When we cook, we cook with passion,” says Suong, already crying to demonstrate just how unstable she is.

The teams must cook a five-course dinner, representative of the decadent culture of obsessive consumption that My Kitchen Rules was created to epitomise. “I’d just like to wish Kim and Suong good luck,” says Emily, lying shamelessly. “May the best man win,” she adds. This means Alex, as he is the only man.

The two teams run to their kitchens and immediately start telling each other that it is important to make good food and work together and say everything out loud for the benefit of the viewer.

“We know how good Alex and Emily is,” says Kim to Suong, leaving the “they are complete shit” unspoken.

Emily is cutting a tuna up. “I’ve got to get cracking on this tuna,” she yells, for no reason at all: she IS getting cracking on this tuna. “Alex, I’m really trying to cut this tuna as quickly as possible,” she says, in answer to a question that was never asked.

Meanwhile Kim and Suong are discussing the mess Kim is making, respectfully not mentioning the mess cutting the tuna on the other side.

Pete and Manu have a boring chat. Pete seems to be of the belief that Alex and Emily include elements of every culture on Earth in their dishes. This does not include paleo.

Emily is already whining and having a go at Alex. “I’m not having a go at you,” she says, having a go at him. Her destruction of her own relationship is interrupted by the arrival of the eliminated contestants. She rushes over to hug Josh and Nic, so if they run out of time she has only herself to blame.

Alex is mixing up the harissa paste. “That’s taken you a FULL HOUR,” Emily says, considering setting fire to his hat.

Now the finalists’ families arrive, always the most emotional and dull part of every MKR grand final. Kim and Suong assure us that they are “doing this for them”, but their kids don’t really seem that fussed.

Two hours to go and the contestants’ personalities are already grating. Even worse: Colin will soon be here.

The guests have to stand up on the balcony throughout the cooking process, as someone else is using all the chairs. “I’m like a ninja!” Emily shrieks for no apparent reason. The first course has not been served but already madness has set in in the kitchen.

Pete and Manu discuss Kim and Suong’s intention to wrap beef in mustard leaves. It is a conversation of no note whatsoever. Meanwhile Henry and Anna tell Stella and Jazzey that the two finalist teams are extremely deserving. Stella and Jazzey agree that this is indeed what the cue cards say.

Alex shouts his plans at the world, having lost the ability to modulate his voice. Emily tells Alex he will have total control over plating. Alex laughs maniacally and accuses Emily of deception. Meanwhile Kim has pickled carrots, pickled apple and pickled ginger, and simply does not know what to do about it.

Among the audience, Steve is worried that Suong wraps beef too slowly, and everyone else is worried that they have to stand near Steve. Kim is also worried, criticising Suong’s wrapping technique. Roula sings a snatch of a Limp Bizkit song. Remember Roula? She’s here. Sorry.

Alex gives an instruction to Emily. “Don’t shout at me!” she yelps. Alex notes that he did not shout at her. Emily insists that he did. Alex clenches his entire body.

With just thirty seconds left, all the spectators start screaming and shouting to put the teams off their game. Emily grabs at her eye as a blood vessel in her brain bursts. It is time to serve the first course.

The judges are let out of their wooden crate to eat the first course. Karen looks with bemusement at Colin as he smears his food all over his face. “The tuna has integrity,” she says rendering anything else she ever says worthless.

“Team One have given us their version of a beautiful street food,” says the blonde woman whose name has never been revealed. Colin agrees that Kim and Suong’s beef-in-a-leaf is very tasty. Karen says it could be better. Colin tells Karen to shut her dumb face.

Time to prepare the second course, the course nobody ever really remembers. Kim rushes to the sink and begins mutilating a small bird, acting out long-repressed emotional trauma.

Meanwhile, Emily yells “Emma, this one’s for you!” and holds up a lamb’s brain. Emily is snickering like a hyena at her incredible joke, and everyone humours her, laughing uneasily in fear of what might happen if they don’t. God only knows whether the brains are even from a lamb, or from…well.

Anyway Emily is losing her mind as she crumbs the brains. “I feel like I’ve been left to do this by myself,” she snaps at Alex, regarding the mutual decision they both made that she would do that part herself. Emily is resentful that Alex refuses to do his share, and Alex is resentful that Emily refuses to take her medication. There is a lot of resentment going on, but if they were up on the balcony listening to Stuss and Steve, they would realise life could be a lot worse.

Kim has worked out her issues and the quails are cooking, apart from some of them, which are burning. Flames soar high into the air as the quails turn black and Suong casts the Ring of Power onto the grill. Kim must now debone some extra quails thanks to Suong’s latent pyromania. Suong now drops a quail on the ground, causing the spectators to squeal in poorly-feigned alarm. Kim, suspecting Suong of wanting her to suffer, goes right off, Emily-style, except that unlike Emily, she has something to be upset about.

“Kim is angry at me because I’ve just dropped a quail!” Suong explains in a cutaway shot after the event that for some reason the show is trying to convince us is happening in the moment, as if after dropping the quail, Kim and Suong rushed away from the kitchen, filmed a short interview, and then ran back in to finish the quail.

The quail are falling apart at roughly the same speed of Kim and Suong’s friendship. On the other side, Emily exclaims, “This is mental!” as she stares into a mirror.

“Alright baby we GOT THIS!” Emily bellows to either Alex or the voices in her head, as Kim and Suong gaze despairingly at their ugly quail. Second course is served. Kim hopes the quails are cooked, which is indeed something you’d hope for when giving someone quails to eat.

The judges eat Alex and Emily’s brains. So to speak. “Team Two have certainly cooked these brains perfectly,” says the mystery blonde. “I love the crunch, the softness of the brains,” says Colin, unnervingly. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” says Manu, which is stupid because he just ate brains, so there are DEFINITELY brains.

Meanwhile Emma tries the brains and finds them disgusting, which is funny because Emma being in distress is amusing to us all.

Onto Kim and Suong’s quail, and the music gets extremely tense, suggesting I don’t know what, because the music gets extremely tense over everything. “I just have to say wow,” says Guy, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to say wow at all. He had the option not to, but he went ahead and did because he is a blustering fool. Show some fucking restraint, Guy.

Everyone loves the quail, savouring the hint of broken trust that comes through in the seasoning. It is now time to prepare the third course. “No more mistakes, yeah?” says Kim. Suong agrees, but you can tell she’s lying.

Kim vows to make her rice very special. It sounds a bit like a threat. “Suong, what’s in the red sauce?” calls Henry. “None of your fucking business,” Suong replies. Nah, she doesn’t really. Should’ve though.

“Go mum! You have to win this mum!” screams some awful child, increasing the pressure on his poor mother who has quite enough to deal with you know?

“Harissa” sounds kind of like a girl’s name, doesn’t it? I think there’s a character in Picnic at Hanging Rock called Harissa.

Pete and Manu have a chat. Manu says “gelatinous” funny. In the kitchen Suong is flinging prawns around with gay abandon. The children compete to see who wants their mother to win more. The little boy is definitely the best child. The girls should lift their game.

Meanwhile the hopefully-to-remain-childless-forever Alex and Emily are fighting etc.

“It’s a great day to be a judge,” Pete tells Manu. Manu agrees. In fact every day is a great day to be a judge, as the life of a judge is extremely lucrative and requires almost no work whatsoever.

Up on the balcony, some old woman who apparently was in the show at some point despite the fact nobody knows who she is is saying some stupid bullshit. None of the eliminated contestants are adding anything to the show. Big mistake letting them in. Could’ve spiced things up by letting Sonya and Hadil come, if they were as drunk as last time we saw them.

Oh yeah, Dan and Gemma. Remember Dan and Gemma? They are truly unbearable.

Ten minutes to go and the third course is as boring to watch as it will be to eat. “Have you got more prawns?” Kim asks. “No, that’s it,” says Suong. “Did you drop some?” says Kim. “No, just one,” says Suong. There are two prawns missing, and the search begins.

“It’s like Groundhog Day ,” chuckles Pete, but this is very wrong: if it were Groundhog Day, Kim and Suong would be cooking the quails again, and they wouldn’t be able to leave the town, and nobody would believe them when they tried to tell them what was going on. Pete hasn’t even seen Groundhog Day, the bastard.

Meanwhile Alex and Emily’s plates are dirty, and Emily apologises for the filth she has forced into Alex’s life.

The judges eat the third course. The nameless blonde basically has an orgasm over the prawns. Guy climaxes at roughly the same time, so good for them. “It’s a really good dish, even though it doesn’t look pretty,” says Pete, staring straight at the blonde woman, making the subtext pretty clear.

The judges then eat Alex and Emily’s lobster and say things like “interesting” and “curious” which is extremely bad news for Alex and Emily. Karen says the integrity of the lobster has been lost. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” says Pete, but apparently he’s not referring to Karen’s statement. Nobody likes the lobster but they try to say something nice about it anyway.

Time to prepare the fourth course. Alex is pressing his pork, which seems reckless when time is of the essence. Emily is freaking out. “Don’t freak out,” says Alex, as if that’s ever worked.

“Who would’ve known, two mums from Melbourne?” says Suong, as if nobody thought mums could cook and Melbourne is a tiny country town hitherto unknown. Kim’s little boy yells out to distract her, calling her “Kim” which is disrespectful. He will be punished later.

Meanwhile Emily is falling apart in a Bergman film sort of way. She may try to crawl into the fridge at any moment. She starts to scream at Alex, incoherent wordless noises. Or rather, they’re not wordless, I’m just not really listening. She wants Alex to stop having a go at her. He isn’t having a go at her, but the imp who lives on her shoulder is. Emily bursts into tears, scarcely believing that the world can be so cruel.

Time is up for fourth course. “This is hard. It’s not easy,” says Emily, cannily identifying the concept of antonyms.

The judges gather. “We just witnessed one hell of a battle in the kitchen,” says Pete. Only he and Manu got to witness it of course, because the others have to stay in their crate. The judges chow down on Alex’s pork. Apparently it’s incredible, thanks to the delicious seasoning of Emily’s tears.

The four guest judges, of course, don’t know which team is which, so they’ve absolutely no idea which team might have made Vietnamese beef stew. It is a complete mystery. They are big fans of it though, although Colin is wearing that look on his face that suggests he’s about to complain about political correctness. But that’s the look he always wears I guess. “You think you’re leaning one way and then all of a sudden…” says the blonde, describing her battles with vertigo.

In the prison the contestants have to go to between courses, Kim and Suong are yelling at each other about dessert. Suong says the dessert is already ruined. Kim says they should try it and see. Suong says she should make a new one and if it works serve it and if it doesn’t work serve the original. Kim agrees that this is what they should do. They do not disagree on anything, but they continue yelling at each other anyway, because why should Emily have all the fun?

“We’re both upset with each other because we want this so bad,” says Suong, but it’s untrue: they’re upset with each other because each thinks the other is trying to poison her. They apologise to each other, which is so not in the spirit of the show.

Time to make dessert. Kim and Suong are trying to make more creme caramels in less than 45 minutes, which I am reliably informed will not work. Meanwhile Emily describes her dessert as “a penicillin cocktail” so no idea what’s going on there.

Alex and Emily are doing things with dry ice. “I feel like a scientist doing this,” says Emily, but a scientist would be a hell of lot more mindful of health and safety. As the clock runs out, Alex begins what will be a long night/lifetime of drinking.

It’s all over. Except for the half hour that isn’t over yet. Before we can finally throw the corpse of MKR 2018 overboard, though, the judges must taste dessert. Kim and Suong’s dessert is kind of OK, which means I was misinformed APPARENTLY. But they’re not creaming themselves like they did over the beef stew. If only there were more beef in the creme caramel.

The judges try Ale and Emily’s magical dry ice dessert wank. “This is just a showstopper,” says Guy, but he is sadly mistaken: the show keeps going. “Presentation: eleven out of ten,” says Karen, a lifelong innumerate. Colin is happy because there’s lots of alcohol in it.

“What a joy to be able to judge the MKR final again,” Pete lies. It is time for the scoring. Each of the judges gives a lengthy considered course-by-course critique. But this is very boring, so basically what happens is…

OK so first we have to watch another fucking cruise ad with Stuss and Steve. Fuck those guys.

OK so now what happens is, Alex and Emily win. And the blonde woman gives them a ten even though everyone agreed their lobster course wasn’t very good, so what the fuck, blonde woman?

Thus a record is set by Emily, the least deserving person to ever win a major cash prize on Australian television. At least it’s all over now. Tune in next year, when someone will actually kill themselves in an instant restaurant.

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