MasterChef Junior season 5 episode 6 review: Inside the Michelle Obama appearance

There were many things that MasterChef Junior season 5 episode 6 tested when it comes to some of its home cooks. What we’ve also learned right now is that since the show, they’ve also done a really good job testing some of the contestants on their patience. We knew that it’d been a long time since the show filming, but we didn’t get a sense until now as to just how long it really was.

At the bottom of this review, you can see a video featuring Justise Mayberry, who won the Michelle Obama themed Mystery Box Challenge, from when she appeared at the White House with Michelle Obama. According to People Magazine, this meeting took place back in July, meaning that the season filmed even before that! It was such a cool thing for the White House at the time to be involved in something like this, given that it created such a personal connection with today’s youth and encouraged other kids to go out there and start cooking.

Within the context of the show, Justise winning the Mystery Box enabled her safety for the week, while the majority of the other contestants had to take on the challenge of cooking something inspired by their mothers. Julie Bowen, who plays one of America’s favorite mothers over on Modern Family, appeared as a guest judge and she was great. She was very encouraging to all of the young cooks, reminded them of how they were probably better than her at this, and seemed to help put some of their nerves at ease. Her best moment probably came explaining to Mashu why Gordon Ramsay was so hard on him: He respected him, and he wanted him to get better. Mashu’s Achilles’ heel in the episode tonight seemed to be trying to do a little too much with what he had. He created, for example, a really beautiful lamb dish, but complicated it by making a swordfish cake using fresh fish when he didn’t need to.

As for our other eliminated cook tonight, Donovan just seemed to be having a bad day, and he struggled when it came to getting his marshmallow pie together. Sometimes it happens with this show — you just hit a bump in the road and it’s hard to come back from it. Both of these kids seemed to really like each other, and one of the nice things about the show is that nobody has to go home alone. They’ve got another shoulder to lean on. The episode was fun, and the presence of two notable women in Bowen and the former First Lady gave it an extra spark. Grade: A-.

If you do want to see some further MasterChef Junior coverage, including some recent previews and episode reviews, be sure to visit the link here right now! (Photo: Fox.)