As I have said before, I am not an ardent fan of reality TV shows, but MasterChef is usually such a delicious show, that most of the times I do watch and even follow the show.
Maybe not religiously, but yes enough to know who was eliminated, who is a strong contestant and who should probably just leave the show right away.
And mostly I do not have any real problem, but this season, I noticed something that I have observed in a couple of other reality TV shows as well.
Not just MasterChef, but even Jhalak Dikhla Jaa and a couple of others, where I saw that people who have much more grip of the particular field, and could even be called professionals at it, are coming on board to the show as contestants.
MasterChef: Why You Do This?
So the MasterChef Season 5 just finished with Kirti Bhoutika being declared as the winner of the show.
Now sure, Kirti in herself is an extremely strong cook and in all honesty deserves the title, however, one thing I had a problem with was in the semi-finals, where Dinesh and Mirvaan both were eliminated for not scoring the top marks.
Again, not a problem and fair enough. But I would like to bring to attention that both the finalists, that is, Kirti and Ashima, were both bakers, i.e. dessert people and professionals at that.
Whereas Dinesh was a lawyer who had no cooking background and Mirvaan was just 19 years old and both showed amazing talent and finesse in cooking to even reach the final level.
Now one thing about baking is that, the basic recipe for most desserts is almost the same, there is flour, sugar, eggs (optional), baking soda and a couple of other things.
The thing to notice in dessert making is not the recipe, but how to recreate that basic recipe and give it your own original touch. What flavour you add, what you take away, how much to add something and ultimately, how creative can you get with the presentation.
So Ashima and Kirti already had a lot of practice of it, whereas Dinesh and Mirvaan, but especially Dinesh, showed exceptional grasp of cooking really amazing stuff even without having that prior knowledge.
I also noticed that for most of the times when the contestants had to choose their dish on their own, Ashima and Kirti would almost always go for a dessert, whereas Dinesh always took risks and did something that he himself was not comfortable with.
Ok, But What Does Jhalak Has To Say For Itself?
Alright, if you want to say that well, MasterChef is about who is the better cook and not about what background they come from, well sure, ok, I will accept that.
But what about Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa?
I was quite shocked to see an episode where I found out that Salman Yusuf Khan, the ace choreographer from previous seasons, is not a contestant at the show.
Yup. A professional choreographer is a contestant at a show that is about non-dancers learning to dance.
If that is not unfair then I don’t know what it.
I would just like to ask, why exactly are these experts in a particular field, being taken on as contestants for a reality competitive show?
Isn’t it unfair to others, who even after being extremely new to the field and having little to no experience in it, are competing for the winners title and for that matter doing quite well given from where they are coming from.
Or is it at the end of it, just a game of TRPs, where these people are added on as a marketing gimmick to keep the audience interested in the show?
Image Credits: Google Images
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