‘MasterChef’ season 5, episode 7 preview: When rivals become … allies?

Usually on “MasterChef,” the show follows a standard pattern where you have  a Mystery Box Challenge, and Elimination Challenge, and then something that forces the home cooks to get out in the field and create some mass amount of food for a group of people.

Personally, we could care less if the latter goes away, since there isn’t really creativity in it so much as there just is drive and determination. This is why we are kind of glad that Monday night’s episode will focus instead on the remaining cooks having to work once again in the kitchen, but on a very different sort of challenge than usual. They will have to cook a great dish while as a member of a team … but the team is only consisting of two people, and your partner is someone you have clashed with during the competition. Rivals must become allies! This is at least true for the day.

The thought of having to see Leslie and Ahran actually work together on something is gold to us, given that they may hate each other more than anyone else in the entire kitchen. But are they the worst cooks on the day? That honor may instead go to Cutter, given that his team has their food infamously dumped in the garbage. This is at least the impression the promo gives, but we have seen this show enough over the years to also know that things can be very misleading. You may think a challenge is going to go down one way, only for it to twist and turn to being something entirely different in the end.