The Block All Stars – Sun 6:30pm; Mon-Thu 7pm, Ch9
http://homes.ninemsn.com.au/theblock/
Once more we check in with the Blockheads on The Block: All Stars, and all the promo promises us is that someone will be mean to Jenna. But she’s the nicest one! I guess. We don’t hear from her much.
The voiceover man catches us up on last week, when Dan and Dani, and Josh and Jenna conspired to win the power-saving challenge and gain an advantage over Phil and Amity. This probably means that it’ll come up again today, finally putting an end to ElectricityGate and letting us as all – as a nation – move on.
The tradies that each team received yesterday visit the houses to be given their jobs. Dan welcomes his handyman, Phil his plasterer, Josh his carpenter, while Duncan and Dale have both a painter and a landscape gardener. Duncan can’t stop talking about how big these guys are, and I wonder if he’s impressed or terrified. Maybe both. I’d be both.
Phil and Amity are picking up furniture for their living room, but Amity makes Phil wear a zip-up hoodie over his “Blockaholic” shirt. Does she not realise what show she’s on? This sort of stuff is unavailable, Amity. Bad “Block” puns, seven O’Block, every blockin’ night.
Back at their house, Keith is uncovering some dramas. Some incorrect measurements have resulted in the fence protruding in Duncan and Dale’s land, after Brad – one of the site tradies – has gone and concreted in all of the fence posts. Now, this might seem a crazy idea, guys, but; couldn’t you just all line up and push the houses away from the fence? Your guest tradies are pretty big guys. Just ask Duncan.
Down the road, Dani is trying to get a free-standing shower happening in their backyard. It looks nice, and I get that you’re excited about it, but I have only one question… why?*
*Come to think of it, this question could be asked of many things that happen on The Block. Probably best to leave it alone.
We then check back in at Phil and Amity’s place, where Keith is telling Brad that he’ll have to dig up the fence posts he’s just concreted in and move them back to the correct place. Brad goes to Phil and Amity and suggests going to Duncan, who has the place next door, and asking if he’ll let them just claim the extra two hundred millimetres of his land and leave the fence where it is. Perhaps – and this is another crazy idea, but we have to think outside the Block – you could come to some sort of Indecent Proposal-style arrangement? If I remember correctly, it all worked out perfectly fine for everyone in the movie.
Meanwhile, there are other dramas afoot. Amity thinks that other teams are giving her the cold shoulder, because she and Phil are doing so well. Jenna tells us that, at dinner, Amity told them all how much older and wiser she is, and how much more her house would sell for. Amity tells us how much happier she’ll be when the competition is over and she can go back to hanging out with people she actually likes. Basically, it’s all very high school, and I’m just waiting for somebody to call somebody else a mole, and maybe chuck their backpack over the fence.
Later, Josh is building an outdoor kitchen. Between this and Dani’s outdoor shower, I wonder what will actually be inside the houses. Barbecues? A swing set, maybe?
Down the block, Amity is pitching Brad’s land deal to Duncan and Dale. Dale tries to claim a percentage of Amity’s house sale price in return for the land, but Amity is having none of it. Brad is put out, but hey, it was his mistake. You’re lucky they’re not concreting you inside a porch (do they do that on The Block? I’m sure they did it in season one).
Later, Phil and Amity have an argument about Phil’s spray paint job. She thinks he did a terrible job and got paint everywhere, while Phil thinks that he doesn’t like getting yelled at and just wants the argument to go away (he doesn’t use those words, but… you know. We’ve all been there).
The next day, Phil puts up a lot of tarps to avoid a mess (and, more importantly, to avoid getting yelled at), and fixes the paint job. Sort of – they realise that they got two colours mixed up and now their mezzanine doesn’t match the portion of the ceiling that they just completed. Amity refers to this as “disastrous”, because she’s never heard of earthquakes.
Later, Scott summons them all to headquarters. He reveals the Great Cosentino (?), who runs a three card monte game to give the teams a chance to win some cash. I have no idea what any of this has to do with home renovation, but maybe Scott’s hinting at the fact that all of the houses will be swapped around with massive cranes in the finale and they’ll have to guess where theirs is.
Phil wins a grand, goes double or nothing, and winds up with two. He goes double or nothing again, and walks away with four grand. Are all sleight-of-hand scams that easy? Surely not.
Scott then reveals that it was all a scam. Like, card tricks are normally scams, but a double-scam; Phil and Scott arranged with Cosentino to let Phil win, to get back at Josh, Jenna, Dan and Dani for the electricity scam last week. This seems fair and I’m sure everybody will move on now, like adults.*
*This is me being ironic.
At a group barbecue, Phil comes clean about the whole scam. Dani thinks that it’s awful, rather than funny (she is incorrect. It is pretty funny). Jenna just storms off, because The Block is no place for fun and games this is serious business.
Let’s all remember that.
Dan Hall is a frequent TV watcher and occasional TV recapper. You can find him on twitter @danieljohnhall, and read more of his writing at www.the-flack.com