MasterChef Junior season 5, episode 4 review: Enter Mayim Bialik — and vegan food
Thursday night’s MasterChef Junior season 5, episode 4 proved to be a challenging night for most of the remaining home cooks. Not only did they face elimination, but they had to make a quick transition from corn dogs (and watching corn-dog stuff get dumped on the judges) to making vegan food. Vegan food is basically the complete opposite of corn dogs.
The vegan challenge stemmed from the appearance from guest judge Mayim Bialik. The star of The Big Bang Theory doesn’t eat meat, which led to groans from the kids when it was announced. (Hilariously, we’ve had that reaction to vegan food in the past — we’ve discovered some good stuff sense.)
What makes this show entertaining, especially in contrast to some of the other cooking competitions out there, is that this is all about inspiring the contestants to be as good as humanly possible. While some of the kids struggled to get burgers together, Gordon Ramsay put on a smile and tried to encourage the kids to keep it together. Cydney, meanwhile, did a great job of keeping it together herself after her first burger crumbled after she dropped it on accident. (As revealed later, she was still able to squeak by.)
The tasting
The big surprise of the night was Shayne, a kid from Texas who had never cooked anything vegan in his life. Yet, he did still figure out a way to make something that appealed to his personality and who he wants to be as a cook. He was one of the winners of the night to go along with Adam, who will be Captains in the upcoming team challenge.
Unfortunately, there were also some other cooks who struggled, and found themselves in danger: Cydney, Avani, Sam, and Eddie. They all accomplished a good bit of stuff, but at the same time this is a competition. The judges did their best once again in order to be kind and diplomatic, but Sam and Eddie went home. This was a TOUGH challenge to be fair, especially since we never thought in a million years that any kid would be able to do a vegan burger. We certainly couldn’t given what they were doing.
Overall, this episode proved to be another interesting entry in the show, but probably the saddest one so far given that Sam was one of the biggest characters on the season. He was brimming with confidence, and we could’ve seen both him and Eddie being a great deal of fun if they’d made it a few more weeks. Then again, we could say this about almost any of the kids at this point. Grade: B+.
What did you think about tonight’s MasterChef Junior? Did you agree with the eliminations? Share in the comments.