I don’t generally care one way or the other who wins competition shows, even when I watch the shows. Masterchef turned out to be buck the trend this year. When it started way back, I really didn’t have any particular favourites. Indeed, I really didn’t care if I watche dit or not and, in fact, I didn’t watch a lot of the earlier episodes and didn’t particularly stress about missing an episode. But then, the show got interesting.
As with any show of the sort, some of the contestants were real characters. A few were in the “love to hate” category. Some were real nice folks. Others were just odd. But what’s more, the people developed over the course of the show. People improved as time passed. People changed. Some stagnated and washed out. Others improved continually. In particular, Luca really began to shine in the final weeks.
And Luca did not just shine in the kitchen. He shines as a human being. When fellow contestants found themselves short on ingredients during pressure tests or mystery box challenges, he cheerfully shared if he could. As he put it, he wanted to win based on skill, not an artificial handicap of the other contestants. Now that is a real classy, stand-up guy for you. And so, based on that, I was really rooting for him to win. Every week he was still in the competition put me that much more on the edge of my seat. And, finally, he made it to the final two. And then, after a tense nail-biter of a final, and editing and dialogue well calculated to keep you in suspense, the final announcement that the winner of this year’s Masterchef was Luca ellicited cheers.
So here’s to Luca, winner of Masterchef, and one all around stand-up guy!