The Block All Stars – Sun-Fri 7pm, Ch9
http://homes.ninemsn.com.au/theblock/
Blocketty blocketty Block!
No one has any money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone explains to us their respective poverty. No one will be able to finish their houses. Furniture expensive. Debtors coming by night and being quietly disposed of in concrete slabs. Etc, etc. The last few weeks of the competition are going to be a total snore if they can’t afford furniture to mismatch, fittings to panic over and tradies to fight with, so out of the pure Aussie goodness of his heart, Scott steps in.
Scott hustles everyone together to announce that they’re all poor, and he will be marrying them off to rich husbands immediately to restore the family’s fortunes. Amity doesn’t want to do a challenge and wants him to go away. Scott says he’s there to give them a challenge… not. Then he tells them that the prize for the best rooms this week has been doubled to $10, 000. This is a game-changing amount of money for any team who isn’t Josh and Jenna, who would probably blow the lot on a lamp or something. Mark and Duncan point out that whoever wins probably won’t be a very well-liked team, automatically disqualifying them and their delightful moustaches from the running. Amity bitterly says she doesn’t think it’s an issue since the judges never let them win. She then laughs and pouts, and kids, that’s what we call passive aggressive.
Everyone must now rely on their “secret weapon” to pull off the room win. For Amity and Phil and Mark and Duncan, it’s a third bedroom. For Josh and Jenna, it’s four-level storage extending into the roof and floor. For Dan and Dani, it’s careful and committed eyebrow maintenance. And an attic for storage. As far as secret weapons go, they’re fairly tame.
Phil is worried that everyone else will realise they’re having a third bedroom and immediately do the same. He suggests stealthily tearing down the frame for the dividing wall that has just gone up. Amity tells him to shut up and go away.
Amity watches as a cement truck rolls up and Josh starts wheeling barrows of cement into his linen area. She immediately freaks right the hell out and goes back to her house where they all speculate about what Josh and Jenna are planning. Phil, Amity and their builder all decide with complete certainty that they’re knocking a wall out to extend their kitchen crazy big. Cue panic.
Mark and Duncan are splitting up for a while. Mark’s going to stay at the house and do worky things while Duncan takes out a car to go shopping. He hasn’t driven a manual in 30 years and gets lost almost every time he goes out so he’s looking forward to the trip. A small crowd gathers happily to watch him lurch and creak helplessly down the street.
Everyone is sanding and stripping old paint in readiness for the new paint job. It’s about as interesting as it sounds.
Dani is seriously stressing about having too much work to do and no time to do it, so she decides to make Elton John a Bisley work shirt with rhinestones.
Heritage rules state that the walls needed to create the third bedrooms cannot be full walls, so Duncan and Mark are rigging up a kind of cupboards/Perspex extravaganza that Duncan is now building in the dead of night. Everyone has worked hard and is sleepy.
The next day, Dan puts on a shirt. It’s another day of sanding and scraping, and wobbly dividing walls, until 5, when everyone goes to see Elton in concert.
Dani is gluing rhinestones on a jacket, and Phil and Amity have disappeared into the city for a meeting. Dan is working and singing “Rocket Man” – not the song, just those two words on repeat. Josh and Jenna are putting huge freezers in their floor storage, hoping that it’ll give them the edge come auction day. Concert promoter Phil has a cunning plan to get the young blokes nice and smashed tonight so they’ll be sleeping instead of working tomorrow. Amity is excited about the prospect.
After a few hours of gluing rhinestones, Dani presents her art project to Dan, who’s getting a little sick of doing actual work by himself. He tells her it looks good, without effusion, and she gets angry. She returns to the bedroom to glue some feathers on it, saying she’s going to take longer now on purpose. This, kids, is what we call a mature relationship.
A few hours out from Elton hour, Mark and Duncan have discovered that their floor is uneven and their wall doesn’t fit. The boys discover that lying underneath the floorboards whacking them with a sledgehammer seems to work, so the issue is resolved. At Phil and Amity’s the wall woe continues as Stegbar arrives to hopefully brace their dodgy wall with some cupboards. The Stegbar folk can sort out their wall also being wrong due to an uneven floor but drop the bombshell that the glass won’t be arriving til Friday morning. Room delivery is Friday morning and panic quickly fills the house,
Josh and Jenna are discussing – with some very colourful language – whether they should buy art for the living room. Jenna thinks she can make some. Josh does not.
Dan has finally cracked it over Dani’s devotion to Elton’s shiny shirt. He’s trying to carry some planks, she’s in his way and the music is getting all dramatic. Dan accidentally smashes a window on the front porch and Dani storms out to the front of the house for blood. Dan thinks she should have moved stuff off the porch, Dani thinks he shouldn’t have broken the window, they both think the other person is a being a jerk and it ends when Dani storms back off and Dan mutters that she can go make Elton another top. He has a point.
Dan doesn’t want to go to the concert because there’s too much work to do. Dani tells him they should have hired more tradies and Dan reminds her that they have no money. Dani yells at him for not wanting to go out and have fun.
Amity has decided to have Flexiglass all around their wonky wall and has solved the whole crisis. Right on cue, a hideous pink stretch Hummer pulls up outside to transport the Blockheads to the Elton gig. Dan’s on board and everyone looks all fancy. They party in the Hummer like 17 year olds on their way to the formal. We get a look at everyone at the concert, and Elton playing away. Everyone’s nice and relaxed which you can assume lasted until they realised that Elton would never get the shirt that Dani spent the day decorating.
Tomorrow: painting! Swearing! Josh’s outrageous hipster hair!