My Kitchen Rules Recap: The Shame Of A Nation

Previously on My Kitchen Rules: the gang assembled in Perth to tell the fuckhead brothers that they are fuckheads while Amanda and Blake proved themselves skilled chefs and dull people.

Tonight on My Kitchen Rules: stupid costumes.

We begin by hearing again from Karito and Ian that they are “just like Modern Family”, which is vastly overstating their entertainment value. Also Karito is one of those people who has a dead grandma and flat-out refuses to stop talking about her. Ian, on the other hand, has no ancestors at all, having budded spontaneously from a cactus.

The teams read their menus. None of them understand anything the menus say. “What is this…br…eee…aaa….d?” they stammer, frowning.

Karito is cooking Colombian food because she is from Colombia, while Ian makes a Peruvian dessert because Peru is a place he has heard of. Colombia and Peru, incidentally, are two more countries where everyone is obsessed with food and cooking, just like every other country that any cooking show contestant has ever come from. Where are the countries that aren’t obsessed with food and cooking? I guess Australia is one, which is why we only get the very worst cooks from other countries coming here to enter our cooking shows.

Let us pass graciously without comment over the producers’ choice of music to accompany Colombian food.

Karito informs us that Colombia is a very colourful country, so they’ve decided to make their instant restaurant as tacky and garish as possible. Meanwhile Josh notes that “Karito and Ian…one of them is Colombian and one of them is pretend Colombian”, so god knows what the little shit is going on about there.

Sadly, Ian has chosen to make a dessert that Andy and Ruby are familiar with, which is a huge blunder, because Andy and Ruby are total dicks about food they’re not familiar with: they’re going to hit new heights of shitheadosity with this. The dessert is called Suspiro Limo, after the Dario Argento movie in which it first starred.

“We’re gonna show Australia the flavour of Colombia,” Karito says, incorrectly: Australia only gets to see their food on TV, we don’t get to taste it.

“It is so important I do not stuff up tonight,” says Ian, because just look at this couple: she has ample reason to dump him already.

The guests arrive. “Tonight we want to be taken back home,” says Andy, but unfortunately before they catch their plane they have to go to Karito and Ian’s house and eat this awful food.

“We’ve never had traditional Colombian food,” says Amanda, shocking us all. Overhead, thunder rumbles in the sky, which could be a bad omen — but is actually just weather.

Everyone entering the instant restaurant is forced to put on a weird hat and a weird scarf, as Ian greets them with the news that he can’t pronounce the instant restaurant’s name. Back in the kitchen, Ian needs to deal with the burnt milk. “I did everything correctly but I used the wrong pot,” says Ian, which is a funny way of saying, “I fucked up royally.” Karito subtly hints that Ian might want to kill himself, but instead he drives to the shops to buy some more milk to burn.

Back in the dining room, the whole competition is rocked by the revelation that this episode will also run two whole hours. Strong men break down and cry across Australia at the news.

I mean, two hours! Believe me, guys, when your crew returns from each instant restaurant, the footage they bring with them definitively does not constitute a two-hour program. Even with the 90 minutes of ads that are in each instalment.

Meanwhile at the shops Ian is running around like the obedient little bitch he is. Back at the instant restaurant, Blake has removed his stupid Colombian hat and put his normal stupid hat back on. Ian returns to the kitchen to find his wife signing divorce papers.

“I’m feeling good babe,” says Karito, but it’s weird because it’s the sort of voice in which someone would normally say, “I feel like shit and it’s your fault you stupid fuckface.” Weird.

Speaking of fuckfaces, Austin is saying that he thinks all the other teams are intimidated by him and Josh. This is what they teach in homeschooling: every time you act like a total cunt and people tell you you’re acting like a total cunt, it’s because they’re intimidated. It’s a bit sad, really: Josh and Austin couldn’t help that their parents are escaped Nazi war criminals.

Anyway, back to the show…

In the kitchen Karito is working on the filling for the entree, which is a bit dull, isn’t it. It’s very bizarre that you would make a show about obnoxious pricks shouting at each other at a table, and then throw in all these random shots of sweaty people cooking for no apparent reason.

Oh yeah, the judges. I forgot they existed. They’re here now.

Karito tells the judges what the menu contains. She tries to get Ian to say some of it, but Ian hasn’t got a fucking clue what’s going on so he refuses to talk. They return to the kitchen and Karito lets Ian mash some potatoes because she thinks there’s relatively little chance of him destroying all of her hopes and dreams while doing so.

Andy and Ruby tell the rest of the table all about the dishes for the night and how knowledgeable they are. “It sounds like a pizza pocket,” says Josh, who hasn’t been listening but was told to say that by his team in the remote van who feed him lines to make sure he never stops sounding like scum.

Manu visits the kitchen and accuses Karito of being unsanitary. Karito mocks his concern for health and safety. Manu walks out to vomit.

Back in the dining room, the guests have a good laugh at the rapid deterioration of Ian and Karito’s marriage, before Andy and Ruby tell everyone again how they know everything about Colombian food which is nowhere near as good as Peruvian food, which Andy and Ruby invented several years ago. They say that Peru has won “six years in a row”, but I’m not sure what it’s won. The Best Food Country Medal, I guess?

In the kitchen, Ian is placing leaves on plates, a task almost within his abilities. Karito is feeling extremely stressed because entree has to be perfect, as she’s counting on the prizemoney from the show to finance her new life away from Ian.

In the dining room everyone is discussing what celebrities they look like. Josh asks Romel if he wants to know who Josh thinks he looks like. Romel says no, on the principle that nobody ever wants to know what Josh thinks about anything, but Josh goes ahead anyway and says that Romel looks like Randall from Monsters Inc, proving once again that Josh is a prick and also that he’s never seen Monsters Inc.

After several weeks of preparation, Karito and Ian have finished their entree. it’s called Papa Rellana, which is Spanish for “huge balls that are too much for an entree”.

Karito is excited because it’s the first Colombian dish on My Kitchen Rules, which is a wonderful opportunity for her to shame herself, her family and her country. Pete and Manu shove the balls through their faces. “You can tell by the look on Pete’s face that something’s gone wrong,” says Andy, but you never know: Pete’s face always looks like something’s gone wrong.

Manu tells them there was too much potato in the balls. Karito tries to make excuses, refusing to take responsibility for Colombia’s failings as a nation. “I feel like you’re teasing me,” says Pete, referring to either the entree or Karito’s cleavage. He questions why they gave him three balls instead of one. Karito says she thought it would look better. “Forget presentation,” says Pete, which is an absolute trap because anyone who forgets presentation will be abused by the judges for it. There is no way out of Pete and Manu’s vicious passive-aggressive games.

The guests eat the balls. The old guy whose name nobody remembers says it’s crunchy. Romel says it reminds him of something he’d eat at 3am after drinking all night, which is the only time he ever eats. The blonde lady whose name nobody remembers either says she can see the character of Karito in the dish, because Karito is also bland and has too much starch. “Deep-fried potato and meat is like a cheeseburger, you know?” says Ibby, but no, nobody knows.

In the kitchen Ian and Karito are cooking, so who cares, really. “When you’re cooking a Colombian beef stew, you need the beef to melt into your mouth,’ says Karito, but surely this is wrong? You need the beef to melt into your mouth when you’re EATING a Colombian beef stew: if it melts into your mouth when you’re cooking it you’ll have nothing to serve.

In the dining room the lady with the dumb hair says her mother used to make stew with Vegemite, because she grew up in the house from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Andy says that Colombian beef stew needs lots of flavour and rice and also to be Peruvian which has won six years in a row. Austin opens his stupid greasy-haired mouth to say that not everything your grandma makes is good, but that’s just because his grandma was the kind of mental defective who would raise a child to homeschool her grandchildren.

In the kitchen, Karito has made the terrible mistake of giving Ian the incredibly simple job of cooking rice, and he’s pulled a real Ian on it. He forgot to put salt in it: it’s understandable that Ian would forget one step out of the almost four that he had to remember. Next Ian is giving the job of squashing plantains, which causes him to make a noise like he’s passing a kidney stone.

In the dining room Manu tells Amanda what a plantain is in a manner suggestive of a man asking for a blow job. To break the tension, Ibby decides to do something that can be repeated endlessly on promos. He and Romel whisper for a while, debating whether Ibby should reveal the extremely boring secret that we all already know. Romel already basically let the cat out of the bag on the first night, but he covered it up. Or rather, he thinks he covered it up, but actually it was incredibly obvious.

Romel thinks Ibby should keep his damn mouth shut. Ibby can’t let such a terrible uninteresting secret weigh on his conscience. He gets everyone’s attention and confesses that although he is, as he said, a nurse, he no longer practises, and now owns a chain of restaurants. This news shocks everyone, especially the soundtrack editor, who puts some frankly hysterical music on.

Ibby’s secret excites Austin so much he has his first ever erection. “I KNEW IT!” he squawks, greasily. “I knew Ibby was hiding something”. Yeah, beautifully deduced, Lestrade. “Australia wants honesty,” Austin says loftily, but he is mistaken. Australia does not want honesty, Australia wants car batteries hooked up to the testicles of creepy homeschooled Christian serial killers.

Some at the table think that Ibby has a huge advantage because of his restaurants, even though as manager he doesn’t actually cook, and for all they know his restaurants are shithouse anyway. Everyone feels extremely betrayed by the revelation because they’ve been desperate to feel anything at all for some time now.

Meanwhile in the kitchen Karito is crying because her grandmother is dead. Deja vu.

Austin tells us that he has always felt that Ibby was a boring person, but now he feels that Ibby is boring “and a snake”. Austin is one of the most insufferable cocks Australian TV has ever seen, and proves it by asking Manu whether restaurant managers have much to do in the kitchen. Manu says no, but would clearly rather be somewhere else, as has been the case since Season 3. “I’m about eleven out of ten on the fuck-off scale,” says Josh, which is true but not the way he means it.

Suddenly, against all expectations, the main course is served. And it only took four or five days.

Pete says the beef was cooked beautifully but objects to the flavourless dishwater it was cooked in, the bland plantains, and Ian’s general personality. The weird hair woman is crushed, as she had put a huge bet on Karito and Ian at Sportsbet. Manu is disappointed as his expectations were high, because between every MKR season Manu’s memory is erased so his expectations remain completely unaligned with reality.

Sadly, the truth must now be faced: Karito’s grandmother was a terrible cook. This is confirmed by Andy, who bitches really hard about grandma, essentially spitting on her grave.

There now follows an unbelievably tedious conversation about the way Peruvian women sigh.

Dessert, of course, has been prepared by Ian, so there’s a 90–95% chance it will literally kill someone. Karito and Ian take the dessert out of the freezer and find it is liquid and therefore no good for anyone. Luckily, Andy and Ruby have barged into the kitchen to gloat, and their gleeful advice is much-appreciated: even more so when they return to the dining room to tell everyone how badly Ian fucked up. “Is she crying?” asks Josh, licking his lips with erotic delight at the thought of a woman’s suffering.

The table is clearly divided into two camps: Andy and Ruby and Josh and Austin, who have orgasms whenever anyone else is unhappy; and the rest, who are something approximating human beings.

Karito and Ian serve their gross runny dessert. It’s gross and runny. Manu says it’s gross and runny. Pete gives his considered opinion that it is gross and runny. The guests agree that it is gross and runny. The only thing grosser and runnier than the dessert is Andy and Ruby’s underpants after seeing how badly Karito and Ian have cooked.

It’s time for the scores. They’re pretty bad, and Josh and Austin make sure they act like fucksticks while giving theirs. From the guests they get 20 out of 70 which mathematically speaking can be defined as “low”. The judges give them 18 out of 60, which gives them a total of fuck-all. They are on the bottom of the leaderboard, and their only chance of survival lies in Seven’s desperation to pad this interminable show out as much as possible.

Tune in next time, when Karito and Ian are further humiliated by the competence of their competitors.

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