WHAT'S the most boring show on television?
What do caffeine-addled footy players watch when they're waiting for the Valium to kick in? What enables harried mums to get fractious babies to slip into slumberland?
MasterChef.
Wait, wait, wait. I'm not talking about the regular program - the five-nights-a-week phenomenon uniting families around the glowing hearth.
I mean the Friday night "Masterclass" variant of MasterChef, where contestants stand around learning the finer points of rhubarb crumble and snail porridge.
I love cooking and I proudly count myself among the millions of Australians who enjoy watching other enthusiastic foodies being challenged and tested and ritually humiliated over a hot stove on a nightly basis - but after an hour of Friday night Masterbore, I felt like I'd been on a drip of pure Colombian chamomile tea.
With the slightest effort I could have slipped into a Zen trance and begun levitating off the sofa.
I had a desperate desire to change the channel to see if Lateline was on yet, but all my muscles had begun to atrophy and my core temperature had dropped below the level necessary to sustain life.
As waves of dialogue lapped the edges of my consciousness, all I could do was stop my eyeballs from rolling back into my head.
"Can I use soy milk in this recipe?" asked contestant Jimmy Seervai, looking concerned on behalf of the hordes suffering silently through dairy-intolerant hell.
"George," asked Adam Liaw thoughtfully, "not everyone's got a cappuccino machine at home, so can you get a similar aeration of that anglaise and milk mixture in a bain-marie or something if you're whisking hard enough?"
Mmm-mm-mm.
The producers were trying their best to introduce an element of drama, with slashes of aspirational bong-bong-bong music.
"The Chinese believe the number eight brings fortune," said judge George Calombaris in an avuncular tone. "You're the top eight amateur cooks in this country, battling it out."
Chef Gary Mehigan murmured, "I love vanilla", as a steaming pan of milk twinkled his eyelashes with tiny dew-droplets. "You can see why they use vanilla in perfumes, because it's such a beautiful, beautiful smell."
Oh, sorry, did you say something? I must have nodded off.
Where's the drama? Why is nobody crying? Won't someone pick up that meat-cleaver and fling it at the wall?
You may wonder why I submitted myself to the snooze-fest.
It was because, after last week's shock-horror reaction to the eviction of the people's princess, favourite contestant Marion Grasby, I thought it was worth examining the master stock that creates this incredible program.
The Friday night version is MasterChef in the raw, bringing together masters and apprentices to teach and learn.
Sorry, but it's just not ever going to fly as prime-time television.
The Friday night style of collaborative, beard-stroking hugathon is warm and cosy, but it's not going to make any money for the producers or the broadcasters.
It certainly won't drag in the viewers, the syndication deals or the product-placement squillions, which ensure we all understand the importance of extra-thirsty kitchen towels for messy kitchen spills.
And this is the whole point of MasterChef - a point worth remembering when you're enraged about how stagey and made up it is.
If you strip away the confected melodrama, the pseudo danger and tantric tension, the show isn't really much fun at all. And that's why MasterChef's essential elements are the dramatic music and the brutal evictions, the crazy two-minute challenges and the sprinting back and forth with flaming pans.
They're all essential to the recipe.
Like it or not, they're the reason you enjoy Masterchef.
So why do viewers get so angry when someone like Marion gets punted?
Look at the show from a cold business perspective and the strategy's pretty obvious: build someone up as a favourite, promote her chances as heavily as possible, ensure she remains involved until at least the crucial final weeks, and then drop her like a soggy profiterole.
Brilliant! More page one photographs, more hits on the website - it's all good news. Unless, of course, you happen to be the unfortunate Marion, or one of the remaining candidates, such as Aaron, who claims he's afraid to leave his own front door lest he's ambushed by some crazed fan wearing a chorizo-spattered tracksuit.
It might be tagged "reality television", but in fact MasterChef's grip on reality is a bit like my grip on trigonometry - I know how to spell the word, but that's about all.
The only real surprise is that anyone would expect such a successful franchise to be any different.
Having created the pattern with the 2009 series, MasterChef's producers are well aware of how to roll: the favourite contestant shouldn't win every time.
That means there's a sense of genuine risk every night. If I know the beautiful Eurasian chick is going to win every time, be she Poh Ying Leow of 2009 or Marion Grasby of 2010, I've got no real need to tune in.
Face it, fans: MasterChef is the new iSnack 2.0 - a massive try-on by a bunch of clever people who know exactly how to push Australians' buttons.
Remember iSnack? It was the "new Vegemite" released by Kraft last year. The company held a competition to find the best name for their new product, a blend of Vegemite and cheese-flavoured whey protein compounds.
After announcing that iSnack 2.0 was the winning name, Kraft executives crawled under their desks and chortled together like schoolboys while the predictable tornado of outrage whirled around them.
"Oh dear, we appear to have made a dreadful mistake and we're horrified that our product is on the front pages of every newspaper and dominating all forms of terrestrial media," they eventually said, struggling to maintain straight faces.
Kraft announced another public poll to find a new name, which lodged more than 30,000 votes and resulted in the name "Vegemite Cheesybite" and another round of fuss and bluster.
See? Everyone wins.
MasterChef is a fabulous addition to our television landscape, I think.
It's a clever, elaborate, largely positive program about talented people learning new things. It's also a giant con -- and that's why we like it.
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