‘MasterChef’ season 5, episode 2 preview: The top 22 arrive!

Are you as happy as we are about the new approach to “MasterChef” this season? Rather than wasting our time with audition episodes that feel bloated and stuffed full of sob stories, we’re already at the good part of the competition: Watching everyone cook and compete in challenges.

We’ll admit, though, that the video below is hardly the most revealing one released by Fox. In it, you basically have the arrival of the top 22 contestants to the kitchen, where the judges tell all of them that they will need to bring their A-game if they want to be able to make it deep into the competition. Some of these chefs are going to face bigger challenges than others when it comes to their experience or their technique; in order to win, you really need to know what you are doing from all aspects of the cooking world.

To us, though, the most important thing here is that these amateur cooks all have huge personalities to go along with their cooking skills. There is nothing that is that exciting about watching boring people cook, even if they are pretty good at it. We don’t necessarily need a ton of conflict, but we need comedy and we need passion that makes us want to pick some people to root for. That has, in the end, made some seasons of the show superior to others. There are not necessarily a ton of memorable people that appear on this show after the fact, so you really need to stand out if you want some sort of career in this industry.

What do you want to see on this batch of “MasterChef” episodes? Share your thoughts with a comment.