Fans are speculating whether MasterChef Australia judges Andy Allen and Melissa Leong will quit the show following the death of friend and co-star Jock Zonfrillo.
The Scottish chef was found dead in Melbourne on May 1, which prompted the Season 15 premiere of MasterChef to be pushed back a week.
Now, as the latest instalment unfolds on-screen, fans are wondering whether Andy and Melissa will return to the show next year as Ten begins the search for Jock’s replacement.
“Has anyone ever thought, ‘What if Mel and Andy decide not to continue being judges next season?'” one Facebook user wrote on a MasterChef fan page.
“That crossed my mind too,” another fan admitted.
Other viewers noted that it wouldn’t be the first time Ten scrapped an entire judging panel. In 2019, the network bid farewell to longtime judges Matt Preston, George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan.
“Like in any other job, none of us are indispensable,” one netizen wrote. “There will always be someone to take our place no matter how loved, talented they/you/we are.”
However, there were a number of loyal fans who said Jock would want Andy and Melissa to continue fronting MasterChef without him.
They wrote: “I’m sure Jock would not want them to quit. TV is a tough gig to get into, and being a judge on our much-loved MasterChef is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and an honour.”
MasterChef Australia viewers ‘annoyed’ over judges’ ‘boring’ opinions
The speculation comes as fans took to Reddit to call out the way the judging trio assess the chef’s dishes.
“Does it bother you that all the judges are always in complete agreement?” one user wondered. “It kinda annoys me that they never have an actual personal opinion or disagree with each other.
“Why not just have one judge then?”
A second viewer wrote: “I’m with you, even though I understand we are getting a very ‘produced’ judging.
“I think it would be nice to have Andy really like a dish but Mel really isn’t a fan — like they can’t all have identical palates… Surely we’ve been at restaurants where one person didn’t like their dish but another tried it and enjoyed it.”
Not all Redditors resonated with this gripe, though.
“Maybe the dish is either too bad, or too good,” one reasoned. “Or maybe the judges have similar palate, so that they always reach consensus.
“Sometimes they edit out the mediocre dishes, which might not be considered unanimously good or bad. On the contrary, the Masterchef America judges always [disagree with] each other, for drama mostly.”
The judging isn’t the only thing fans have taken issue with this season.
In recent weeks, they’ve also called out MasterChef‘s “unhygienic” antics and “underwhelming” competition.
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