‘MasterChef’ season 5, episode 3 review: Listen to Leslie … sometimes

If we were one of the contestants on “MasterChef” this season watching at home, there would be a number of times where we would want to growl and/or shake our first at the TV while watching Monday night’s new episode.

We imagine that Leslie was probably not an easy person to work with most of the time, given that he is extremely opinionated, and there are many times in which he has come across as abrasive. However, he was right on two separate occasions during this military-themed challenge: He told his team to not cook chicken (a smart move), and then he also told them to make sure they were not undercooked. Yet, even with all of this being said, this team had no business losing this challenge. As a matter of fact, we’d be annoyed if we were them. The editing throughout this made it obvious that the Red Team won, despite not even serving all of the soldiers their pork chops because with time. (Is it too late to propose a new rule saying that every person needs to be served?)

Daniel on the Blue Team was the much more capable Team Captain, and yet we spent the entire second half of the episode worry about his fate. The video  game designer got his blueberry pie in the pressure test in so much later than everyone else, and it looked like he would be going home to the enjoyment of Leslie, who proved here why so many people wanted him out when he wanted revenge for not being declared safe.

Jaimee clearly had one of the best pies of the entire group, which makes plenty of sense given that she has a freakin’ blueberry pie tattooed on her neck. Meanwhile, Elise claims to be a master of baking, yet she has failed with pies a number of times already this season. Stefani also bombed making a blueberry pie with pecans in the crust, while Daniel managed to barely squeak by and make it to another week.

Who was eliminated between Elise and Stefani? The latter was surprisingly sent home to us, and the reason we say “surprisingly” is because pies are supposedly what Elise does well. The good news for her is that this is not really taken into consideration so much as just the overall quality of the dish at the time.

Overall, at least the ending of this episode managed to surpass what we saw in the early going, and we were mostly entertained as a result. Grade: B-.

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