My Kitchen Rules Recap: Law of Averages

Tonight, on Incompetent Masterchef, Amy and Tyson are forced by Tyson’s sudden attack of beach catatonia into a sudden death cook-off against Caz and Damo, who were forced into it by the fact that they’re not very good at cooking. It will be a tense and passionate battle that could barely be any more dramatic if it involved anyone we cared the slightest bit about.

At Kitchen HQ, Manu demands to know what the hell happened to Amy and Tyson, which means we have to hear Amy say “angry angry man”, which everyone on the show keeps trying to make happen. Betty then says “angry angry man”, because she has a pathological need to leap onto every bandwagon she sees passing by, even when there’s no one else on it and it’s on fire.

“I don’t like average food and tonight I’m not planning on serving it,” says Tyson, confirming that he plans to serve something extremely bad.

“Amy, Tyson, what are you guys cooking for the entree?” calls Betty, as per her contract. Disappointingly, Amy and Tyson do not scream that it’s none of her fucking business, instead saying boring things about steak and stew and dumb stuff like that. Amy informs Tyson that she would prefer it if the food they make is nice, rather than not-nice. Tyson, ever one to learn from his mistakes, agrees that nice food is the way to go.

Cyn can’t believe that Amy and Tyson are using a pressure cooker, after having used a pressure cooker in their failed beach challenge. “It is your enemy!” she quacks, having bowed to pressure from the producers to manufacture some kind of pressure-cooker curse, like the reverse of when someone on Masterchef claims to be “the dessert queen” before going on to burn ice cream.

Sadly, Tyson has no choice but to use a pressure cooker, as in a tragic romance a la the film Ladyhawke, he and the pressure cooker are in a passionate yet doomed relationship. During the day Tyson is human and his lover is a pressure cooker, while at night she is a woman and he is a wooden spoon. Only for an hour at dawn and dusk can they truly be together, during which time she makes him promise to fill her up with meat and make a stew.

Anyway, references to “angry angry man” and also “shut down man”, which is even less of a thing than angry angry man, abound. Caz and Damo are doing something as well, but honestly if you give the slightest shit about what Caz and Damo do, book yourself in to some kind of clinic.

Josh is having a giggle in a cutaway about wanting to provoke Tyson to anger, raising the tantalising possibility that in a future episode, Tyson might hack Josh to death with a spatula.

Caz is making a sriracha aioli, but so what?

Amy has decided to confit the egg yolk, the mad, romantic fool. Manu and Pete think this could be good, but on the other hand, they believe, maybe it won’t be. David believes confiting the egg yolk is a waste of time, and he knows a thing or two about wastes of time: he’s still trying to sleep with Betty.

The onions are getting to Caz, if that’s the kind of thing you want to know about.

Suddenly, drama almost breaks out: something is burning! Is it the pressure cooker? Has Tyson’s lady betrayed him? Yes she has. The meat is burnt. Everyone on the balcony pretends to be upset. We cut to an ad where Kelsey and Amanda threaten to keep making noises unless we all audition for My Kitchen Rules.

Then there’s an ad with David and Betty, for a car. David drives around while Betty says “hashtag” before words. The lesson is something along the lines of, “Want to be an obnoxious fuckhead like these two? Buy a Holden!”

Why do these people keep appearing on ads anyway? Can’t we at least wait for the end of the series to give them endorsement deals? I realise that on current pace that won’t be until 2023, but still. It’s pretty revealing that MKR contestants get signed to promote products that either have nothing to do with food, or are takeaway. Advertisers are united in the belief that associating any MKR participant with cooking would be poison to a brand.

Seeing the pressure cooker mishap, Josh gloats about Amy and Tyson being “one more team to knock off”: Josh has still not caught up with the news that he is terrible at making food and has not yet made anything good even once.

More references to angry angry man. These people have never even heard of Mean Girls.

Caitie and Demi are keen to try fish cakes as they’ve never had them before. This is literally the most entertaining observation that can be derived from Caz and Damo’s side of the competition.

With time running out, Amy breaks an egg. Goodness the action literally never stops.

Caz and Damo’s fish cakes are nearly ready. Stunning twist.

In the nick of time, the dishes are ready. Caz and Damo are hopeful that their simple uncomplicated good honest boring awful home cooking will overcome Tyson and Amy’s fancypants WTFery. “I hope they brought their A game though,” Damo lies.

Whatsherface blonde says the steak tartare is “lacking”, but she’s one to talk. Colin can’t believe that they didn’t taste the food before serving. Everyone else has an opinion too, what a frigging surprise. Seemingly the steak tartare does not taste good, and also, it is raw meat which is gross. Luckily, Caz and Damo have served fish cakes which are equally gross. Guy thinks the fish cakes need “a bit of oomph”, showing the precision and descriptive power that makes him such an in-demand judge. The fish cakes, like the steak tartare, lack seasoning, as do Caitie and Demi.

Josh is angry that the fish cakes don’t have enough fish in them, or possibly he’s just using that as an excuse to vent the anger he feels at his lifelong inability to open his mouth all the way.

As main preparation begins, Amy tells Tyson to not stuff anything up. He promises not to. It is a promise he is in no position to make. He begins making a carrot cake for dessert. Karen offers an opinion on carrot cake which nobody in the entire history of the universe could ever have been in need of. Meanwhile Tyson’s girlfriend continues her brutal mistreatment of the oxtail.

Caz and Damo are doing something with pears. Don’t really care what.

Della says she thinks Caz and Damo are doing a “lamb wheel”. I don’t know what this means and her explanation does absolutely nothing to clarify matters. Best to just move on.

Tyson cracks open his lover and finds that she has done his oxtail perfectly. He will shake her hand with particular affection this evening. But their beef isn’t great, and people start saying “angry angry man” again, Jesus Christ.

Oh great, Tim and Kyle advertising Hungry Jack’s. I agree with their assessment that eating at Hungry Jack’s will give you a better meal than eating at the home of any member of the MKR cast.

Amy and Tyson have decided to pretend that steak was never a part of their main course. By the end of the day they will be pretending that they have never aspired to be professional chefs, and that they are not related to each other.

Caz is frying off some kidneys or whatever.

Salt ’N’ Pepa’s “Push It” starts playing, and everyone on the balcony starts singing and dancing and every member of the crew who does not immediately act to assault the cast of the show is culpable in this atrocity.

It’s time for Tyson to start making the mash. It’s time for Amy to ask Tyson what he thinks of the stew. It’s time for Tyson to say it’s average. It’s time for Tyson to say average is his worst enemy. It’s time to ensure the stew is not average by pouring in several litres of fabric softener. But they don’t do that, sadly.

It’s time for Betty and David to stick their big fat irritating unfunny unwanted oar in.

Caz and Damo look depressed. Don’t know why, don’t care why.

The judges are impressed with Amy and Tyson’s stew. Blonde thingy wonders why they left the steak out. Pete tells her it’s tough. She thinks it was a good decision, not realising that Pete was talking about life in general. Colin says it is a “cheffy” dish, but he’s already drunk. Meanwhile the other contestants are their usual halfwitted bitchy selves.

The judges are less impressed with Caz and Damo’s lamb backstrap, and also they don’t like the dish very much. Ms Blonde says the hero is the parsnip puree, and you know that when the hero of your dish is the parsnip puree, you are in horrible horrible trouble.

I guess it’s dessert time, and everyone’s feet must be hurting. Damo says they’re not going to stop until the last second, as if he had any choice. As if there are heaps of teams that give up halfway through sudden death and just wander off into the woods, but Damo’s got more guts than that.

Amy describes her dessert. While she does so, for some reason we are forced to look at an extreme close-up of Mell and Cyn. Like, really extreme. Like, for a second it seems we’ve cut to Google Maps. Then suddenly Sinatra’s “Love and Marriage” starts playing for reasons that are as baffling as they are unpleasant. On the balcony they’re having a great time, because between courses they’ve all been huffing paint.

Tyson is making carrot foam, which is mainly for presentation, and texture, and to be a huge wanker. “Looking forward to that foam!” yells Betty, not saying “hashtag” but still sounding annoying. “Average is not gonna cut it,” says David, as he knows so well from his efforts to get Betty’s pants off.

Meanwhile Damo’s ice cream is failing and I am happy that he is sad.

Tyson’s carrot foam looks as disgusting as something called carrot foam might be expected to be. Meanwhile Amy has a saucepan of sugar and water for no reason. Tyson’s foam isn’t going foamy. He didn’t put enough vinegar and baking soda in. “I could get more foam out of a bubble bath,” says Josh with his paralysed jaws, but in fact if Josh tried to make a bubble bath he would probably end up with charred bubbles and water that smells like crab dung.

David says “angry angry man” again. David and Betty love saying this. They probably have a Tumblr of it.

Tyson refuses to give up on his foam, even though giving up on foam is a rational course of action in almost every situation one might face in one’s life. He puts the foam in a bigger bowl and it sort of works apparently: I can’t tell because Christ only knows what carrot foam should look like. Meanwhile Amy’s carrots are just average, which is appropriate: if you don’t want to eat something average, why would you even have carrots?

Elsewhere, Josh is sniggering like a big stupid lockjawed twat.

Damo is determined that he and Caz not go home because they are the only team from Tasmania, which is ironically the reason everyone else wants them to go home. “We’re not going home,” say Caz and Damo. I bet they’re going home.

Time is up, and everyone is clapping the mediocre desserts, while David tries to subtly cop a feel of Betty on the balcony. “Teams, you both showed a lot of spirit,” says Pete, deliberately avoiding any comment on their skills.

The judges taste the carrot cakey thingummajig. Blonde lady says she’s never had a dessert like this before — usually she has good desserts that taste nice. All the judges are agreed that the dish is a nice idea, but poorly executed, much like Tyson and Amy’s parents’ decision to have children.

Meanwhile the other contestants talk nonsensical bullcrap amongst themselves.

The judges taste Caz and Damo’s poached pears. Karen says they rushed it, and the pear is too firm — Karen has always understood the value of a nice firm pear. Colin says “that’s not an ice cream, it’s a disaster”; but you could say the same about Colin’s haircut.

An ad for New Idea promises “the shocking truth about Josh”. My bet is it turns out he is a moron.

Judging time. “We’re not ready to go yet,” says Caz. “I don’t want our journey in this competition to end,” says Amy. So, two opposing viewpoints then.

“Stressful watching both teams cook tonight,” says Pete, who really suffered knowing how disgusting his dinner was going to be. The judges explain to Caz and Damo how it’s awesome how they did their best, but their best isn’t good enough and they are basically food-illiterates. Then they explain to Tyson and Amy how their cooking is average, and for the eight millionth time tonight Tyson bangs on about how much he hates averageness. Anyone who truly hated averageness would have the guts to deliberately ruin everything. Karen says she admires Tyson and Amy’s adventurousness and it’s all Tyson can do not to spit at her and yell, “Who are you to question me, WOMAN?”

The upshot is that Tyson and Amy are average but Caz and Damo are actually incompetent, and also very bland and uninteresting as human beings. So they go back to Tasmania to try to learn how to turn an oven on. “If we have to be eliminated, at least it was to the highest-ever scoring team,” says Damo, glossing over the fact that they lost to the highest-ever scoring team on a night when the highest-ever scoring team was basically rubbish.

Tune in tomorrow, when Josh steals a car or something.

Show your love by coming along and seeing the best show at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival: Degrassi Junior High — the Dining Experience. At Trades Hall from March 30. Tickets here.