Mark H88 says:

While that bugs me as well, I do have to admit that I can understand what the point is. They never really explain it on NFNS, but they always seem to put it in perspective on the Cake Challenges. Keegan is always saying that things are going to go wrong in challenge and you should never expect to come in and do a perfect job. The whole point of the competition is “Who screws up the least” and how people deal with failure. The same thing happens on “Chopped”. As much as the judges will rip you apart for serving undercooked food, they also hate when contestants give up at the last minute and not put something on the plate because it isn’t finished cooking.

That’s the way I feel these NFNS challenges are all about. They don’t spend enough time with these people to really get a good sense of their personalities, so they give them these ridiculous challenges (that are pretty much set up for failure) in order to see which one of them can handle the pressure better. It’s almost like you can tell a lot about a person by what they don’t do as opposed to what they do do (know what I mean?).

I think these “2 minute, Tell your life story and cook at the same time” demonstrations are meant as a way to tell who can handle the pressure. Just look at the “winners” of some of these camera challenges. None of the winners are really that great. They usually win because they were more calm and collected and focused. I believe that’s why Whitney was let go. While she could cook really well and had a “natural” way about her, that naturalness didn’t exactly come through on camera. I worked in TV for many years and have come to realize that you have to overemphasize aspects when it comes to TV. Natural in real life comes across as very boring on TV. You almost have to have sort of an exaggerated version of your naturalness in order for it to feel natural when on TV.

And I also think a lot of the judges criticism is made up for the show. Being a star requires you to take criticism (even if it’s untrue). Just look at that Facebook note that Jyll wrote. She bitched about how the selection committee constantly said she wasn’t funny, when all she did was crack jokes. Well honey, maybe that’s the reason why you were booted off? Maybe they threw those comments at you to see if you can handle it and when you started to cry and get defensive, they realized you weren’t ready to be a star.
It’s under the most stress, criticism, and ridiculous pressures when the you see a persons true “star” potential. If you can’t handle the stupid challenges on this show, how are you going to handle being on TV??