‘MasterChef’ season 7, episode 4 review: The agony of the Team Challenge

We have long said that the Team Challenges on “MasterChef” are probably the least entertaining thing that the show routinely does. Most of these, after all, do tend to follow a pattern: The two teams face off, one team struggles mightily, and then the other team struggles mightily. One of the teams is saved, and then we get the pressure test.

Tonight, we didn’t even get the pressure test! In the end, this may be the biggest bummer episode we’ve seen in some time, in particular from a structural standpoint. For example, the person who went home following the wedding-themed challenge in Barbara is someone we had completely forgotten about the first time we saw her in the episode. There was no real edit surrounding her going home other than that we saw her struggle with the scallops at times. Instead, the entirely of the Blue Team’s screentime was devoted to Captain Nathan struggling to find his voice, especially with a commanding presence close to him in Shaun. First of all, great move by Terry to send Shaun over there, knowing full well that he would be a lot for Nathan to handle. He was, but most of it didn’t seem like Shaun’s fault.

We don’t want to be cruel to Nathan, since he’s a nice guy and it seems like he’s doing a lot for someone 20 years old. It just felt like he should have at least been in a little bit of danger given that his leadership style, which was frantic and at times harsh, was one of the reasons the first course went so badly. He did turn it around, but you can’t just ignore the bad because something good happened later.

The other problem here was that since it didn’t matter what the diners ultimately thought of the food, this entire challenge felt effectively pointless other than giving former contestant Nick a nice wedding. We lost all semblance of individuality without the pressure test, and while we had some good drama courtesy of Nathan vs. Shaun, it was so apparent that the Red Team was going to win that the entire challenge dragged. We’re glad to see the show shifting back to the Mystery Box next week; it needs an injection of creativity after something that may as well have been “Hell’s Kitchen” lite. Grade: C+.

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