Dani's food bio turns out to be a write-off

A great thing that marathon runners get ... when the whole of your body starts shaking. Well, I'm bonking furiously," the cheeky judge said with a wink. And he's not the only one - with pressure now building on grand finalists Michael Weldon and Kate Bracks to turn up the simmering ratings.

Audience figures for the cooking juggernaut slowed this week, falling well short of last year's average of 2.1 million viewers. Competition from The Block and the new digital channels, combined with criticism of this year's format, resulted in Thursday night's final-two decider delivering just 1.69 million viewers.

Weldon was a short-priced $1.80 bookies' favourite yesterday, with Bracks pulling favour with the female vote in online polling.

Back at the kitchen, the motorcyclist still hasn't moved his bike, and is no doubt racking up some serious parking fines by now. Inside, by the same token, Michael is racking up serious disgust at his revolting sauce.

But anyway now it's Kate's turn, and the judges look admiringly at the way Kate has encapsulated her entire childhood in a salad, which is what you want in a cook, really. Moving on to the prawns, and “prawn and pumpkin's lovely isn't it?” lies Gary. And then a perfect dessert! Which is not, to be honest, good news for the next contestant.

Dani steps up with some plates of things and a bucket of ice cream, symbolising the fact that throughout her life she's never actually finished anything. Moran hopes that the presentation may not be there, but the flavours will be. HAHAHAHAHA you're funny Matt Moran.

So to the tasting, and Dani has cooked the soup too long, which, to put it mildly, is ironic. Preston looks extremely depressed. Why didn't he swap Alana and Dani's dishes when he had the chance? Her second dish turns out quite well, though, or at least they say it does, but then there is a limit to how cruel a man can be in one day. And then the dessert: frozen chalk in a bucket next to a crusty banana. Mmmm! Amazingly the judges don't seem to care for it.

The contestants are called back in, and Alana shows she has at last cottoned on to what this show is all about, by bursting into tears. Michael says he finds it hard to communicate how much he wants this, but then the next second he does, so it wasn't that hard at all.

“One of you will be Australia's next MasterChef,” says Preston, and we have to cut to an ad break just to recover from the devastating cognitive dissonance this fact causes within us all. Our brains recalibrate themselves by musing on which brand of paint is the choice of 9 out of 10 Old English Sheepdogs.

Back inside, “For one of you, the dream's about to end,” says Preston, which is a relief for Dani, who is hoping she will now wake up and find that she's able to cook. Michael looks depressed. His hair is beginning to contemplate self-harm. Everyone watching is struck with an urgent and irresistible desire to cuddle the nearest teddy bear.

But he has nothing to worry about, of course, because FINALLY, AT LAST, AFTER ALL THIS TIME, Dani is going home. The internet instantly becomes 26 per cent more smug. Dani confesses she feels at peace and that she has done “really well” to get this far. Which is, I suppose, one way of looking at it. She leaves, while the other three head upstairs to toast her absence with the champagne of schadenfreude and eat the canapés of meanness.