My Kitchen Rules Recap: The Pale Rider Whose Name Is Death

Previously, on My Kitchen Rules, the voiceover guy suffered severe gastric distress. Also, Roula and Rachael told Colin that he was full of shit, which he is, but not compared to them. Then Dan and Gemma proved again that they are bad at this. And so, Roula and Rachael will face off against Dan and Gemma in Elimination House, the ancient edifice haunted by the ghosts of all Pete’s victims.

Rachael tells Roula that they need to show Colin how seriously they’re taking the competition, which will be difficult because everything Rachael says sounds like Barbie Girl. “It’s not our time to leave yet,” says Rachael, and she’s right: their time to leave was weeks ago. “It can only get better,” says Roula, an admission that they have been as bad as anyone can possibly be up till now.

Meanwhile Gemma’s eye is twitching under the pressure of cooking in Elimination House and spending so much time with Dan.

“Our energy is just gonna be contagious in this kitchen,” says Rachael, which doesn’t seem to mean anything. Who’s going to catch their energy? Colin?

For entree, Dan and Gemma are serving samosa. “Hopefully it comes out the same as it does at home,” says Dan, still believing that what he makes at home is acceptable to serve to strangers. “After the challenge, I never want to see another potato as long as I live,” says Gemma, which Dan takes as a comment on the ingredients, rather than what it is: a direct dig at his head.

Roula and Rachael are cooking Italian dishes that Rachael learnt from her grandmother, but she can’t be that Italian because she doesn’t call her nonna. The two women discuss how negative Dan and Gemma’s vibe is, but everyone’s vibe is negative when Roula and Rachael are around: the only people who can be positive in the presence of Roula and Rachael are Roula and Rachael.

In Dan and Gemma’s kitchen, Colin informs them that the judges like spice, so maybe they should put some spice in their samosas. Dan had already said they were putting spice in their samosas, but Colin, not without some justification, assumes every contestant on MKR is a moron.

The guests arrive. Jazzey informs us that sudden death is “heckers”. OK. G

Group Two is fairly confident that Dan and Gemma are better than Roula and Rachael, despite the fact that Dan and Gemma are clearly dreadful at cooking. Jess and Emma want Roula and Rachael to win, despite the fact that Roula and Rachael are clearly dreadful at being people. Also, Kim is absent, so Suong has to eat twice as much. This isn’t important, but just in case you cared.

Roula is washing her potatoes, and explaining that she’s washing her potatoes. They are boiling potatoes for their gnocchi, because that’s the way Rachael’s non-nonna does it. But if she was so great, how did Rachael end up the way she did?

Dan wants to show everyone authentic Indian food, as illustrated by the bad Indian music on the soundtrack. India may have to take diplomatic action.

Meanwhile Colin visits Roula and Rachael, which even he doesn’t deserve. He asks why they’re boiling their potatoes. Rachael explains that her grandma boils her potatoes. Colin explains that he bakes his potatoes. Rachael explains that she doesn’t give a shit. Colin explains that whatever, bitch, he doesn’t even have to be here.

“Less than an hour!” says Rachael. “Less than an hour?” says Roula. Consensus is reached: there is less than an hour. Rachael declares that their intention is to prove that they are a threat in this competition, a task quite, quite beyond them tonight.

The guests look at the menus. Sonya is sure, based on the menus, that Dan and Gemma will be safe, because they are prone to the weird delusion that takes hold of MKR contestants, that your ability to write down the names of delicious foods is an indicator of your ability to make delicious foods.

Rachael is preparing dessert, but worse than that, she’s talking while she does it, and less than half an hour into an episode, Rachael’s voice has already far outstayed its welcome. Meanwhile Roula believes that they will win because their food has “sass” in it. So even though her voice isn’t as inherently annoying as Rachael’s, she’s doing her best to keep up.

In the dining room, Hadil is excited about a samosa. But Emma doesn’t do well with spice. Who is right? Jazzey is staring at Henry and dampening up her seat, while leaning forward so far Henry is almost involuntarily motorboating her.

In the kitchen, Rachael reveals that the arancini balls are her mum’s recipe. Her MUM’S? What about her frigging grandma? This has been a sham. Roula and Rachael start making balls. Roula says it just like this: “we start making BALLS!” She thinks she’s hilarious. Rachael has been making arancini balls all her life, according to her, so that explains why she had no time to develop a proper personality.

Meanwhile Gemma wants to put something on the plate, but Dan is insistent that the most important thing is to make sure all the flavours are right, rather than actually give the guests anything to eat.

With fifteen minutes to go, Colin tells the teams that it’s time to think about plating. Roula makes the fatal mistake of not thinking about it, but doing it instead. Meanwhile Dan makes some stupid cricket reference like a stupid person.

“We don’t wanna get knocked out before the grand final,” says Gemma. Oh Gemma. You’re so cute. You’re not going to get anywhere near the grand final.

Then we have to see Roula and Rachael rapping, and it only lasts a couple of seconds but it’s like having your head pulled in half by horses.

Entree is served. Josh has an orgasm over the arancini, but mainly because he gets to say it in an exaggerated Italian accent, and saying things in exaggerated Italian accents is 90 percent of his personality.

Jazzey says that it’s bizarre that “all of Group One is frothin’ Roula and Rachael’s entree, and all of Group Two is frothin’ Dan and Gemma’s entree”. But what’s really bizarre is her use of the word “frothin’”. Is frothin’ like heckers?

Colin visits Dan and Gemma to tell them they impressed him at the end of the preparation of entree. He then tells them that making chicken tikka masala is a pretty shit idea, but they don’t care, as they don’t understand his accent. Then Gemma makes a cricket reference and it’s dumb.

Apparently Rachael has made gnocchi a million times before, which is probably a lie, and even if it isn’t the gnocchi she made was probably shit. There is tension between Roula and Rachael, because Roula wants Rachael to hurry, but Rachael just wants to get drunk and dance on tables.

Dan wishes he was back home making curry for family and friends, because his family and friends lie to him and tell him he’s good at making curry. Meanwhile Gemma is shoving naan into the wood oven, which is way above her pay grade.

Rachael keeps banging on about her grandma. I don’t remember ever hearing about this grandma before. It’s extremely suspicious. I don’t think she ever had a grandma.

Meanwhile Gemma is freaking out and swearing about the oven. Dan wants her to calm down. Gemma wants Dan to divorce her sister. I mean she doesn’t say that out loud, but you can tell.

In the dining room Davide is explaining how to make gnocchi. Josh is seething with rage at the audacity of someone besides himself talking about Italian food. Jess and Emma speculate on what it would be like to be Davide’s girlfriend, and agree it would be terrible because he likes his mother’s cooking. “You’re not the only who has a mother,” says Jess, revealing some kind of deepseated insecurity.

Meanwhile Gemma, having burnt the naan in the wood oven, has also burnt the naan in the normal oven.

Roula is losing patience with Rachael, who is struggling to comprehend the concept of linear time. Rachael is pulling enormous lumps of tomato out of her undercooked sauce because she didn’t realise she would have to serve the gnocchi, like, today. Meanwhile Dan and Gemma can’t cook rice, so their curry won’t have any rice in it. It’s a big day for losers.

Dan is very worried about his curry. He doesn’t know whether any of it is any good, because he knows nothing about food and finds it impossible to judge whether anything is good or not. Roula and Rachael’s tomato sauce looks awful. Marco takes a bite, and finds that this is because it actually is awful. Valeria declares Roula and Rachael’s main disgusting, and Jess and Emma give her an evil look, because they are weirdly loyal to Roula and Rachael. Matt loves Dan and Gemma’s curry, but Emma is whining about the bread and Jess decides it’s a good time to tell the table about her toilet habits. Olga and Valeria find this tacky. “It’s just chip,” says Valeria. And it is. It’s incredibly chip.

Dessert time, and Gemma says the crack of the surface of a creme brulee is exactly like the crack of leather on willow, because Gemma made a vow many years ago that nobody would ever find her likeable.

Colin comes to Roula and Rachael’s kitchen to drop a hint that their dessert is garbage. They giggle jauntily at his Irish anti-humour.

“I’m a plumber, and I love to cook. People say tradies, they won’t be able to cook!” says Dan, describing the true and accurate things that people say.

Meanwhile Roula and Rachael have made bowls of dirt. It might be chocolate. It might not. I guess the tasting will reveal. Colin is yelling at the teams that it might be their last cook. “We don’t like to hear anything negative,” says Gemma, in which case they’ve definitely picked the wrong show to try out for.

Anna says Roula and Rachael have made a pot plant. Olga says their dessert looks like Chernobyl, and there is zero chance she was not instructed to say this by producers, who have no knowledge of anything that has happened in Russia after 1987.

The creme brulee is runny and the chocolate dirt-mousse is dense, but members of the same teams as the cooks think they’re ace. So it’s all a bit of a farce.

It is time for scoring, after the voiceover man has another aneurysm.

Davide and Marco and Emily and Alex get to give double scores, because of the stupid People’s Choice thing they’re doing. They vote along team lines except for Emily, who bizarrely seems to think this is a cooking competition.

Pete gives a speech about how amazing it is to have lots of people in a room together, and then the judges score. They give Dan and Gemma’s crappy entree fours, their less crappy main eights — and then Dan and Gemma make some more irritating cricket references like the dickheads they are — and their not-very-crappy dessert eights. The guests gave them 95, which makes their total score 135.

Time to judge Roula and Rachael, which I’ve been doing since day one. Pete says their arancini was great, but the mayo was bad. Roula and Rachael say that actually the mayo was great. They are incorrect. They get sixes for their entree. For their disgusting main, they get a three and a four. For their filthy dessert, they get twos. LOL. From the guests they only got 71, so they finish with 94 and are humiliated just as we’d all hoped they would be. It is hilarious. Let’s celebrate this happiest of all MKR evenings.

Rachael finishes by telling the room that she has learnt that she is not very nice. Roula finishes by having some kind of seizure. Then we have to listen to flashbacks of them rapping, and it seems that elimination is not punishment enough for these “people”.

Tune in tomorrow when everyone goes to Costco or something.

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