Here we are in week two of what is decidedly the most difficult and harshly judged season of MasterChef Junior yet. The kid gloves have come off, and underneath them are, well, more kid gloves, but they aren't as soft and gentle. Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliot have no problem telling the contestants when their dishes are downright inedible.
There are 14 kids left in the competition, which is still a number bigger than any of their ages. This episode starts with the judges asking Jimmy, Ryan Kate, and Andrew to come to the front as they were the top three dishes of the previous challenge. These three are competing in a special challenge, which feels like a reward for them but arguably a bigger reward for the crew that's responsible for cleaning up at the end of each day.
For this special challenge, the contestants must make the meringue to top 12 lemon pies. Graham explains how to make it, and it's clear that the real challenge here is separating enough eggs. I have no idea how to separate eggs. That's the point where if I was reading a recipe and it told me to do that I'd be like, "Screw it, I'll buy a cake on my way to this dumb party."
The winner of the challenge receives not only an advantage in the next elimination, but also the opportunity to throw one of their pies in the face of a judge. Jimmy is competing to throw one at Graham, Ryan Kate is playing for Joe, and Andrew will get to hit Gordon if he finishes his 12 pies first.
Once the timer starts the kids are furiously cracking and separating eggs. Ryan Kate claims to have experience with meringue, which is insane to wrap your head around. She takes the lead early on, but Andrew quickly catches up to her and has all of his mixers running before anyone else. When he notices that the meringue isn't whipping up as quickly as he would like he starts screaming at the machines like a Texas high school football coach, getting red in the face and pounding on the counter.
Andrew's unbalanced mixtures continue to whip while Jimmy and Ryan Kate pull ahead. They're neck and neck until the last second when Jimmy edges her out ever so slightly to win the challenge, the advantage, and the chance to cover Graham Elliot in sugar and custard.
Graham pleads with Jimmy that he shouldn't do this because they both wear glasses. I can tell you first hand that reasoning doesn't work, otherwise the fellow-bespectacled woman who works at Bloomingdale's wouldn't have had to cut up my charge card in front of me, citing my "expensive silk blouse habit."
Jimmy's head barely reaches Graham's waist, so it's impressive he was able to even reach high enough to hit him in the face with his biggest, messiest pie. The white meringue all over his face coupled with the bright colored shirt and bow tie makes him resemble a clown. Had he been wearing Joe's big, neon shoes the look would have been complete.
Graham decides that since there are 11 other contestants and 11 of Jimmy's pies left, that the kids should all get to pick a judge to hit with a pie just so nothing goes to waste. It turns into a free-for-all with the kids and judges, though with a heavy focus on getting whipped topping on Joe's bald head. There were enough comments about that during this segment to make any man in his position think, "Jesus, is it time to look into this whole plugs thing? Am I pulling this off?"
Once cleaned up, the judges introduce the next challenge, which is all about sausage. In teams of two, the contestants will make their own sausage and then prepare a restaurant-quality dish highlighting their creation. The kids don't get to pick their own teams though, because that would devolve into the kind of emotional chaos that no one should have to endure on television.
Because Jimmy won the pie challenge, he gets to pick all of the pairs. Overall, he seems to match up teams that would work well together, except when it comes to Andrew, who is clearly his biggest competition so far. He pairs Andrew up with Brooklynite-in-training Cory. The two could not be more different. Andrew is all about hearty, mature dishes and Cory — from what we have seen so far — is mostly about wearing ties and skinny jeans.
Cory runs around the kitchen like he just stuck his head in a vat of powdered sugar and has been mainlining Mountain Dew since 2013. Poor, serious Andrew can't rein him in enough to even plan a dish, let alone divide up any responsibilities. He says, "Cory, we're gonna make spaetzle," and Cory simply responds with, "Noooooo!" before he runs back into the pantry, presumably to cartwheel out the door and off into the California wilderness. They decide to basically make two different dishes and then see which one is better.
On the other side of the teamwork spectrum are Ryan Kate and Kayla, who are working together on a venison sausage and polenta dish. The girls really seem to get along on this show, which I realize is because they aren't the age yet where their entire relationships are built on talking behind other girls' backs and taping pictures of Devon Sawa to their bedroom walls. (Note: I don't know who is hot for teen girls now, so I'm going with my era of heartthrobs. Also, whatever happened to him? For a long time, just because he was in the movie Casper, I kind of thought he died, but apparently he's fine.)
Gordon can barely contain his excitement when he learns Riley and Ayla are doing their take on traditional bangers and mash. I can barely contain my shock when I see that neither of them giggles while saying the name of the dish. When Gordon examines their sausage in water though, he notices the gas isn't on, thus the water isn't boiling, and time is almost up.
Mia and Jenna serve the judges first. They prepared a pork and chorizo sausage with roasted potatoes and sauerkraut. Joe absolutely loves it, which makes sense, because you can't really go wrong with chorizo and potatoes in my book. He describes it as a rustic dish that's very German. He then explains that he could eat it while wearing lederhosen, which he points out he does, in fact, own. Anyway, I hope everyone else enjoys that image haunting you for eternity!
Next up is the team of Micah and Alexis with their pork sausage in a white bean and swiss chard stew. The concept is good, and it's cute how they can both barely pronounce "swiss chard," but the rest of the dish is a bit of a disaster. The sausage is underseasoned and lacking fat, and the stew lacks real flavor. I feel like last season the judges would have said more positive things and left it at, "You just needed more salt." Instead, here, they pretty firmly outline all of the problems of the dish before sending the girls back to their station.
Jimmy came into this challenge the frontrunner, so the judges had high hopes for him and his partner Kyler. The two did a pork and kangaroo blend sausage with a sunny side up egg, biscuit, and fennel salad. While Joe enjoys the dish, Gordon really doesn't like it. He finds it dry and overall not cohesive. Kyler tells us that he was born in 2003, which explains why he doesn't know much about proper sausage balance, and also probably why his parents thought it was acceptable to name him Kyler.
Gordon loves Riley and Ayla's bangers and mash with red onion gravy, his only complaint being that there wasn't quite enough of it in the serving. Jack and Nathan present a tasty veal and boar sausage with polenta and yuzu spinach that shocks Graham when it works.
The judges also love Ryan Kate and Kayla's pork and venison sausage with sauteed vegetables and polenta. Joe tastes the dish and tells them he could see it on the table in any restaurant in Italy.
Last to present their dish are Andrew and Cory. These two were a mess from the beginning and might have benefited from some comedic tuba music as they bumbled around the kitchen together. They prepared a chorizo and pork sausage with spinach and spaetzle, since Andrew clearly won that argument. Gordon doesn't love most of the dish, but he's even more displeased with the way they worked together. Cory made and then ended up throwing away quail egg cakes for the dish, which Gordon sees as them wasting time and not taking the competition seriously.
After a brief meeting, the judges decide that the winners of the evening are Jenna and Mia for their rustic, German-style sausage dish. I hope that this win means that we'll see more girls succeeding in the competition and hopefully in the finale, since they so clearly deserve it.
The bottom teams of the evening are Micah and Alexis and Cory and Andrew. Both teams served subpar dishes and struggled with the main challenge of making and preparing a good sausage. Ultimately, Micah and Alexis are sent home for their flavorless pork sausage cassoulet.
Everyone in the competition is crying: the barely spared Andrew and Cory, the two girls who must go home, the other contestants who had been their friends, even the judges are struggling to stay poised. No matter how many episodes of this show I watch, it's so difficult to see the kids get eliminated. If you aren't crying at the end of every MasterChef Junior then I assume you are made of cement and dead pigeons.