Kez and Craig on a knife's edge You can always count on Kerrie and Craig to get heated in the kitchen. So begins the first episode without the constant nit-natter of "babe" every 8.4 seconds, after crowd favourites Ashlee and Sophia exited the competition for making the mind-boggling decision to cook with offal. But anyone who knows anything about TV producers - a tricky bunch who bombard us viewers with characters we hate because we'll sit around and watch in the same way we can't help watching murder scenes in horror movies - was not surprised to find out at the end of last night's episode that being eliminated meant they were not really eliminated at all and the series will be dragged out even longer. As we try to ignore the bizarre voiceover - whose only other work has been on a trailer for Scary Movie 5 - we watch a short recap of last night's episode with the delicious dramatic irony that it was all for nothing. Cool, calm and coiffed ... Jake and Elle are sizzling. With this knowledge in our hot pockets, there's a sinking feeling that we're about to be sucked in to 90 minutes of similarly meaningless drama, albeit without any chance of continuing our sick love-hate relationships with Ashlee and Sophia. Luke and that guy he cooks with seem delighted to have the power to tell the other pairs what they'll cook with; a clear indication the episode was filmed some time ago and they don't yet know, as was proved in last night's episode, if you do get eliminated it actually means nothing. As Manu lifts the lids of three cloches, the music from the shower scene in Psycho is played and we can only assume he's as sick as we are of the pointless episodes and is about to pull out three knives to prevent anyone else from entering the Comeback Kitchen. Unhappy Luke ... clearly the mystery ingredient isn't to his taste. Kerrie tells us the competition is "do or die today" and we see a wicked gleam in Manu's eye. Meanwhile, Pete pipes up to say there are three ingredients for three teams, proving that the producers are indeed competent and that he could have become a maths professor if he had wanted to. Luke says having the power to dictate who cooks with which of Pete's carefully counted three ingredients is "massive," displaying that he has already forgotten Sophia and Ashlee dictated their own demise the night before. And Kerrie seems confused about the difference between cloches and fridges when she says whatever is underneath the cloches won't faze her because she's a mum and usually cooks out of a fridge. Then we're confused as to whether Kerrie is a mum, a cook, or a marine biologist when they're lifted to reveal cherries, ginger and eel and she says "they're yucky, they're awful, they remind me of a snake." Manu's confused as to where his knives are gone and all the contestants breathe a sigh of relief. Luke, now free of the fear of being murdered by a crazed French chef, moves on to being afraid of picking the ingredient that could send him home. They go on to choose the eel for Jake and Elle, a clear indication that they hate them much more than Kerrie and Craig. Luke displays incredible foresight by saying they will either get it right or wrong. Kerrie, who has been nattering on about "Ginger a la Kerrie" and other variations for some time, is given cherries to cook with and says "Cherry a la Kerrie" so fast we think it's something about shells on the seashore. The teams are given an hour on the clock and thankfully for Craig, Kerrie runs over to the cloche instead of the fridge. Craig begins hacking at a duck with the gusto of a crazed woodchopper. When Kerrie asks "Who are you thinking about when you do that?" he refuses to tell her because he doesn't want Manu to overhear his plan for revenge. When he decides to smoke the duck, Kerrie shows just why she's turned him into a murderous beast by being controlling and bossy and dismisses his "little two cents worth" by saying the duck is worthless in comparison to a fruit she can rhyme her name with. Cut to Manu who tells us Craig will probably over-smoke the duck, while Pete gazes on like a confused child. Elle tells Jake, who has decided to cook the eel Japanese-style, they will win because Japanese people have been cooking for centuries. Manu praises Jake's filleting style and plans to copy it to fillet the losing contestants. Pete copies what Manu says so as to give viewers an impression of his remaining relevance. Jake and Elle are obviously confused about how the other contestants feel about them because they say they were given the eel because they're considered a threat. We're reminded that only one team will go straight to the finals after this episode and then shown shots of each pair smiling, which reminds us once again that being eliminated doesn't really mean anything. As Craig fills Kitchen Headquarters with so much smoke we think Constable Care is going to bust in and tell everyone to stop, drop and roll, Kerrie takes a break from rhyming things with her name to start hassling him again. The editors play the Married with Children theme music and all the other contestants laugh at Kerrie and Craig as it slowly dawns on Steph and Dan they'll be exactly the same in thirty years. Pete talks about how the boys are using too much ginger, then editors cut to the boys talking about how great ginger is, so that it's our turn to laugh at them. A second later, the guy that cooks with Luke can't remember the last ingredient he needs for his sauce. It's ginger. Jake and Elle are seeming very competent and we almost decide to like them again until Jake does an accent we assume is Japanese and says "I am the Japanese grill master, hai!" Craig starts throwing chillies into their cherry sauce and Kerrie flips out almost as much as when he did it with the veggie burgers at the start of the week. He still hasn't even realised they rhyme with her name. When they cut open the duck a la smoke it's cooked perfectly. Craig is ecstatic and Kerrie is disappointed because she wanted to call him an idiot. Luke starts talking about how he's rubbing spices into the kangaroo meat he doesn't cook properly and all the female viewers move a few centimetres away from their partners at home as they imagine getting a rub-down from the Hercules on their screens. The editors allow his cooking partner to say something, but we can't remember what his name is, or a few moments later, what he's even said. Jake displays the embarrassment of a mugger trying to rob Crocodile Dundee when Elle tells him the knife he's given her isn't a real knife and he scampers away. The boys are trying to construct leaning towers of kangaroo, Jake and Elle have run out of sauce and Kerrie is frowning at Craig's plating, which looks as he's recreated how one of their children abandoned their toy blocks and threw up on them. Jake says if they lose because of a tablespoon of sauce it will be a disappointment, and Elle, who didn't make enough sauce, knows he is thinking about filleting her. Pete continues his irritating trend of copying other people by saying the married couple made a delicious dish a la Kerrie and Craig. The guy that cooks with Hercules says something else about cooking and not wanting to go to the finals, but it's only included because Hercules is also in the shot. Manu tells Kerrie and Craig how much he loves sauce and we start rolling around on the floor at home because Jake and Elle have spent half an hour worrying they didn't have enough sauce. He then turns to Jake and Elle and leaves enough silence before his next words for Australian Idol to announce the winners of all seven seasons. When he eventually snaps out of a coma he says their dish didn't need a lot of sauce and gives them a ten out of ten; at home we drown our sorrows with a bottle of wine and wonder when Ashlee and Sophia will be back. They go through to the grand final and Elle says it's the best experience of her entire life, confirming our suspicious that her rich parents have never let her out of the house until now. It turns out that Hercules and his sidekick go the same way as Ashlee and Sophia; Manu tells them he's going to put them to sudden death and we have flashbacks of the cloches. In case anyone hadn't yet realised that My Kitchen Rules was unabashedly copying MasterChef, the judges ask the remaining pairs to cook something that sums up who they are and producers rub their hands with glee, waiting for sob stories to come pouring out of the contestants like yolk from an egg. So we go to Manu's favourite round, sudden death. As the remaining pairs return to the pantry, Kerrie shows us she doesn't know how to figure out alphabetical order by asking Hercules if the spices are in alphabetical order. Not even Pete's superior counting skills can help her now. Kerrie and Craig talk about how much their kids love lamb back strap but unfortunately for the producers, none of them are suffering from an illness so there are no tears just yet, not even from Craig when Kerrie, not put off by his success with the duck, calls him an idiot. Craig blatantly steals a line from The Simpsons by telling the health nuts "you don't win friends with salad" and obviously the editors don't realise that show's on Channel Ten because they leave it in, but later make up for it by interspersing the scenes with shots of Renae Ayris in a bikini on Celebrity Splash. Pete says something of his own for the first time when he gets excited about the boys cooking an ancient grain, confusing it with activated almonds. Pete calls Kerrie and Craig "humble" and Hercules "hot," sending all the male viewers off for a jog around the block. Kerrie smokes an eggplant and pretends she was the first person to think of smoking something. Editors are forced to overlay the Married with Children theme song again because Kerrie refused to wear a red wig during filming. Hercules shows he has the same blatant disregard for fish as he had for the Australian national emblem because for the second time in thirty minutes he turns out raw meat. With thirty seconds to go Kerrie and Craig begin to crumble in such a delicious fashion we're already picturing them back home with their healthy children. Suddenly, Pete and Manu are sitting at a table with four strangers and for a second we worry they've introduced another round of intruders. The mysterious foursome isn't introduced to us so we can only assume Manu is holding them hostage. The one that kind of looks like Marco Pierre White and also has an accent is happy with the fish and our suspicions that Pete knows nothing about cooking is confirmed when all four strangers disagree with his favour of the lamb. Cut to Hercules, who says "being eliminated from the competition is not an option," displaying he clearly has no grasp of the word "option" or who's in charge. When one of the mystery foursome tells Kerrie and Craig their dish showed their personality but only gives them a four, the mastery of the tricky producers is revealed because the story never mattered at all. Despite everyone else awarding either a five or six, Pete awards a seven, confirming for audiences everywhere that he knows nothing, When mystery judge Colin awards Hercules' and his friend a six, Hercules' eyes swing around in his skull so far they almost fall out. The mystery jets score Kerrie and Craig low and the boys high and vice versa for Pete and Manu, which is confusing because we don't know who's scoring incorrectly. Either way, the cloaked strangers get their way and Kerrie and Craig are sent to sleep with Hercules' uncooked fish. As they walk out, some suspenseful music starts playing so immediately we know something else is to come. Kerrie and Craig read their own version of the letter Ashlee and Sophia read last night so it turns out they'll join them in the Comeback Kitchen with the father-son pair and the "Italian Mamas." Just when we're about to roll our own eyes out of our head, we see Ashlee and Sophia crying and know we'll tune in.