What makes MasterChef season 9 different: Teams, judges, and more


MasterChef season 9

In today’s edition of our ongoing Summer TV Preview series, we are putting the focus solely on MasterChef as we dive into what will hopefully be an interesting and exciting season 9 starting on Wednesday, May 30.

On the surface, though, one thing seems to be different: The judging panel. After being a part of the for many consecutive seasons (plus also many iterations of MasterChef Junior), Christina Tosi will not be a regular on the series this summer. Instead, Gordon Ramsay, Aaron Sanchez, and Joe Bastianich will be leading the way. This is the first time that we have ever seen this particular combination on the series and we hope that the three of them have good chemistry and a lot of fun out there in the kitchen. (Hopefully, there are still opportunities to see Tosi coming up in the future.)

One other thing that is immediately different about this upcoming season is that it marks an opportunity to see some of the home cooks have more of a specific mentor/coach among the three judges. This feels a little bit similar to when Ink Master utilized this format for this past season — The Voice to a certain extent popularized it in America. It remains to be seen just how rigid this team structure is but this could prove useful in seeing if there’s more mentorship we see this season than in the past.

Personally, we’re all for some element of change given that for the past eight seasons, MasterChef has been by and large the same show with a few small changes sprinkled in there. If every facet of the show was perfect we would probably have less of a problem with this; yet, there are some things that need to be hammered out. For starters, we’ve never loved the team competitions that turn this show into Hell’s Kitchen, or the ones where the contestants have to recreate another recipe. There’s less drama and creativity that comes along with that.

No matter what you feel about any of these twists, though, in the end it is still very much evident that MasterChef is really just all about seeing these home cooks flourish. If you’ve got the right group of contestants, you will see that almost nothing else matters.

Want to see when other summer shows are premiering? CarterMatt has you covered! Check out the official Premiere Guide for dates that are being constantly added.

Let us know in the comments what you want to see from MasterChef season 9. Meanwhile, like CarterMatt on Facebook to get additional updates the moment that we have them. (Photo: Fox.)

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