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Elizabeth Cauvel vs. Courtney Lapresi is going to be the MasterChef 2014 finale, right?

Posted on by Ted Bauer

MasterChef seems to be a big fan of the narrative thread this season perhaps more than any other — for example, Leslie and Ahran feuded repeatedly in early challenges and then, on Ahran’s eventual elimination night, it was her vs. Leslie (and it got to the point where she said Leslie was going to win the whole thing). I’ve written about Leslie a little bit before, and while I do think he’ll be in the final three/four, I see him eventually getting eliminated. He’s a very good cook and he’s done a masterful job surviving all these Stress Tests, but I think there’s an element where they’re keeping him around this long for the ratings side. He seems like he’s a potentially insufferable dude on the regular (although we see such a narrow sphere of these people’s interactions that I can’t be sure).

If you think about the narrative side of this season, though, it seems like the entire thing is building towards Elizabeth vs. Courtney. Even last night, when — SPOILER ALERT — one-time fan favorite Big Willie went home, the whole thing was essentially about Courtney (up in the balcony after winning Mystery Box) trying to screw Elizabeth by putting her with Cutter. It almost worked. I’d say at least once per episode this year, either Courtney or Elizabeth has done something and they’ve immediately cut to a shot of the other one throwing shade / side-eye at what just happened. They’re angling to meet in the finals; it definitely seems like the earlier episodes were edited to get us hyped for that.

The final six is now Cutter, Christian, Leslie, Elizabeth, Courtney, and Jaime.

I feel like the strongest four cooks, based on the body of evidence thus far, are: Leslie, Courtney, Christian, and Elizabeth.

Personally, I feel like that’ll be the final four. I could easily be wrong.

I like Cauvel (Elizabeth) a lot because she seems like a cool person off show, and she’s doing the social media side of it right. For example:

Fans are into it too, and she responds:

Plus, she’s got a cool website — tag line is “Staying in is the new going out” — and the website has a blog, with entries like this:

A lot of my friends do “Meatless Mondays.” As a conscientious omnivore, I try to eat meat at only one meal a day (although sometimes, I don’t adhere to this rule–which is why I try not to preach about it). As I’ve discussed before, I am a strong believer in the meat-in-moderation approach to eating, and I hope that this recipe shows you that you can conceptualize dishes in fun and unexpected ways when you take meat out of the equation.

The inspiration for this dish was definitely the iconic visual of spaghetti and meatballs–one of my all time favorite meals, and in my opinion, in the top ten best dishes in the world. But could I take that beloved classic and make vegetarian? I knew I could do it. And for me, the fun is always in the challenge. I was actually surprised just how tasty this ended up being! The zucchini noodles are actually awesome–I will definitely be adding them to my repertoire! And they couldn’t be simpler. This was the first time I’d made falafel from scratch, and while I can’t say it was perfect, my husband said it was the most delicious falafel he’d ever had. High praise from someone who LIVED on the stuff in college.

To potentially contradict my theory on Elizabeth making the finals, there’s this tweet from her husband on July 26th. I have no idea of the shooting schedule of MasterChef and this could just be for the comedy sake of the posed shot, but … she might have been said because they taped her elimination episode before she flew back to NYC. Again, who knows? I love floating theories.

On August 17th, though, she was away again. (Still don’t know the production schedule, but clearly it’s wrapped by now.)

Point is on all this stuff: there’s six left. I’m not sure how they’ll eliminate them, but if I had to guess, this would be my order:

  • Jaime goes out next week (it looks like a stressful test, and she hasn’t been great at those)
  • Cutter goes out the week after (he’s been skating, legitimately)
  • Christian goes out the following week (Leslie does something devious to get him gone)
  • Leslie vs. Courtney vs. Elizabeth gets rid of Leslie
  • The final is Courtney vs. Elizabeth

Obviously they may edit it differently and eliminate two at a time, etc. — but that’s my best guess for the final six.

Your thoughts?

Ted Bauer

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One Comment

  1. Spot on. I feel however it would be a guy girl final like the past 2 seasons of masterchef , alongside Masterchef Junior.

    I have a feeling either cutter or christian goes home next. Christian for the past 2 episodes were in the bottom 2. These are my predictions:

    Top 5 (in order)

    1. Courtney
    2. Leslie
    3. Elizabeth
    4. Christian
    5 Cutter

    Im rooting for elizabeth and leslie!

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