The Block Sky High – Sun 6:30pm, Mon-Thu 7pm, Ch9
http://homes.ninemsn.com.au/theblock/
Another day, another disaster on the Block. The His & Hers bathrooms are well underway and you just know there’s tension boiling.
The Twiins have decided to include a steam room in one of their bathrooms and they think it’s their big secret – by telling anyone who’ll listen. Little do they know Trixie & Johnno have been seeded the same idea by their sparky who heard about it from the flappy lips on Level 1. It’s all very sinister and covert as neither party want anyone to know what they’re doing.
Matt & Kim are suffering from a leak coming down from Level 3 and Posh & Becs are claiming it’s not coming from them. All the to-ing and fro-ing drawns much unneeded attention from Keef. “I don’t think it’s gonna be a two second fix,” offers the Blockinator. No shit, Sherlock.
Keef lectures Posh & Becs that as a priority the source of the leak needs to be sorted out and move on. Bitter pill swallowed.
Madi & Jarrod are pushing on with their “no secrets” build by sending Madi off to secretly electroplate her tapware for their “His” bathroom in a black matte. We even get a secret insight into the plating process. For Jarrod though raindrops keep falling on his head but only because he’s drilled a hole through the floor. Here comes Keef to sort it out… or, at least, shake his head.
As a lesson, Keef takes Jarrod upstairs to lecture him on building and drilling safety. While Jarrod’s upstairs, Johnno offers to set up a spycam website through one of the holes to pay for the “rectifications”.
Leaks, leaks and more leaks. Where’s all this tension we were promised? It looks like Posh & Becs are gonna offer it to us for the next 10 minutes. The drama has become a regular “Upstairs/Downstairs” debacle and now Level 3 are trying to bother Level 2’s plumbers to solve the problem. Keef reckons it’s remainder water from the old taps and in the removal of some newly installed board they find the culprit – a missing pipe cap.
Becs is in a full blown pity-party over what she knows and doesn’t know. She’d worried about Posh because he’s lost weight and is sick, and she’s concerned because she can’t make her thrice weekly manicure appointments.
The Twiins have finally cottoned on that the Tradies are talking and secrets are being shared (It’s a competition for them as much as the formal contestants). The Twiins know they need evidence but can’t prove anything. Would hate to be in the interrogation room with them and a spare copy of the Yellow Pages. Week 2 and it’s starting to get ugly.
Twiin 1 can’t get over the fact that their idea has been stolen. Good lord.
Up on Level 5 the steam room idea is pushing on and as much as Johnno & Trixie are pleased with it they’re well happy to deflect the praise for the idea to the place where it came from – their electrician (who they don’t know heard about it from downstairs). Trixie’s proving to be quite the local by navigating herself from the Block to a local supplier. Two streets away.
Twiin 2 recognises that she and Twiin 1 need to take some time and sit down and plan their entire build. They’re overwhelmed and their noses are out of joint over SteamRoomGate. There’s now signs and everything.
(The benefit in seeing previews of these eps is that you get to hear Keef say “Fuck” rather than “beep” like you get on the final broadcast copy. It’s very refreshing. Almost like being on a real building site.)
Keef’s gotten a call from Matt and now he’s off to sort out the leak that now it seems still isn’t fixed. The evidence is a clearly leaking ceiling, but there’s always time to run the wind through Matt who has’t kept his site acceptably clean & tidy. Matt swallows it and tidies it all up but not before Twiin 1 and Kim start a pillow fight with him. No lingerie though.
To replace the lift a couple of 12 ton concrete slabs need to be removed so a crane is working hard upstairs as pallets of good arrive consistently downstairs. It’s almost like it’s a real construction site.
To help ease the tension Scotty summons the teams to the vault room to give the teams a chance to open the doors on the deposit box to see what they win. Posh & Becs go first and win some old books which they’re quite cynical about until they’re encouraged to read them. Between their two boxes they score $2,000. Johnno & Trixie get a watch; Jarrod & Madi get some old 8-track carts; & the Twiins get some Smurf figurines. What a strange vault it is.
Budgets are already biting. Lots of spending on tradies, especially on this week as sparkies, plumbers and plasterers have to get the hard work done for the bathrooms. Jarrod & Twiin 1 compare notes for tradies and both have horror invoice stories. Becs is eyeballing her invoices and is getting fed up with what she perceives as spurious charges. Tradies be cray.
Keef has good news for Matt – water has been connected to Level 2 and from Monday he’ll have hot water too. It offers him and Kim a little lift to their otherwise chaotic day. Here’s to the end of leaks.
The Twiins openly admit they’ve no budget but are happy to shout their tradies some pizza (after all, an army marches on its stomach). Also they need to distract their blokes from their impending nervous breakdowns as the Twiins prove to be harsh taskmistresses. When asked what they’d like a resounding “meat” call is echoed through Level 1. Is this a building site or the gay mardi gras?
On the Block, Keef wears many hats: Caps, stetsons, beanies. He’s all over the stylez. He pops in to Level 3 because he’s heard Becs is really worried about Posh. Now with this Father-figure Fedora on he’s off to tell Posh to find some personal time to eat, sleep and stop stressing. To help there’s a double dinner date planned with Madi & Jarrod (they’re taking this key in the bowl thing a bit too literally).
The Twiins are working late into the night with their tradies to get the job done. Johnno & Trixie are reflecting on the sign down on Level 1 and have a chat with the returning date kids on what it meant. Trixie decided not to go to bed with animosity in the air so heads down to have a chat with the Twiins to turn it into all-out war. At 12:30am.
Trixie has her nose out of joint at the fact that the Twiins thought she and Johnno would be like that, and the Twiins feel that maybe J&T’s electrician should have shut his mouth. So… in the end, a whole hullabaloo over nothing.
Welcome to the Stockholm syndrome live-in experience that is The Block.