Attack of the killer carrots Tatt-Matt attempts to make Christina's carrots seem like an actual challenge ... MasterChef Welcome to the Wild Wild West Elimination where all our dreams come true and a MasterChef contestant is finally shot like a dog in the street for bad cooking ... or wearing clothes that clash with their apron ... or just for being Kelty. Sadly. Tonight according to MasterVoice "those who fell on their sword" will face a challenge, because we've been in the episode for thirty seconds and it was far too much to expect the wild west theme to hold on for that long. We're in Perth and Rishi is staring wistfully out the window doing his impression of a person with a human soul, while he simultaneously sits in the black kitchen of contemplation telling us he's going to give 150% tonight because shockingly he doesn't want to be eliminated. Totem is bunking with Rishi but clearly that doesn't stretch to joint window use so he sits on the bed and we learn, in a turn of events that none of us saw coming, that he is also disappointed in himself and doesn't want to go home, so will, you know, try tonight. End of the culinary road: Totem Douangmala. Rishi entirely without prompting randomly walks to the wardrobe and is shocked to discover two sets of chef's whites with his name and Totem's name on them. His look of bewildered amazement means he's either really not destined to be a chef or that he is destined to win acting awards. Christina is not bunking with that pair for fear of actual drama breaking out on the show so she sits in her room and ... yup, disappointed ... yup, going to try ... yup, got the chef's whites. Through the power of teleportation the three then find themselves walking along the street outside a restaurant with Christina's disembodied voice explaining that she is thrilled to be going into a restaurant here in Perth because she once did the same thing back in the real world. We meet Matt Stone, the owner and executive chef of the Greenhouse, who Gary tells us was named the best young chef in Australia, the best chef in Perth and the most "rock star total hipster" chef by Christina who doesn't like to label people but is really bad with names. Matt Preston looks around for a moment before telling Matt Stone that he can "sense the sustainability" in Greenhouse. Matt Stone, who I'm calling Tatt-Matt henceforth, explains that they have a compost machine on the roof, and it really senses out the joint sometimes. Gary tells us the challenge for the three amateurs who have proven themselves least qualified for the task will be to cook Tatt-Matt's six plate tasting menu for eighty guests, with no help, except for the help they will get from Tatt-Matt. The menu contains "simple dishes" according to Tatt-Matt. They are the six signs of simplicity in the wild west according to custom and they are in turn ox heart, mussels, marron, carrots, emu and a "celebration of autumn." Some of you may have noticed that one of those isn't a dish, but this is the wild west, a frontier state, where rules are broken and a clump of mushrooms is a freaking festival. Tatt-Matt agrees with Tattless-Matt that the pairings are "equally difficult" though some dishes are harder and some are easier. And one is carrots on a plate. Conveniently the three muppets in chefs whites each want a different pairing, so the highly dramatic moment where they choose their pairs is in fact dull, flat and lifeless, which is of course a first this season. Sorry tonight. No, I'm just sorry. Rishi talks us through cooking emu which he hopes to intend to make perfectly which is the sort of positive thinking that could really help out tonight. Rishi recalls that he doesn't want to go home and stresses that he won't get distracted tonight, then he sees a shiny object and wanders off. Totem takes a moment to tell us he is worried about his ox heart, as he hasn't been taking the supplement medication and is worried his body will reject the transplant. And Christina is worried about her carrots because ... ummm ... yeah she's got nothing. I ask you, who worries about carrots? We haven't heard from the other contestants have we? Time's up on that wish fulfilment though as Noelene is in helpful mood, so she takes a moment to tell us that Rishi is easily distracted and that this is likely to mess him up this evening. Gosh its nice to have a cheer squad and the support of your fellow competitors. Christina get started on the marron and immediately finds two instant obstacles. Firstly she can't get them out of the door. They're in their box and no one ever told her spatial sills would be required, but thankfully some crafty face pulling solves that and she shuffles them into the kitchen. Secondly, they're still alive and "like a box of cockroaches." Meet Christina Gump. The marron in fact look like a box of sedated, chilled crustaceans blissfully unaware that Christina will soon needlessly kill and butcher them before serving them up in a dish that will be mostly ruined even before it is not actually served to anyone for three hours until a camera is set up with the right lighting. Perhaps cockroaches would have been a better idea. As one poor marron clings desperately to a sheet of kitchen towelling in a legitimate if fruitless belief that it would make for the best weapon to use against the useless puddle that has just picked it up, we go to an ad. When we return, the dramatic music with beats and strings builds to a synthesized crescendo as Christina uses tongs to herd marin into a roasting pan, toss them like a salad and lob them into the freezer to sleep. She understands that is the humane thing to do. She's wrong. The humane thing would be to compete with one of the marron to see which of them was the better cook, but what would we do once Christina had been stuffed in the freezer? Totem is cooking mushrooms in a fashion that involves him saying "bam bam bam" before skypeing with his mother and telling us the story of his dead father. So post-modern. Tatt-Matt the hipster chef gives the team a hurry up before expressing the fact that "I don't want to be embarrassed tonight." It's lucky horse isn't on the menu tonight Tatt-Matt because that has already bolted. Christina is the exploding oilrig in the middle of a sea of calm as she explains that the marron have really thrown her. Clearly quite the reverse was true, but whose here to be literal? She then again turns to the dreaded topic of the carrots which she fears will ... ummm ... carrot ... at her. Rishi is actually doing something, shredding his ingredients like a shredder to be clear, when Gary and George, the tattoo-free chefs (or so I believe and please don't correct me if there's a heart with MUM written in it somewhere on little Gary) arrive to point out that having some idea of quantities would help. Gary and George then try to help Christine with her biggest issue of the night yet even they can't manage to make carrots sound like a challenge either, so we flashback to the marron in the pan when Christina was fighting them earlier. In fact the producers are currently wishing they'd put a camera in the fridge with the marron so they could run a whole great escape sub-plot. Tatt-Matt and Tatt-Free-Gary-and-George get together to talk up what a huge, massive, insane challenge this is. It sounds almost plausible until: "And what's Christina got to do?" asks Gary of Tatt-Matt. Errr ... Carrots. This is actually getting weird. Totem takes a moment to trump Rishi's backstory by explaining his past as a refugee. Aaaaand with that one statement half of Australia tune out everything else he says as the blood instantly boils in their ears and they storm their entertainment units to spin their television screens because even reality refugees must be turned back. Back in the kitchen, we learn that every fibre of Christina's being is telling her to run and hide. Sadly the same can't be said of the 80 people queued up outside for whom every fiber of their call sheets tell them to walk in and sit (and get paid by their agent in a few weeks less twenty per cent health insurance premium). Christina takes one look at the people, then at her carrots, and then tells us she's freaking out. And carrots are: Still. Daunting. What is daunting is the shaky camera footage used in Australia's Most Wanted along with the uber tight clothing worn by its presenters. Channel Ten: Fighting crime with fashion. Back in the wild west, Rishi takes a moment to gloat. He feels Totem and Christina aren't ready, that their prep is unprepared and that he is looking really good right now if only by contrast to these clawless marron. Tatt-Matt is yelling at the terrible trio because the hungry (paid and stage managed) hordes have arrived. This induces Christina to worry about her ... smile. Which sounds at first about as unworrysome as carrots, but when she demonstrates her terrifying rictus we see this is something to genuinely stress over. Without a hint of special effects or loud inexplicable klaxon noises, the final minute of prep ends and the service time begins, and as if they knew, the orders start to arrive. Tatt-Matt shouts them out and is frustrated when the three chefs don't reply, or move, or demonstrate any sign of cooking skill. Totem is pushing some leaves around a frying pan and Tatt-Matt wins my lifelong admiration for breaking the unwritten rule of MasterChef by walking up to him and telling him he's just stuffing around. The leaves will cook on their own suggests Tatt-Matt, perhaps Totem could actually DO SOMETHING. Tatt-Matt then walks around the kitchen in a supervisory gesture before returning to suggest to Totem who is now working on his mussels, that he keep the frying pan on the heat. Totem says yes, he clearly agrees and understands what Tatt-Matt is saying. Then when Tatt-Matt leaves he carefully takes the pan off the heat again. Tatt-Matt spots this, and somewhat more bluntly suggests, using gestures and very small words that Totem put the pan on the flame. Tatt-Matt says yes chef, but he confides to us that he has cooked mussels before and knows he needs to toss them to circulate the heat. He's just skipping the need to have heat to circulate. This is clearly going to end well. Meanwhile, do you know how you add stress to a carrot? You drop it. Sure, it sounds like a witticism from that Vegetable Jokes for Five-Year-Olds book you wish you hadn't given your niece who now keeps talking innocently about rooting, but it's actually Christina's recipe for adding a dash of difficutly to her lifeless pointed vegetable challenge. So she drops one of her carrots. Tatt-Matt forgets himself momentarily and points out that it just doesn't matter. Someone needs to quietly explain to Christina that they only gave her carrots as a dish because they couldn't find a softer, less pointy, vegetable that they could ensure she didn't hurt herself with that could also legitimately be called a dish. Back at Totem, medical staff have been called as he's demonstrating ever sign of having suffered a stroke. He just cannot seem to process, umm, words. Having now been told, again, that he needs to keep his frying pan on the flame, complete with practical demonstration where Tatt-Matt placed the frying pan ... on the flame. Get this, Totem's worried the heat won't circulate in his frying pan of mussels. So he takes them off. If this was the first five minutes of an episode of House you'd expect to see blood dripping from his ear any moment now. In an even more predictable turn of events, two sets of mussels are sent back by customers who had food-poisoning clauses written into the contracts. "I'm in a bit of trouble here" says Totem which is true. He is having trouble. Trouble understanding basic commands. Trouble comprehending the role of heat in cooking. Trouble convincing us that this won't be the first MasterChef TKO. After the ad, we get to see all the mussel madness once more as the editing team begin to smell a lack of dramatic conclusion coming and then Tatt-Matt yells a lot at Totem and sends out some replacement mussels to the customers with his apologies. He is sorry he ever let this farce occur. Undercooked is a theme this evening as Christina notes that she may have accidentally sent out some raw marron to customers, but hey that's ok as long as no one notices, right?. Errr... PS It's around about now that I note we never saw Christina's "humane" treatment of the marron. Did they all actually hide behind a salad in the fridge and send out a tin of tuna to confuse her? Perhaps they all just pretended to be carrots and she ran away from them in genuine fear? Either way, we're all shocked she managed to bungle the cooking part, right? Anyhow, away from the cook who isn't allowed to use sharp instruments, Rishi is worries he might overcook his emu - which isn't a euphemism but should be - before Tatt-Matt comes over to say its cooked perfectly. Tatt-Matt then stops to yell praise to the trio to the effect that everything is going really well, and has been all night. Now really, he really is overcooking the emu a bit, as that statement flies - well runs really fast and feathered - in the face of everything we've seen so far. Totem takes a moment to celebrate how good he is, which is the cue for more mussels to come back. Tatt-Matt is bewildered, as is Totem but for totally different, yet related reasons. Tatt-Matt promises to lose it if this happens again and in a fit of desperation Totem comes up with an idea: cook the mussels all the way through. Stop tossing them. Who. Would. Have. Thought. Now that the trio have had hours in which to try and ramp their efforts up to edible and non-poisonous, Gary, Tatt-Free-matt and George arrive to taste their wares. The mussels they are served are conveniently well cooked, however the ox heart lacks syrupiness and salt for Preston. At this stage Christina gets to the end of service and tells us that she thinks she's gone really well, so the judges are given her dishes to discredit that entirely. Matt, Gary and George aren't ready to agree with her, but do concur with each other that the marron looks bad but at least tastes awful. "This sadly is a dish that will send someone home" predicts Preston as he chews on the last of his red herring. Then they taste the dish that terrified a nation. The root vegetables are a winner it seems as they feature everything that was lacking in the marron, including the need to really do anything to them before serving. Finally Rishi's dishes are served up, which consists of inconsistently cooked mushrooms that need salt to "taste more mushroomy" and smoky, perfect emu that is labelled a cracker dish by George. Rishi knows in his heart he has failed as autumn has not been celebrated or even toasted by the judges. Service ends ... again (thanks for the spoiler Christina), because the magic of editing works like that ... and Rishi says that he enjoyed every moment while Christina admits she has a sick feeling in her stomach that can only come from eating that raw marron she thought she sent out. Some indeterminate amount of time later the trio face Gary, Matt, Matt and George on the restaurant's rooftop which the keen minded among you will recall features a compost heap. Toss them in the heap! Preston delivers the judges" analysis of the dishes and the sound of applause echoes out to alert us to the fact that the other contestants are up here too. Together they chant: Toss them in the heap!! Tatt-Matt is asked how it went. He tells us that Rishi dominated prep, but there were inconsistencies in his service. Christina on the other hand didn't stab herself with a vegetable once, so he was actually impressed. While Totem had a good prep but also had "inconsistencies" in the service. You see, that's just not fair. If Totem was anything it was consistent. The judges pry in the way of people who have been told by their producers to pry, and Tatt-Matt explains that all-up FOUR dishes of mussels were sent back. Tatt-Matt proves he's not quick to admit defeat as he explains once more how cooking works to Totem who once again nods as though he is in anyway capable of interpreting this information. Toss him in the heap!!! The capacity for drama in this announcement can only be measured on the carrot-terror scale, and even then it only registers a canned baby carrot with a face painted on in texta. As such, George doesn't really bother with suspense and just says Totem's out. They don't. However we can all take some solace in the knowledge that technically, Totem is the first to actually be tossed out of MasterChef for being a tosser. So there's that. Christina takes a moment to heap praise on Totem by saying that while some of the others saw him as cocky and arrogant ... she didn't. That probably won't be a pull-quote on the dust jacket of the Loatian cookbook that we're told Totem is working on based upon his family's recipes which at no point require things to actually be cooked. Oh and on a side note, the promo tells us that tomorrow night Gary will "whip out the mortar and pestle" and thankfully that isn't a euphemism ... and shouldn't be.