My Kitchen Rules and comedy writing

It's all artifice, I'm sure, but watching early episodes of My Kitchen Rules makes for particularly amusing viewing in terms of watching how the "baddies" are identified and play up to their allocated role for the season.

This year's team are a full on "11" on the annoyance factor scale - married, rich, young, gym fit lawyers.  (Well, apparently they are, because it is hard to believe that practising lawyers - he looks like a barrister? - would make themselves such easy targets for ridicule if they are working in the public eye each day.)   As Ben Pobjie - always the funniest Fairfax reviewer of this show - accurately writes, this is how Zana plays her role:

Zana reacts to the menu the way she reacts to everything: by sticking her lips out a metre in front of her face and looking like she's just been asked to bathe in urine. Zana thinks the menu is too simple. Zana thinks the human race is too simple. Zana is so sophisticated it's taking all her self-control to not spit on everyone at the table. Zana gets a look at the entrée and there is no vinegar on her rocket, which means "it's just lettuce", which means her mouth is now twisted into such a vicious sneer she's in danger of dislocating her jaw. Though why someone who doesn't know the difference between lettuce and rocket should act so superior I couldn't tell you....Zana is also no fan of the chips. She prefers her own chips. "Whose are better?" she asks Gianni, the threat of castration implied in her eyes. He agrees that his wife's chips are better than the strangers' chips, and Zana resumes sucking her invisible lemon with a look of triumph.

Funny stuff.