‘MasterChef’ season 7, episode 14 review: Nathan faints; does he avoid elimination?

Wednesday night’s “MasterChef” may easily take the cake for one of the most dramatic of the season, and largely that was due to one of the most stressful elimination challenges of the season. The tag-team challenge is back!

We’re going to go ahead and ignore most of the cast-iron skillet mystery box challenge, given that there really wasn’t anything of substance to it other than Brandi’s impressive win. She’s building momentum, and that’s great for her given that almost everything that happened later. We’re not sure anyone really came out of that with any momentum at all.

Nathan was eliminated at the end of the tag-team, and it came as a result of a challenge that was so stressful, it caused him to faint. We do feel for him. He’s still a young kid having to deal with a situation that is probably extremely out of his element. Maybe with a few more years he will be able to handle the pressure better, or maybe this sort of environment just wasn’t for him and that’s totally cool. Nathan’s a super-creative guy who makes visually-appealing food; in our mind, he’d be great down the road as a private chef or owner of a small restaurant where he could relax. Brandi did him no favor by bearing him with the very-intense Shaun, though at the same time she did so to try and send Shaun home.

In the end, David and Katie won the tag-team challenge even with him completely losing it when he couldn’t open the champagne in time. They’ll get a chance to be captains down the road. There was a lot of drama in this episode, and while that made for compelling television, at the same time the end result was so expected that the air was let out of the final minutes early. Grade: B-.

Want to get some other news right now when it comes to “MasterChef”? Then be sure to head over here! Also, sign up over here to score some other TV news on everything we cover via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Fox.)