Every year – every freaking year – there’s always a running theme. MasterChef is nothing if not a concentrated microcosm of bullshit food trends, and jesus christ is Back to Win ever the most glaring example of that. Because it’s barely week three of this cursed, life-draining show, and I am already considering building a time machine, travelling back to February when they were filming, and stomping every godforsaken Hibachi Grill into the dirt right in front of them.

These fiery little hell boxes are ruining my life. I hate them. What once was an occasional novelty in seasons of yore has this year turned into an inescapable glowing box of smoke and doom.

Like sous vide machines or bloody blast chillers before them, apparently there is not a single recipe in this year’s MasterChef that doesn’t require the two-hat version of a Bunsen Burner.

I cannot put my finger on why these sizzling little hell pits annoy me so much. Maybe it’s the fact that they kick up more smoke than four 17-year-olds dutching out a 1997 Ford Laser with its windows stuck shut. Maybe it’s because anything that gets chucked onto one immediately turns to boot leather no matter what it is. Or maybe it’s the fact that I don’t actually believe they’re real; that they’re just old wooden milk crates that someone’s Gorilla Gripped a glow stick in; that there’s a tube running through the bench connected to a fog machine that some production intern is absolutely hammering off-screen like it’s a Year 8 formal and the DJ dropped Bangarang while the teachers are on smoko.

Look at this ridiculous shit. What’s even happening here.

What’s that. What the fuck is happening there. It looks like Rose is incinerating a box of alive Troll Dolls. That’s the kind of shit you’d expect to see in Ghostbusters. That’s not a food thing. That’s a stage effect. If you want to cook something over that gentle a heat just suck back half a bottle of ghost pepper sauce and breathe on it for 20 minutes because that is literally the same thing.

I hate them. I hate them so much. Fuck off outside and chuck your squid on the Weber for god’s sake. Enough with the damned Hibachi Grills already. Please.