My Kitchen Rules Recap: Surely You Can’t Be Serious

Ben Pobjie
7 min readFeb 24, 2019

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Beauty queens Veronica and Piper are almost exactly as obnoxious as you’d expect beauty queens to be. Slightly more, because they’re actually former beauty queens who still refer to themselves as beauty queens. Veronica was Mrs Australia 2012, while Piper was Mrs Australia 2015 and also played Elaine Dickinson in the hit comedy Airplane!

Veronica and Piper’s target is 130 points, a score that nobody has ever gotten and that nobody ever will because fucking duh. They have given every guest a personalised sash at their instant restaurant, a move that, were I to be judging them, would lose them five points immediately.

As they drive to the shops, Piper refers to the team as “busy mums, businesswomen” — are they not beauty queens. “Obviously being pageant queens, we have a lot of experience under pressure,” she adds, like the worst person you’ve ever known. “We want to showcase Veronica and Piper and who we are,” she says, which is weird, because earlier they said they wanted a high score.

Piper says explicitly that they want the best, but nevertheless they go to Coles to buy ingredients. Arriving home, they put on boring dresses and begin slobbering all over each other regarding their multi-tasking skills. Piper reveals that she and Veronica are “insperatable”, a special word that beauty queens use.

Veronica grew up eating potato croquettes, while Piper grew up eating cod croquettes. Their friendship really is a Milo And Otis kind of story. Never have two women come from such different backgrounds only to find they look almost identical to each other.

There is now some cooking footage of no interest to anyone. But Piper makes it clear that she absolutely loves their entree. We’re not halfway through the episode and yet it’s difficult to recall a time in our lives when Piper wasn’t talking.

The guests arrive, dressed up to the nines in a revolting display of the decadence of late capitalism. Everyone has to hug and kiss Veronica and Piper, which is a hell of a price to pay to get on TV. Bianca’s sash reads “Miss Troubles”, because apparently the beauty queens believe that insulting their guests is the best way to get perfect scores. Lyn attempts to Lynsplain to Bianca that actually it’s a positive thing to be called Miss Troubles. Bianca is not convinced, either that it’s a positive thing or that Lyn isn’t a dickhead.

Lisa’s sash says “Miss Mum”, which she objects to. “I’m more than a mum,” she protests, sitting in front of an onscreen caption describing her and John as “Mother and Son”. She asks John how he would like being described as “Mr Son”, which isn’t a good move because John has made it clear from the start that being Lisa’s son is his only ambition in life.

Pete and Manu arrive, the intensifying ennui of their existence showing painfully on their faces. They put on the crowns that Veronica and Piper have placed on the table for them to emphasise the night’s theme: tacky shit you get at the Reject Shop.

We learn that sauce gribiche is kind of like a tartare sauce, only more pretentious. To prepare it, you put a bunch of crap in a blender, pour in some oil, and talk non-stop for half an hour in an irritating American accent.

The guests discuss the menu. “I think this menu is smart,” says John, who has been outsmarted by menus more times than he can count. “Smoked cod croquette — that’s how you get little kids to eat fish,” quips Karolina, who apparently grew up somewhere where getting little kids to eat fish was very important.

Entree is served. It is two small wads on a bed of gunk. It looks kind of like chicken nuggets in a pool of phlegm. But actually they’re made of fish. “Was it the perfect entree?” asks Pete, even though he of all people should know. We have an ad break so we can fully digest the question.

Apparently it was not the perfect entree. “It was a good dish but I wanted more,” Pete says, furious at the nugget shortage in his life. Manu is upset that he was not slapped in the face by the smokiness of the cod. Bottom line: they’re not getting 130. Bianca is quite pleased.

Before going back to the kitchen, Veronica and Piper are forced to listen to Pete subtly imply that the dish they’ve chosen to cook is stupid.

The guests eat their entree. “These are definitely crispy croquettes,” says Mr Son. “Mm,” agrees Miss Mum. “I really liked the croquette,” says Lyn, who just never shuts up. Anne didn’t get a lot of flavour, but to be fair she didn’t deserve much. Mr Son points out that as every dish needs to be perfect to get a perfect score, Veronica and Piper have already failed. Everyone agrees, delighted to think of the sadness of their enemies.

In the kitchen, Piper lets us in on the secret of good quinoa salad: it needs to be cooked well. With those sorts of tactics they’re going to blow the table away.

Meanwhile in the dining room, Bianca talks some heavy-duty smack about Veronica and Piper, and so she should. They talked smack about her, after all, and in much more aggravating voices. Karolina joins in by denouncing the decision to put tzatziki in their dish. The tzatziki is already very unpopular with the dining room.

In the kitchen, Veronica and Piper are cooking their steaks, which are different sizes, at different times, to make sure that they are all cooked differently and some of them are cold, which is the classy way to serve steak.

In the dining room, Manu demands to know why Bianca is such a negative Nancy all the time. Bianca tells him that the fact she hates all kinds of food doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love food. Manu is sick of Bianca and Bianca is sick of Manu. We are sick of everyone.

In the kitchen some of the steaks are medium rare and some are medium. Piper has no idea why they ended up this way because she hasn’t been watching the show. They cook some more steaks in an effort to make everyone’s main medium rare. The previously cooked steak is still cooking because it’s still warm, but happily soon it will stop cooking and just be cold steak which everyone loves.

The steak is old and dull, but at least the sauce looks like vomit. They have somehow managed to cook a main course that is simultaneously boring and weird. “I think we’re in big trouble here,” says Piper, just like when she lost bladder control during Mrs Australia 2017.

“I can taste the dish with my eyes,” says Victor, “it’s a hot mess.” He’s wrong there — it’s not actually hot at all.

“Veronica and Piper, were you proud of getting out of the kitchen with this in your hands?” asks Manu, leaving the words, “because this is some utter bullshit” hanging in the air unspoken. He explains that there is nothing wrong with the dish except that each individual element is terrible. Pete agrees, making a weird noise with his teeth to indicate disapproval in his people’s language.

“We’re feeling a little deflated,” says Piper, and you can tell by looking at her neckline. “But the best is yet to come.” She’s right — soon we’ll hear the scores.

On the upside, Lyn and Bianca liked the carrots.

Dessert is poached pear with zabaglione — Italian for “thing you put a poached pear on top of”. It’s made by whipping custard or something.

In the dining room Lyn says that she expected Veronica and Piper to make great food for no reason, and that she now expects Millie and Karolina to make great food for even less reason. Karolina promises that she and Millie will make great food with their unbeatable combination of loudness and simmering resentment.

In the kitchen they’re whisking some more or something. “This is actually getting thicker,” says Piper, describing god knows what. It’s water with tea in it, or eggs, or…syrup? No idea what’s going on. There’s some creamy stuff and some pears and that’s it I think. Also some crumbs and/or dirt.

Dessert is served, such as it is. “You’ve confused me once again ladies,” says Pete, who is to be fair very easily confused. Dessert was simpler than he expected, but it tastes nice, which some experts believe to be one of the more important aspects of cooking.

Victor loved the pear — “there was just the right amount of resistance there for me”, he says: he likes his dessert to put up a fight but not for too long. He wants an opponent he can respect.

Time for scores. Everyone was very disappointed with the main course, and they take extra points off for Veronica and Piper being awful people. They get 29 out of 70, which is bloody hilarious. Piper claims they have been stabbed n the back, but actually they’ve been stabbed in the front. If you could bottle the looks on these idiots’ faces you’d have quite the taste sensation.

It gets even better when Pete and Manu give them twos for their main course. Oh, nothing to say, Piper? For the first fucking time in your life. In total they get 64, which means they’re on the bottom and will definitely be in the elimination cook-off. And yet again we learn just how good TV can be when unlikeable people are sad.

LINKS! You want ’em, I got ’em. If you’d like to buy my books, here you go. If you would care to support my recapping and other projects via Patreon, here you go. And finally, why not come to my new show in the Melbourne Comedy Festival? Here you go.

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Ben Pobjie
Ben Pobjie

Written by Ben Pobjie

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