My Kitchen Rules Recap: Fuck a Duck
After the enormous disappointment of finding out the Russians know how to cook, everyone’s fingers are crossed for some gross incompetence tonight.
It’s the turn of Georgie and Alicia, who have been flying under the radar so far but could well end up being two of the most obnoxious pricks to ever appear on television. Having spent the last week reacting to everything everyone does with “We could do that better”, it’s time to put their disgusting shitty food where their horrible mouths are.
The sisters live in Coffs Harbour, so we get a nice shot of the Big Banana, home of better food than has ever been served on MKR. They reveal that they are prepared for the pressure of the show because they spent their entire childhood violating child labour laws in the family restaurant while their mother hurled abuse at them. It’s a charming picture of parental abuse that Georgie and Alicia think is quite cute, and it’s really a bit awkward.
Cut to Olga, who says she doesn’t like Chinese food, which is a big fucking surprise from the woman who has already made it clear she wishes to set fire to everything on earth that didn’t come from Russia.
The sisters go shopping while the judges peruse the menu. They are baffled by the entree of prawn and shiitake ravioli in seafood broth. Ravioli is not Chinese, so Manu and Pete, being racist, can’t understand how Chinese people can make them.
Georgie and Alicia decorate their instant restaurant in a brief sequence that captures the intense boredom of instant restaurant decoration without giving away the mystery of it all. They then begin making the entree. Georgie will be taking charge of the pasta and trying to win her mother’s love. Alicia will be covering the seafood broth and delusions of grandeur.
Georgie moves on to prepping dessert. Dessert always needs to prepped early because desserts take so long. This could be avoided if people served frozen sausage rolls for dessert, but nobody has ever had the guts on this show.
Alicia begins butchering her duck. “I hope there’s never a man on the end of that,” says Georgie, masking her genuine fear that one day her sister will mutilate a helpless human being behind a facade of humour.
We intercut between kitchen scenes and Hadil sniping behind Georgie and Alicia’s backs. This will continue all night.
The guests arrive. “How good’s Coffs Harbour?” says Henry. “I saw the Big Banana!” said Anna, and even though there is literally a big banana in Coffs Harbour, you can tell from the way she said it she’s making a dick joke. I don’t even know what the dick joke means, but Anna is definitely talking about a penis.
Meanwhile Olga and Valeria say that their mission is to “Ken Kerr” the world. No idea who Ken Kerr is.
Sonya and Hadil have been sat directly across from Olga and Valeria. Hadil is scandalised. “Olga, AKA Vulgar,” she says, in a quite frankly HILARIOUS bit of devilish wordplay.
Hadil tells the table she’s “really excited for this, because I love Asian food”, in the tone of a woman talking about her upcoming bowel surgery. What she’s really looking forward to is punching on with Olga and Valeria, who are already smirking at her with the confidence of two women who know just how easy a US election is to tamper with.
Back in the kitchen, the sisters are cooking the duck breast three times, which is ridiculous. Nothing should ever be cooked more than once. It’s disgusting decadence to do more.
Manu and Pete arrive, to the sound of Wolfmother’s “Joker and the Thief”, for reasons which will never be explained. Georgie expresses her excitement that Pete and Manu are going to use her toilet. Nowhere to go with that really.
The guests read the menus, which are printed as if on little takeaway dockets, to emphasise the cheap and tacky aesthetic that is Georgie and Alicia. Dan and Gemma agree that it is “a competition menu”, and wonder ruefully why they didn’t think of doing one of those.
“I feel like our menu shows a lot more technique than we’ve seen in previous menus,” says Alicia, because if she didn’t feel like that her entire sense of self would collapse in on itself.
In the dining room everyone is cracking open fortune cookies. “You listen to fortune cookies,” says Henry. “They’re always right,” says Anna. I like them a bit less now.
The whole fortune cookie sequence is fairly painful. Valeria gets a fortune that refers to her “kindness” and everyone laughs because Valeria is horrible. Hadil is furious that the fortune cookies are taking sides like this.
Henry and Anna are on a car ad, because Renault is trying to position itself as the most reliable car to hunt truffles in.
Georgie and Alicia are still in the kitchen and still doing boring things with food and not even lighting anything on fire. Eventually they serve their weird Italian entree. Everyone gets three pissy little ravioli and some seafood broth in a baby bottle, but disaster — they forgot to attach the teats, and the guests are unable to suckle. Olga sniffs suspiciously at her broth, finding it the strangest-coloured vodka she has ever seen.
“It worked very well indeed,” says Manu, disappointing an entire nation. “This is perfection on a plate,” says Pete, and the cunning strategy behind the baby bottles is revealed: they’re trying to appeal to Pete’s strong desire to feed babies broth.
Marco is vaguely annoyed that the ravioli isn’t ravioli, much like people who meet Marco are annoyed that he’s not actually Chris Pratt. Meanwhile Olga is unimpressed with the broth, but then I’m not sure it’s meant to be drunk straight. She doesn’t even put ice in it. Valeria adds that she understands that when you try to do something perfectly it might not work out that way: a vicious underhand swipe at Hillary Clinton.
As the guests wait for main, they discuss the issue of duck. Anna is gagging for a duck. Matt is gagging for a duck. Dan and Gemma are saying confusing things about duck that seem to hint at some dark incident in their past. Maybe they murdered a duck farmer? It’s not clear.
Meanwhile there are plenty of things that could go wrong with duck, according to Alicia, which is why duck is a lot like a childhood.
Back in the dining room, Hadil has had enough of Olga’s bullshit. She takes a deep breath, and lets fly. “The reason I’ve been a little bit cool is you called me an annoying little rabbit,” she explains. Olga isn’t bothered. “You said something that wasn’t very nice,” says Hadil. Olga tells Hadil that Hadil’s feelings are not her problem. Hadil asks Olga why she doesn’t want to be nice. Olga is still not bothered. “As a woman,” Hadil says,” there’s no need to tear another woman down.”
“I’m sure you aren’t. Great speech,” says Olga, with gulag-level sarcasm. I like Olga more now.
Back in the kitchen, Georgie and Alicia are fairly dull. They’re painting the duck brown, but will the judges be fooled/poisoned?
Duck is served. The judges saw energetically at their birds. “Oh my god, we effed it up,” says Alicia, hilariously. The duck is overcooked and her parents will never love her. But then Pete says the duck is great. So Pete loves overcooked duck and his opinion cannot possibly be taken seriously ever again. Manu loves it too, and he is likewise now completely worthless as a judge.
“The first mouthful of this duck is everything I wanted and more,” says Matt, in explaining why he is leaving Aly for the duck. Anna is almost in tears at how much she loves the duck. Yet she still refuses to say “fuck a duck”, and so I still don’t have the perfect ringtone. However — and you might want to sit down for this — Olga and Valeria don’t like the dish. Olga whines about the salad, which she says didn’t add anything to the dish, which is ridiculous, because salad never adds anything to any dish. Salad isn’t there to be eaten, it’s just a social nicety.
Back in the kitchen, Georgie and Alicia are making ice cream. “We always strive for the best,” says Alicia, in case we didn’t hear the first eight hundred times she said the same thing with slightly different words.
In the dining room, Hadil says she’s looking forward to the dessert, because from now on everything she says will be aimed at pissing the Russians off. Olga says it’s not her type of dessert, because it’s very “Asian”. And yet the majority of Russia’s landmass is also Asian — what say you NOW, Olga?
Dessert is served. Georgie and Alicia claim to have put a “Georgie and Alicia spin on a classic dessert”, which is incredibly wanky and very much on-brand. Dan likes the look of the dessert, but Dan also liked the idea of going on MKR, so what Dan likes is a very poor guide to anything. Incredibly, Olga does not like the look of it, which really takes the breath away.
Manu and Pete try the dessert. Manu loves the ice cream, but not anything else. Pete loved all of it, but he’s lying and the Paleo movement will disown him. Also, he specifically says it wasn’t as good as the White Russian last night, which is very very funny.
Some loved the dessert, some didn’t. Pat didn’t, which is a great reminder that Pat is still on the show. Hadil practically wets herself with the intensity of her praise, just to rub it in to the Russians. “There’s no comparison between Olga and Valeria’s and Georgie and Alicia’s,” she says, comparing them. Sonya, as she has for the past week, says nothing. Olga and Valeria aren’t very impressed, by this or anything.
Time for scores, and then the sweet bliss of the end of the show. There are some nines, but Marco is still bitching about the ravioli and Pat can’t be doing with all this mango nonsense. Olga says she “disagreed with the flavours”, which is a symptom of synaesthesia. The Russians give the sisters a nine, so what the fuck was all that criticism at the table about? Jesus Christ Russians, why must you always be so duplicitous? This is the Crimea all over again.
Georgie and Alicia’s total score is 113, which means they are on top of the leaderboard. Olga and Valeria are depressed by this, but it’s their own fault: if they’d given them a three they’d still be on top.
Tune in tomorrow, when Matt and Aly serve a three-course all-bully beef feast.
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