Gordon Ramsey has outraged fans once again with another apparently rigged and unfair result in the MasterChef Season 6 Finale. Last night’s MasterChef Season 6 finale was so obviously rigged to hand the win to single mom Claudia Sandoval that it was barely watchable. Why bother touting the show as a competition when the judges are pushing results to hand the “win” to the home cook they’ve decided will make the show appear in the best light.
Claudia is an ethnic minority and a single mom so she’s a sympathetic figure apparently, but that’s not what the COOKING show is supposed to be about. Claadia is a natural sob story today, not because she is Mexican but because she’s poor and raising a kid on her own. If Claudia didn’t win we are led to the suggestion that her kid might not eat.
MasterChef purports itself to be a cooking “competition” to single out the best home cook. Yet Claudia has consistently shown herself to be capable of only achieving singular results when she is cooking her native cuisine. That’s not a MasterChef – that a master chef only of one particular cuisine.
And don’t get me wrong, Mexican food is equal to any cuisine but clearly it should have been Stephen Lee competing against Derrick Peltz facing off in the finale. Claudia screwed up her pressure test – her fries were limp and she f-d up her panna cotta. But Gordon Ramsey and his cronies Graham and Christina had already decided to push Claudia, the single mom, into the finale and hand her the win.
That’s clear. In the finale cook off, Claudia went with Mexican food yet again. The judges are always saying to get out of your comfort zone, be creative, don’t play it safe. And that’s exactly what she did NOT do when she served up a tamale, salsa verde and typical ingredients and recipes she’s fallen back on all season. Did the judges not see the pastry cage that Derrick constructed around his venison?
Derrick served up a top-restaurant quality meal that was beautiful to look at and, according to the judges, delicious. Then to justify their ridiculous decision to rob Derrick of his obvious win and hand it to Claudia instead, they yammered on about how a MasterChef can cook beautifully with basic ingredients. Sure, yeah. But you go to the upscale restaurant for the pastry cage.
And this is not the first time Ramsey and his culinary cohorts have apparently rigged MasterChef results. What about the “blind” cook Christine Ha. Sure she’s impressive for someone who has limited vision (mind you, she’s legally blind not 100% blind). I empathize with her vision issues as the wearer of thick spectacles myself, but the result should not be “the best blind cook” but the best cook.
Yes her cooking is amazing, but the caveat is that it’s amazing for someone with vision problems. There are many cooking techniques that Christine can’t use because of her visual impairment. But she was the clear pre-selected winner from the outset of the season because Ramsey, et al knew she would tug heartstrings as a single mom and her cookbook would sell well making tons of money.
And last season’s winner? Ha! Courtney Lapresi is rumored to have been ‘very close’ with head judge Gordon Ramsey and the exotic dancer took the trophy for her physical and sexual appeal, not her cooking ability. We wrote about this last year and did an episode by episode breakdown of the blatant favoritism to rig the results in favor of the stripper-heel wearing home cook.
I’m not certain why I bothered to watch another season of MasterChef knowing that Ramsey and company do not judge fairly, but I did. Shame on me. And it’s not just the US version of MasterChef that’s wonky. The UK and Australian iterations of the cooking program have been accused of editing that favors certain contestants and drives results on criteria other than culinary qualities.
The final word is that to win MasterChef, you apparently either need an epic sob story (not to lessen the struggles of the women mentioned above, but your rough life should not garner you a win on a cooking show) or need to be eye candy of the flavor that appeals to the allegedly fidelity-challenged Gordon Ramsey. The main thing that seems to be cooking in the MasterChef kitchen is a big fat serving of bias.
