MasterChef season 9 episode 8 review: Shaun O’Neale’s wedding

Typically when you have a MasterChef team challenge out in the field, what happens is that you get this split evenly with a Pressure Test. Yet, things were a little bit different tonight. Former winner Shaun O’Neale had his wedding on tonight’s episode and, to go along with that, the home cooks (of course) had to cater it. What, did you think that they were going to be just chilling and eating the appetizers?

Ultimately, this entire wedding, at least from a cooking sense, was an unholy mess. Things started off with an unfortunate twist, as the assigned captains ended up working with the other person’s team. This led to Juni struggling mightily as Team Captain. He came up with some bad ideas and, beyond that, he just struggled to lead and cook anything effectively. This lead to Gordon doing something that he rarely does: Kick Juni out of the position of Captain.

By the time that we actually got to the Pressure Test, there were only a few minutes left … which really just meant that there was no Pressure Test. We don’t know if this was a decision made on-the-fly or was planned out previously, but it felt pretty clear the moment that this was decided what was going to happen. Juni just had a bad episode — quite possibly one of the worst episodes we’ve ever seen as a Team Captain. This was one of those eliminations that just came our way in slow motion and it was pretty obvious what was going to happen.

What did we learn about Juni through this episode? We do think that he’s a really talented cook — you don’t get this far unless that is the case. We just don’t think that this competition is right for him. He’s probably one of those chefs that is better suited for cooking in an environment that is better suited for his creativity. He wanted to do something bold for the challenge and we respect that. Unfortunately, it just didn’t quite work how he wanted it to.

CarterMatt Verdict

This wasn’t the best episode of MasterChef largely because of the fact that it was so easy to chart most of what was going to happen here from start to finish. Also, we do relish the individual challenges, and it is a little bit harder to enjoy those when you’re having to focus more on team dynamics.

With all of this being said … wasn’t Shaun O’Neale’s wedding nice in its own way?

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What did you think about MasterChef season 9 episode 8 as a whole, and do you think the right person went home? Share right away in the comments!

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