Jo Thornely recaps My Kitchen Rules: The scores are really bad

WHEN you’ve subjected your dinner guests to a level of dickiness, they won’t send you good luck cards when it’s your turn to cook.

THIS latest MKR recap answers two very important, gently paraphrased, Michael Jackson questions:

Q: Who’s bad?

A: Josh. Josh is bad.

And

Q: Amy, are you OK? Are you okay, Amy?

A: Yeah no, not really.

This face means Josh is talking.

BAD PREP

Josh claims that he knows what he’s doing when it comes to seafood, and also that today Amy is the head chef and all he’s going to do is listen.

Both statements are garbage.

“Babe, only use two bottles of wine in the crab marinade” says head chef Amy.

Josh doesn’t listen.

“Babe, leave me some coriander for my pork dish” says head chef Amy.

Josh doesn’t listen.

“Babe, stop making this really unpleasant” says head chef Amy.

“No, if you’d just listen”, says Josh.

Yeah Amy, Josh finds it really frustrating when you don’t listen. Not listening is bad.

BAD EXPECTATIONS

When you’ve subjected your dinner guests to an unwarranted level of dickiness over two months, they’re probably not going to be sending you good luck cards when it’s your turn to cook. As the teams arrive and discuss their expectations for the evening, a pattern emerges.

“I just can’t see it working” says Della, who Josh has picked three or four fights with.

“I think they fell off the top of the lucky tree and hit every stick on the way down” says Court, who Josh has picked five or six fights with.

“They’re the Steven Bradbury of the competition” says Amy, who Josh called a slut once.

“Saying ‘that’s just Josh’ is like saying ‘that’s just Hitler’” says Tully, who Josh has told to be quiet more than once.

Yeah. Being compared to one of history’s worst tyrants is bad.

Ich bin die Seafood Fuhrer

BAD ENTRÉE

You can learn a lot about cooking from watching Josh and Amy. For example, you can learn how to make a seafood chowder taste like grainy vegetable soup, and brush up on your leaving-whitebait-sitting-around-until-it-goes-soggy skills.

After being ruthlessly reamed by the judges and watching the other teams try to find nice things to say that aren’t “unpleasant to eat” or “more like a bar snack”, it’s pretty clear: entrée is bad.

That’s just another way of saying “bad”.

BAD ACTING

As a kind of palate-cleanser between entrée and main, Betty gives us a break from the bad cooking by indulging in a bit of bad acting. Tearfully, she laments the fact that Josh and Amy aren’t respecting food and works herself into an emotional eddy of bizarre tragic magnitude.

Della silently says what we’re all thinking, because the acting? It’s bad.

Put my fork down, flip it and reverse it.

BAD MAIN COURSE

The crab that Josh marinates in four bottles of wine turns out like I do after four bottles of wine: sloppy, tasteless, and unappealing. The crab’s only saving grace is that Amy’s pork dish is like the crab’s ugly friend that the crab hangs out with to look better.

Also a bit like me but much saltier.

After Josh admitting that he used all the coriander in the entrée and Manu getting borderline angry about crab that tastes like pub carpet, it’s fair to say that main course is bad.

BAD MANNERS

As a kind of amuse bouche between main and dessert, let’s present little bite-sized examples of things Josh says to his wife while they’re cooking, as a window into how delightful it must be to be married to him:

“We’ll be divorced after this”, which is Josh’s way of telling Amy she looks pretty tonight.

“Don’t f**k around too long”, which is Josh’s way of admiring Amy’s efficiency on the kitchen.

“Do what you need to do, I don’t need to hear about it, I just need it to be done” is Josh’s way of supporting Amy through the stress of the competition.

“Don’t be a dickhead to me, ‘cause you’ll get it back” is Josh’s way of saying ‘I love you’.

Overwhelmed by all the compliments from her husband, the judges and the other teams, Amy storms out of the house and into the street, where she and Josh argue in the dark with subtitles.

Nice, Amy gives their restaurant four stars.

In the end they decide to re-enter the kitchen and cook more food for their guests, which is probably the worst manners of all.

BAD DESSERT

The only good thing about a dessert called ‘Koeksisters Meets Dom Pedro’ is that it sounds like an international pulp romance novel. The plot is that some heavy, oversweet donuts meet a thick alcoholic milkshake, and they end up being the kind of thing you’d drink on a dare.

Here’s to Evans, he’s true blue…

The second dessert, a Crema Catalana, is more of a sugar soup with sugar croutons, partly the product of Josh’s blanket policy of ignoring head chef Amy’s advice.

“It’s not even funny any more” says Manu, perhaps recognising that Josh and Amy’s continued presence in a cooking competition is a bit of a joke.

The chicken crossed the road to avoid this.

When your dinner guests eat like they’re being punished for a crime, dessert is very, very bad.

BAD SCORE

By the end of tonight, the team with the lowest score will be instantly eliminated – either Karen & Ros or Josh & Amy.

The scores are bad. The scores sound like a full weekend’s soccer results. The scores are the kind of numbers that a three-toed sloth could count on its toes without taking its second shoe off.

The final score, 31 out of 130, is bad. It’s so bad.

THE GOOD BIT

Very unsurprisingly and quite possibly several months too late, Josh and Amy are eliminated from the competition.

Josh says “After a couple of months of marriage counselling we’ll be back on track”.

Amy says “You just never stopped being you, even though people got upset by that”.

And what do we say?