I've lurked on the Masterchef threads for a long time but not posted before. I was so incensed by last night's episode though, that I had to jump in here.
The creepy love doctor should never have been chosen to go first as he's so dithery or might have been likely to start making some obscure regional Italian thing that no-one else could follow.
Once he was in the kitchen he faffed around for almost half his allocated time, not actually starting anything nor laying any clues about what his master plan might have been. it was quite clear that they had all had the time to decide that Alex would tackle the dessert and that plan might have worked had they stuck to it but no, for some unfathomable reason, Geoff decided to make pastry. If they had stuck to their plan, Geoff, Jilly and Jim should have pretty much had the main - and possibly starter, although at that point they didn't know what they were dealing with - done and dusted between them, leaving Alex to whip up a dessert and Irini to come in and do the finishing touches. Remember that Geoff was the only one to know what the showcased ingredients actually were. He effectively set them all up to fail by making pastry - he could have either left the brown sugar untouched so that Alex could have done something in her allocated time - a creme brulee would have been perfect but as an accomplished cook (which he must be to have gotten this far) he must have realised he was effectively asking everyone to have a hand in the dessert making process as a tart could not be achieved by Alex at that point in proceedings. He also could have laid out the ingredients to be used in all three courses to show that he had some sort of plan to be followed.
So then Jilly arrived and found no hint of what they might be doing, so she had to use a significant portion of her allocated time, doing Geoff's job for him and coming up with the shape of the meal. She also sorted out the potato dish and when she left, it was pretty clear that she expected Jim to at least roll out, if not blind bake the pastry. Ok - none of them had expected to touch the dessert but since Geoff had led them down that path, they needed to see it through.
So then Fuckwit Jim arrived and made clear what he was not going to do. Despite Greg's warnings and suggestions, he ignored the dessert and decided to spend his time making a sauce and some black pudding bon bons. Because Jim wanted to showcase his skill rather than work as a team player and do something useful at the midway point. He then left the place in an absolute state.
Alex got to the kitchen immediately saw the size of the task ahead of her. She realised she couldn't do much with the pastry so decided to cut out small bases, therefore making a fairly mediocre dessert. The thing is, she didn't know that the only showcased dessert ingredient was brown sugar. She could have ditched the pastry and made something else but it looked to her like she had to use it. Also, due to the lack of initial planning and Jim's lack of moving things on, she realised the main was woefully under prepared with no veg so as well as taking on the dessert, which the team had agreed would be her thing, she had to bail out the chicken dish too.
Poor Irini was then left to finish everything as well as making the starter. Obviously when they realised it was scallops, they rightly left this until last due to the short cooking time but this should have been all that was left for Irini other than plating up. She dashed around like a mad thing and ultimately undercooked the scallops, missed the sauce and plated messily. Fuckwit Jim then had the audacity to complain about the missing sauce and go on about not pointing the finger at anyone in particular. He threw it all away for that whole group by showing a lack of team work and forward thinking, along with Geoff who didn't give them a plan to work from in the first place.
Comparing them with the blue team where Tim had laid out all the ingredients so they all seemed to grasp pretty quickly what the dish was. I bet hardly any of them would have chosen to do won-tons but they went with it because it was a team effort and it paid off.
Alex and Irini, and to a lesser extent, Jilly (I ADORE her and she's the true champion in my mind. She probably could have done more but she couldn't have foreseen the car crash that was Jim coming after her) were thrown under a bus by the blokes in their team last night and if any of them go home on Monday I shall be most upset.