MasterChef recap: We now know for certain that faves are better than fans

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It's SEMI-FINAL day! There is only one SEMI-FINAL in MasterChef, because the producers of MasterChef don't know what a SEMI-FINAL is. In any case, tonight is the night on which three become two, like in that Spice Girls song about changing your mind in the middle of a threesome. Billie, Sarah and Dan are going head to head to head to achieve their dream of obliterating the dreams of others.

We begin with the slow-motion montages, to remind us that this is not just a cooking competition; it's a cooking competition for people who have emotions about things. To sum up the opening sequence: Billie had a kid and a farm; Sarah owns restaurants; Dan walks on beaches.

The three enter the kitchen to wild applause from the assembled losers on the balcony. "They're just as excited as we are," says Jock dishonestly about the seething morass of personified jealousy standing above. The judges have come dressed in their best: Melissa cosplaying as Elizabeth Banks in The Hunger Games; Jock resplendent in a kilt of authentic Zonfrillo tartan; and Andy in clothes.

The challenge: a three-course menu for 20 diners, who don't matter, and the judges. Assisting them in the task will be Shannon Bennett, who they found hanging around outside the building asking for a job. Throughout the cook, Bennett will be offering hostile eyebrow movements and passive-aggressive comments to the three finalists.

The challenge begins. Shannon, who is supposed to be assisting the cooks, hangs out with the judges instead. Melissa thanks him for being there, as he has come entirely out of the goodness of his heart with no thought of reward.

Sarah declares that her menu is inspired by the most inspirational person she's ever met: Sarah. She is fusing Indian and French flavours, for much the same reason a fish swims or a bird flies or Melissa Leong says "glossy". Meanwhile Billie has come to realise that she loves cooking dishes that stem from memories, and has therefore given up cooking dishes that she has forgotten. Billie's dessert will be a lamington, as she hopes to not only proceed to the MasterChef final, but also raise money for the netball team's trip to Cowra.

Dan is working on his entree, which requires him to take an enormous fish and make it smaller. Shannon demands to know what Dan is doing. Dan explains that he is going to make the big fish taste good. Shannon tells him that his entree and main are too similar, as they both include fruit and fish. "If I'm a diner out there I'm wanting variation," says Shannon, conveniently ignoring the fact that he's NOT a diner out there; he's a pedantic ponytail man in here. Dan takes Shannon's advice and decides to take the pineapple out of his entree. Or out of his main. One of them. Or maybe both of them? I'm not really clear on what Dan's doing. Neither, I think, is Dan. He burns some paperbark, hoping this sacrifice will please the gods.

Melissa announces that there are two hours until service, applauding gingerly as any violent movement could cause the souffles on her shoulders to deflate. Sarah confides in the viewer that she needs to get all the prep done before service, which does seem like a reasonable assessment of the law of cause and effect. However, she says this in an interview to camera after the service is over, so a temporal paradox threatens to ruin the entire experience.

Shannon comes over to Billie's bench to make noises of arousal in the direction of her mousse. "That mousse looks good," say his lips. "Want to come back to mine and comb the paprika out of my ponytail?" say his eyes. Meanwhile Sarah is peeling scampi with scissors in a delightful seafood-themed homage to Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder. Jock and Andy come to talk to her and prevent her from concentrating. They mock her for not having made her salsa. "Honestly, I have a lot to do," Sarah tells them, because it's against competition rules to say "f--- off you dumb ----s".

While Billie does weird things with mussels and broth, Dan works on building up a sweat. His T-shirt is thoroughly soaked and he feels confident that the sweat element of his meal will be strong. "We're pretty hungry," says Jock, "but we're nowhere near as hungry as these guys," he adds, gesturing to the diners who are entering the kitchen having been held in a detention facility with no food for the last three weeks.

Sarah has peeled her last scampi. Not just for tonight, but for the rest of her life: even seeing another scampi will from this day forward trigger violent nerve spasms in her. Service starts in one minute, and it's definitely a tense time for the three semi-finalists, all of whom are desperate to act as if it matters whether they're late or not.

Service begins. The sinister black-clad wait staff – or as they were known in the original novels, "Dementors" – begin taking entrees to the starving members of the public, who weep as they realise their ordeal is finally over.

Billie is racing to cook her duck breasts for main course, even as she is sending her entrees out. Shannon comes round to advise her that she runs the risk of overcooking the main, and that like Bugs Bunny in drag, she may want to turn down the duck.

Meanwhile, Dan is serving raw fish for entree, being far too lazy to bother cooking it. "I wanted it to somehow reflect home," he says, thinking of good old Darwin and how it, too, is usually raw.

Dan's entree, lemon myrtle cured kingfish and a bunch of other stuff, is served to the judges. It certainly looks good: almost exactly like what you might feed to a pet stingray. "I don't know how he does it," says Andy, referring either to Dan's cooking or his silky blond locks. The judges adore the entree and say weird things like that paperbark tastes good.

Billie fires her entrees out. "I feel like I have bigger fish to fry," she says, her brain too addled to remember that in fact her main course is duck, not fish. The judges taste her mussels in horseradish soup. "I'm on the fence," lies Andy, who is sitting in a chair. "It's an interesting one, not altogether sure I love it," says Melissa, gesturing at Jock's kilt. The judges agree that Billie's balance is out, which is one of the cardinal sins of MasterChef despite nobody really knowing what it means.

Sarah's entree goes out: the scampi that have taken up most of her adult life. The judges, after checking to make sure it's definitely Sarah's, claim to love it.

With entrees served, it is time to finish mains. Everyone is very frantic, almost as if the time given to them to complete a three-course meal for 23 diners was pathetically inadequate on purpose to manufacture drama. Billie prepares her mains, while the losers on the balcony, who are not permitted to eat today, clap and whistle. She slices into her duck breasts and discovers they are overcooked. There is nothing for it: she will have to emigrate.

The judges taste Billie's duck and agree that Billie should be horsewhipped through the centre of town for committing a sin so grievous as very slightly overcooking a piece of duck. They condemn her filthy soul to hell.

Sarah's main is lamb with a spinach puree, inspired by Sarah's travels in the mysterious East. Meanwhile Dan puts his fish on the hibachi. "You cannot stuff it up now," says Shannon, underestimating Dan's up-stuffing ability. The fish sticks to the hibachi. An eerie choir begins singing of fate and despair in the background, while Billie sends out her last mains, relieved that she no longer has to gaze upon the horrors she has wrought.

Sarah and Dan have still not sent out their mains, and the judges are considering doing something unprecedented: penalising a contestant for failing to complete the task they were set. Dan's fish is not cooperating, while Sarah is realising that cooking on TV is nothing like running a restaurant, where you can just give people their food whenever you feel like it.

As the diners' stomachs gently bloat, Sarah finally starts to get her mains out (not a euphemism). Dan, against all odds, does likewise. The judges taste his coral trout first. His skin is rubbery. The skin on his fish, I mean. His own skin seems fine. Also Melissa doesn't like his sauce, though Jock does like his sauce. They bitterly argue for several hours. Overall, the judges know Dan rushed his main and he will be judged in a higher court.

Sarah's lamb eventually finds its way to the judges' table. "It was worth the wait," says Andy, happy to ignore the requirements of the challenge. Sarah's tactic of taking twice as long as her competitors to cook a dish has paid off in spades.

After entree and main, the finalists stick strictly to hoary tradition by serving dessert. First Billie's fancypants lamington. It is wonderful, transporting all who eat it to a magical land of the senses where all one's needs are met by lamingtons and it doesn't even matter how long a duck is cooked for.

"Get your mousse ready," Shannon growls at Sarah, his experience in the Marine Corps really coming to the fore. Sarah gets her pears out and finds they're not cooked through. Luckily she has a solution: just take a really long time again. Shannon tells her no. Sarah reels, unfamiliar with the word.

Dan and Sarah, having made the judges wait for their mains, have decided to play the old favourites and make them wait for dessert as well. A week or so after Billie's Sarah's "Masala chai pears" come to the table. The pear is undercooked, because apparently pears take months to cook properly and no one in their right mind would cook one.

Dan, having benefited from a total absence of assistance from Shannon, realises that he left his sorbet in the blast chiller. This means the sorbet is one solid block and unusable. Bits of fruit and pastry begin flying around the kitchen as Dan flails like a beached dugong. Somehow, via an unknown process, the pineapple tarte tatin goes out – without sorbet. "It's great on paper," says Andy, but sadly paper would've been tastier. The judges put on their best sad faces.

The time has come to decide whose life is going to be ruined today.

Before the scores are given, everyone thanks Shannon Bennett for all his hard work standing around looking at the food.

Jock surprises everyone by telling them that being late with service is actually going to matter tonight. We then roll through the entrees (Dan good, Sarah good, Billie bad), the mains (Billie bad, Dan bad, Sarah good but several days late) and desserts (Billie good., Sarah bad, Dan horrible).

In the end, serving dishes late combined with those dishes not being very good sends Daniel home. We now know for certain that faves are better than fans. Dan goes home to Darwin, to continue putting out fires, but this time ones he started himself while trying to grill squab. Tune in tomorrow, when EVERYTHING IS ON THE LINE.