The Julie Goodwin Masterchef Result Shits Me!
I’m just going to add my voice to the enormous amount of material on the internet already regarding MasterChef Australia’s result last night that Julie Goodwin, the somewhat dumpy IT employee was the best of all the contestants. She’s not, that was clear to a majority of viewers it would seem, maybe the judges were too close to the action?
I have watched many episodes of the original series from the UK and never once did I feel the judges were favoring a particular contestant. It’s rare in my view to find an Australian remake of an American or English hit TV show being up there in the same high quality, think Australian Survivor, good lord, that was awful. But, MasterChef Australia was very good, the production value was excellent, the guest chefs, everything about this Australian version was top notch, except for the judging decisions.
Chris and Poh should have been the final two and either of them winning would have been satisfactory.
I was pleased that Kurtis invited Poh over to do some filming in America with him, and I think Chris will do well, he’ll find some backing to help realise his plans for a restaurant. Chris and Poh were present, they had personality and passion for what they were doing. Julie was a bumbling fool.
If the producers want to avoid this sort of thing in the next series, they must make most of the judgments “blind”. For example, in the final episode, the chocolate dishes should have been presented to the judges as A and B, the judges must not know who produced the dish. They will not be able to remain objective to personalities, they’re human, but if there was any encouragement from the producers then it’s even worse. They should make the judgments blind even if just for the viewers. The viewers will think it’s a fair contest even if the producers tell the judges who prepared dish A and B.
It shits me that the producers were this inconsiderate of the viewers and allowed Julie to win, I think you’ll see her fade away with her $100K, whereas I think you’ll see Poh on TV cooking of some sort and Chris will get his restau opened, and good luck to them both. What do you think?
Check this out too at ClubWah, seems the Daily Telegraph got the right result!
Don.
Reader Comments
Hey, that’s a bit nasty and stop knocking someone like Julie who has obviously shown the judges and the Australian public that she has shown great technique, has studied and learnt from the best chefs in Australia and taken on board the judge’s critiques. Unless your a master foodie yourself, leave the judging to the experts!
Carol,
I respect your opinion. I think it’s naive though to think that the producers are not out to maximise ratings and the demographic of people watching this was mums with their kids.
Don.
Julie in IT? Can you imagine the hysterics that Julie would go into if she saw a computer bluescreen?!
I agree that the judges did favour the demographic, and were kind to Julie. The $100k will go to good use with her family and I do believe that it went to a good cause.
However, while Julie is the winner of the show I do believe that in the longer-term the personalities who will rise will be Chris and Poh. Poh is out there like Jenny Kee, while Chris proves that men can cook meat with passion.
Thank you Trish!
Julie was prone to a dash of panic and there’s often plenty of reasons to do that in IT!
Don
I totally agree with you. If we were to re-wtch the entire series and count the amount of times that Poh had made the Judges exclaim loudly her praises and their love of her innovative style and then see what they said about the majority of Julie’s dishes we would see that they definately backed the wrong horse. Achieving a medium quality food standard should not win you a prize . Julie should have “Wowed” the judges and us and she just didn’t. I most certainly do not need to buy a book from her to learn any of her skills or concepts of food as I too understand the basics of cooking.
Sian,
Good point about the whole program results, I did not watch much at all over the first 11 weeks, but I bet you’re spot on!
Don.
Don,
It sounds like you have too much time on your hands. How about instead of critisism, get off your backside and do better. I very much doubt that will be anytime soon. So in the meantime use the old adage of if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
Chris,
Thanks for your input. The whole point of this website is to try and improve things in our society and without expressing an opinion and providing an alternative approach then people will not be able to improve. If we only ever say anything nice then nothing will ever improve, but that’s just my opinion and thank again for yours!
Don.
Don,
How on earth do you improve a student by harshly criticising them?
- I ask, how would this work for you?
and how will bagging someone you will never meet “improve society”?…. get a grip!
You have done this so cowardly over the internet- you are nothing more than a faceless bully
Are you Chris or Rose? Same email, same location? Or two of you share the computer maybe? Anyway….
If you have another read you’ll see I’m trying to improve the program, not the students. I’d like the producers to improve the judgment process so that we do not see the preferential treatment for the contestant that represents their majority viewer demographic, and to that end I offered a suggestion of blind judgment and you may have noticed the compliment on the excellent production quality. As far as your claim of cowardice goes, if you can organise for me to meet the producers I’ll tell them to their face. As far as harshly criticising students goes, didn’t the judges do that time and time again, and Julie and the others improved didn’t they?
Don.
Janine and Poh should have been the two finalists but sorry ,although I thought Chris was a good cook he certainly needed to have a good scrub up as he looked dirty and scruffy to me . Compare the appearances of the guest chefs and none of them looked like Chris.And the hat? Chris was also very critical of some of the other contestants which was unnecessary.As to some of your critics Don If they can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.Ha Ha.
So now that all the hype has died down, are we going to see a rise in Australian’s interest in cooking? And if so will it be sustained for more than a few months…
Good question David. So you’re saying, despite anyone’s views on the program, winners and losers, has the program had an impact on the Australian public’s desire to cook, and preparedness to do so, rather than consume even more take-away and gain even more kilos of fat. I can offer this observation, I asked a nine year old last night during Idol if he’d like to audition for Idol when he’s 16, he said he wants to enter MasterChef. I didn’t expect that, especially when he’s quite the performer. Will we see a drop in take-away and prepared meals? I hope so, as this would be a good thing and it would probably mean more people are cooking. I guess the volume of sale of fresh produce would be another measurement. We’ll wait and see.
I didn’t see anything dirty about Chris. The fact that he wore a hat, didn’t stop him from being the best CHEF. He was fantastic. His whole approach to cooking was confident and competant. At least he wasn’t sweating profusely into the food, like our muddle puddle Julie. OMG she was just dreadful. LAUGHABLE.
Julies idiotic book idea got her across the line. That fogettable “special guest judge” influenced the sychophantic psychos that masquersded as the “regular” judging panel. Julie was a good “cook” like countless other mothers (and some fathers)across this great land, but the show was called Master Chef…. one more time for the dummies MASTER CHEF
I am British and have been watching the show over here avidly since it began. I have to say that I am apauled by this poor excuse of an artical as it just promotes the cynism of certain viewers. This is contradictory as, one moment, you are defending Chris and Poh’s ‘personality’ and then saying that the judges should be blind to personality – make your mind up! I’m not biased for Julie; the only person I had real feelings about was Poh and her ‘Look how many teeth I have’ expression she wore every 5 seconds but that is a personal issue which, to me, made her come across as false. However, I will admit she had talent (though it was very eratic on many occassions – I beg you not to forget or ignore that. Under pressure she struggled as did Julie.) I am not saying that Julie’s performance was flawless but which contestant’s was? No one was perfect and your comment about the judges being ‘too close to the action’ is, forgive me, stupid. They’re the ones who get the full apreciation of the competition as they are the ones who actually taste the food.
Bibsy,
I had to re-read my post and I stand by what I said, and respect your opinion. I think the fact that Poh is now on TV with her own show speaks volumes about who was better. All I’ve seen from Julie is some pictures of her in a crappy brochure that someone left in my letterbox trying to sell me some cooking utensils. I hope the next Australia series featuring unknowns (the celebrity series was crap) resolves to a more appropriate winner. And I hope you enjoy viewing the Australian series, I reckon it was great, as good as the UK version, which I miss but don’t pay for cable TV anymore. Never mind.
Don.
Well I have watched the whole series in the UK and having just watched the semi final how Julie survived is beyond me. She didn’t even complete her dishes and still went through.
she has been bumbling the whole way through the series and to find out she won it is laughable in the extreme. Her food is ordinary at best.
Thank you Natalie! I am looking forward to the next series which starts over here in a week or two, we’ll see if they’ve made any changes to avoid such a ridiculous result.
As with a few of the other contributors I live in the UK and have watched the show in its entirety and I have to admit that I never expected Julie to win. Whilst I wanted her to go far in the competition, I did feel however that overall she wasn’t one of the better cooks, certainly not good enough to win the show. Sam was another contestant who seemed to hang around longer than I felt he should have, but I won’t go into that. I did however think that Julies idea for a cookbook was an excellent one. I had always thought the finalists would be Poh and Chris and maybe Justine who are all excellent cooks. As to if the show was rigged etc, I’ll leave that to you guys to decide.
Comparing the show to the Uk version, I have to admit that there were elements which were better in the Australian version. The format with the challenges and the contestants living together etc made for a refreshing change, and there was a sense of great support from the restaurant and cheffing industry for the contestants as opposed to the Uk version, where the qualified chefs often looked slightly put out when a contestant was trust upon them for a day.However I wasn’t overly keen on the masterclasses and tended to fast forward most of those.
The one big difference however was the judges, I felt the Australian judges got a little too friendly and a bit personal with the contestants, gosh, all the tears. Perhaps its just the Brit in me that feels that was a bit excessive, but back to my point. Having such an interest in the contestants can often lead to a biased and in most cases unfair outcome. That being said, its your first attempt and as with most things in life, its a learning curve. I am sure lessons have been learned and perhaps some changes will be implemented in the second series, if there is one.
Won’t be investing any time watching Series 2 after the joke result in Series 1 made a mockery of time spent watching it. How Julie won I have no idea. Basic cooking that many Australians could do without too much bother. Nothing special, just like Masterchef Australia.
Thanks for the comprehensive contribution Light, it seems we agree!
I’ll give them another chance Pete, hopefully they realised their poor choices.
Australia show – australian winner. For you asian who want to participate in, just socialize is ok. But don’t expect to be a winner. And when you lose, that does not mean you are a loser. If you have the quality, never worry. People don’t support you all the time in the real life.
It is not skill all about. People need a reason to make you off.
Julie probably a good cook but there was also another possibilities instead of a good cook. But if Poh was the winner. Then it is COMPLETELY nothing wrong with that. That proves everything.
Thanks Bernard, I have mentioned before that Poh has a show on our national TV channel, the ABC, and she’s doing much better than Julie, so I guess it all worked out in the end!
We’ve just completed watching the series on UK tv and I was DELIGHTED Julie won. I felt throughout the series Poo was overly complimented by the judges and felt that art is obviously her first passion. Chris was great and his idea of beer based food and restaurant was brilliant. I am sure he will be in business next time I visit Oz. I am also sure Julie will have a restaurant for me to visit and hopefully her cookbook will be available by then. I thought the idea she had was brilliant. I was hooked by the show and looked forward to every episode – roll on Australian Masterchef 2010.
Hi Sue,
I have not heard much about the beer/food dude but Poh has her TV show and Julie has a spot in Woman’s Weekly apparently and a regular cooking spot on our morning Today program. The first episode of MasterChef 2010 aired here last night and it was very good, they had 25 rows of two people all cooking at once, the set was amazing, like an aircraft hanger. I enjoyed it, there was one bit where they pandered to a young good looking girl who was hopeless and I was worried they were going to let her through despite her crap cooking ability, but they didn’t, so I’m pleased, I think I would have had to tune out for the rest of the season if they’d let her thru.
before reading all these comments i knew julie winning master chef was a farse. she was a blubbering idiot and was a home cook not a chef for goodness sake. if she was in the second series there is no way she would have even come close they are all were great cooks and made beautiful dishes. how she ever got her own cooking show i will never know. she new whos heart strings to pull thats all i can say
And I’ve got to say Mary that I’m surprised she has been given a TV show now over one year later and a new season passing with much better and more likable characters!
don you are absolutely right ,this last episode was great with people who could really cook wonderful dishes not just home ccoked meals, they were amazing with what they cooked up,, like i said she wouldnt have come close if she was in the second episode.