@Wagomu:
On the other hand, I think exceptions are well within the rules. Not that I think it's a great thing, but Doujima had pulled the twist crap before when Megumi was cooking against Veggie Tales. It gives me the impression that shitty twists are just a part of the dude's personality like the villain from Saw or the guy who narrates the Twilight Zone.
Exceptions are kind of outliers so by nature they kind of break rules I think.
The thing with Doujima it was framed differently in my opinion so it didn't really feel like it broke the rules.
Shinomiya himself said that Shokugekis with outsiders aren't unheard of and it made totally sense because of Soma being Soma, it's totally in character that he would challenge that judgement so I didn't really have problems with it, also the trade off was nice character progression(for Megumi and Shinomiya).
And in the end Shinomiya recognizes after the whole thing was over that it was a charade from the start anyway.
The indecision of what's her name again though I feel like doesn't really makes sense at all, it's even worse that it was presented as a first in Tootsuki history.
It invalidates the purpose of having an uneven number of judges.
It makes me question why the hell an expert on the forefront of western cuisine can't do her job despite being arguably the most qualified person in the room.
Yet all the other judges could do it, the excuse that these dishes were supposedly so close is pretty mighty weak when you put it against the professionalism and qualification that the judges should have. All in all just super cheap dramatization.
And the payoff for all that is mighty weak too. I can't sustain any kind of suspense based of oh cool characters are duking it out. Right now this has been as interesting to me as reading fanfiction of Naruto vs Luffy vs Ichigo, because you gotta have cooooool characters fighting fuck all reason of why it would happen in the first place.
Like the only thing I could get behind with this was the director allowing this three way match, because from his perspective it's pretty much like "we gathered all these people anyway so fuck it and lets make it more special".
Or TLDR I think Soma's strength as a series is its characters and because of that I have a strong preference for the plot serving the characters instead of the reverse.