Over the course of the show, many people who have watched along side with me have very expressive opinions and emotions, even more so this season. Shall not name names but I think it is fairly easy to say who people hate given a quick glance at what has been said out there. Some of my friends have expressed their distaste towards some contestants very clearly and sounded like they are going to break up their friendship with you should you decide to give the impression that you are on the dark side. And of course there are many reasons why they have such loathesome feelings towards the contestants such as "He/She cannot cook, so why is he/she still here?", "He/She is sooooo annoying!" and in some cases citing expletives that are probably not kosher here.
Going one step further to explain "anomalies", some give speculation as to why that contestant is still in the competition. This of course ranges from the show being rigged to favour some people (for example, the Immunity Challenges) and all the way to it is all about marketing. Rigged because there are many occasions that contestants fail to cook anything above average, to put it nicely and yet they are still barely surviving, somehow managing to overthrow season favourites. Marketing because in the end the winner has to sell a good cookbook and possibly more from other avenues like TV and magazines. Of course, it can be both which seems to be what the majority of some of my friends have taken up.
Call me naive and/or overly simplistic but I choose not to adhere to the above mentioned reasons for some anomalous contestants remain in the competition. At least, to a very large extent. How I pass judgment is based on one principle which happens to be a chef-y one, that you are only as good as your last dish. No other dish in the past, no matter how disasterous they are, simply will not matter. You may have cooked several thousands of bad dishes but if you so happen to make a stellar dish, you get praised. To put it in the negative way, this is mostly true in the culinary world, all it needs to tarnish an image is one bad review from just one setting. This of course should not be the case if one wants to be truely objective in their judgment but alas, it is not.
While I'm certainly no judge in the competition nor am I one of the tasters, you can tell a lot about a dish just based on visual textures and even the technique used in the competition (unless you are of the conspiracy theoretic skeptics that say everything is redone until they conform to the producers secret grand master plan to milk the Masterchef cash cow, then I have nothing more to say). Ultimately taste will be the deciding factor which I will leave it to the judges for their criticism, there is no other way. Based on that one principle above, the overall look and the criticism of the judges, I've correctly guessed the winners and losers most of the time without having these notions of contestant annoyances and predisposition to hate/love one over the other. It is so hard to convince people that the decision is right when the person they hate gets praised for a good dish that I've almost given up trying. Bear in mind that the show was pre-recorded and of course some heavy editing would be applied, so it can make any likeable person into the most hated person on television as rather evident from the very first season. But the sad thing is that people are drawn by the drama and the theatre of reality television when, ironically, does not represent all of reality on the television screen. It is hard to be objective when viewing a reality television series because of the emotional bias that comes into play. This is why I mostly hate reality television shows, the unnecessary play on emotions when it does not reflect reality.
Then why is Masterchef (or even the new Renovators) different? Am I being hypocritical? I still hate the drama and play on our rage that this show produces but I channel all my focus to the one real aspect of the show: food (design in the Renovators case). It is exceedingly hard to lie through the process of food even more so when the emphasis is to produce restaurant quality dishes. Focusing on being objective with respect to an element that is hard to fake is the only means of maintaining some form of sanity when watching shows like these, rather that to be caught up with the theatrics of emotion based on something that is most likely edited out of context. And I suspect I am quite alone in this category (as with most other things).
I'd like to suggest some things to think about that emerges from this analyses of approaches to the highly watched show. Most of us who can at least manage a simple stir fry would at some stage cooked for friends or relatives.
- Would we judge a friend who has had their serious fare share of failures before producing one good dish as how we judge a contestant in a similiar position?
- Is it helpful to maintain two separate acts of judgment, one for our friends and one for the unknown person who is cooking our meals ie. should we maintain a bias towards our friends to be a little sugar coated (and sometimes ignorant) in our criticisms while being very harsh on a stranger?
- Shouldn't we just develop one standard on how we criticize without being biased in a way that is always appropriate for the occasion?
Not that simple, eh? This criticism beast.
PS. We are all entitled to our own opinions, certainly not restricted to contestants of a reality television competition. What I'm not suggesting is that there is one answer to who makes it to the next round and I am here to assert that statement and that I am the all-righteous, all-seeing being. What I am suggesting is to look beyond the appearances of the editing and find objective reasons for your opinion. Whining on the basis that a person is portrayed as annoying isn't objective.
PSS. The Renovators are by the same people that brought Masterchef. Same dramatic tones, same epic suspenseful background music style. So observations here should be transferable to The Renovators. Careful now people, design is even grayer than food. Not that I know anything about design.
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