‘MasterChef’ season 6, episode 8 review: The 100th episode ends with a double-elimination

The 100th episode of “MasterChef” could have been a cause for great celebration among some of the home cooks, but what we ended up getting instead was an episode that probably tormented more of them than perhaps any other this season. The remaining contestants not only had to do a Team Challenge cooking for some culinary titans (plus some “MasterChef” alum; hooray for the Leslie cameo!), but they also had to take on a tough Pressure Test all about birthday cake that led to a double-elimination.

We’re going to work in reverse order here, mostly because we feel like the elimination may be somewhat controversial tonight. Is this a cooking competition, a visual competition, or somewhere in the middle? If it was about how food tastes first and foremost, Charlie probably would have stayed. He made what turned out to be a pretty-delicious cake! The problem is that we can make a cake that looks better than that, and we’re terrible at presentation.

We’re not shocked that he was eliminated as a result of this. This show has to be to a certain extent cumulative, and he has struggled in multiple challenges including the team one tonight burning the carrots. This is a chance for him to actually go out with his head held high. We really like Charlie; he seems like a hard-working guy who wants to make himself better, even if he is still extremely raw as a cook. (Yes, bad pun in there.)

As for the exit of Amanda over Shelly, in some ways it’s more surprising. She hasn’t really shown herself to have many struggles during the competition, and she’s just so likable and bubbly! The problem here is that part of her cake was raw. It’s hard to move past that. You can argue that Shelly, who was in the bottom three with these two, has had many close calls, but her cake looked better than Charlie’s and while undercooked, was not raw. Shelly’s in this for the long haul; her edit reminds us a whole lot of some other contenders who make it until around the top six or so.

The MVP of the episode tonight has to be Stephen (the only person safe from his team), or Olivia, who bounced back from her struggles to lead the Red Team to victory. This is proof yet again that it is never too late on this show to turn things around. Grade: B.

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