‘MasterChef’ USA season 4 review: Paula Deen segment stays; who advanced?

Earlier this year, Paula Deen got herself into some crazy hot water where she not only lost the majority of her sponsorships, but also the entirety of her Food Network programs.

Unfortunately, “MasterChef” ended up finding themselves in quite a pickle of their own this year courtesy of what was a pretty testy situation with the southern chef. Her appearance as a guest judge for the first half of the episode was filmed long before any of the controversy began, and there is a pretty terrible irony that it happened to air on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I had a dream” speech. (That is the worst form of irony possible.)

We don’t believe that Fox was altogether pleased about having to air the segment tonight, but not putting it on the show would omit key parts of the story for the season. Therefore, it stayed, and that’s all we can say about it. This what happens when you film things super far in advance and don’t have much of a plan B.

After we ended up seeing Luca and Jessie secure themselves safety in the next round in this challenge (which, were it not for Deen’s presence, probably would have been pretty entertaining), we turned to the “dreaded pressure test,” which in this instance revolved around making some signature dishes. That’s not easy to do, and if you mess up, he’ll probably be like “what did you do?”. The moment that James put his panna cotta in the fridge with half an hour to spare, we were worried. Very worried. He was also up against two people in Natasha and Krissi who had been strong almost all season long, and they did a pretty good job with Gordon Ramsay’s scallops and Joe Bastianich’s steak, respectively.

James had a great run on the show, and it is a sad revelation to see him go. But we do think that he will have a career in food, and since he’s not such a big personality he should be able to find a job anywhere. This means that Luca is the last man standing, and he has his work cut out for him.

What do you think about the final four this season?