I Love MasterChef, But These Audition Rounds Really Bother Me

MasterChef is one of my favorite shows on television. If I had my way, it would run in the spring and fall so we’d get two seasons a year instead of just one during the summer. It’s a delightful way to spend an hour and has made me want to improve my real life cooking, but as a fan, I need to say something out loud. I love how the actual competition is formatted with episodes alternating between the always chaotic team challenges and solo challenges, but I absolutely hate the structure of the auditions.

Once upon a time, the way it used to work is a potential contestant would cook for the judges, and they would decide, based on the strength of the dish, whether that person deserved an apron to get on the actual show. So, in theory, they were cooking against every single other person auditioning to meet some kind of threshold of performance in the minds of the judges.

That’s not the way it works anymore though. Instead, they have contestants literally cook against each other with the winner taking home an apron and getting a spot on the show. Instead of competing against everyone, they’re competing against one person in a mini-battle that sees one of them advance.

Let’s use this season as an example. The theme is duos, and contestants are auditioning as pairs alongside someone they’re close to. So, we might get a husband and wife or a brother and a sister or two firefighters that cook together at the station. So, it’s not 1v1. It’s 2v2, but the concept is the same. Producers will pair two husband and wife teams together, and they’ll both cook at the same time. The judges will taste each of their dishes and decide which one goes home and which duo gets the apron and advances.

That sounds good on paper. It adds a more direct competition element to the auditions and allows viewers to root for the team they’d rather see go through. In real life, however, it can be really frustrating to watch, and I’m sure it’s infuriating for the actual contestants too because the quality of these auditions varies sharply.

We’ll see one audition where both teams absolutely knock it out of the park. Judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and newcomer Tiffany Derry will rant and rave about what both of the duos did and talk about how impossible the choice is. Then they’ll send one team through and one team will be left devastated as they exit the MasterChef kitchen for good. Then we’ll get the next audition and both teams will make blatant amateur hour mistakes. Stuff will be undercooked. The flavor combinations will be all wrong. They’ll both be a hot mess but because of the format, we’ll see one of the teams go through.

Clearly, the producers have an eye toward casting with the entire process. I’m not saying they’re intentionally letting worse teams through because they think they’ll make better television, but I am saying if you look at the pairs they put together, it’s quite obvious they’re both candidates to fit a particular role on the show. So, we’ll get two pairs of longtime dude friends cooking against each other. Next, we’ll get two happily married couples cooking against each other. The producers obviously want to fill that archetype to balance out the show.

Finding some level of balance and personality variance is important to creating a fun and watchable season, but the way these audition episodes are put together just make it really obvious that many of the better contestants are getting cut. It’s just being rubbed in our faces that worse people are getting through.

I think there are two possible solutions here. Either the show should return to how the auditions used to be held with everyone auditioning on their own and either getting aprons or not getting aprons, or they should no longer air the auditions, have the producers cast whoever is going to make the best television and give us a few extra episodes of real competition. Maybe we could get non-elimination weeks or maybe the show could start with a few more people to fill the extra episode count.

MasterChef is great. Despite changes in judges, various seasons with gimmick formats and the occasional twist that goes too far, it has maintained a fun level of quality. I’ll keep watching the show as long as they’re going to make it, but next season, I hope I tune in to find the audition episodes either changed format or don’t exist anymore.