Shock on The Block: Something is seriously wrong

Block contestants Brooke and Mitch.

Unbearable tension on The Block NZ: Villa Wars last night as we watched water dry. Sarah and Minanne's house sprang a leak, and water dripped through the ceiling. There was a faulty pipe. It got fixed. The water dried. If the suspense didn't kill you then the boredom would.

But actually it was impossible to relax, because the show opened with a shocking preview of Sarah and Minanne in floods of tears on Sunday night's episode. It looked bad.

Something had gone seriously wrong. The sisters had broken a rule, and the punishment was severe. "It's not fair!", howled Sarah. Brooke cried too, and said angrily, "This is crap!"

Block contestants Sarah and Minanne.

What can it all mean? What rule, what punishment, what new circle of hell for Sarah and Minanne to experience pain and sorrow? Everything was going so swimmingly for the sisters last night. They won a witless challenge - Mark told contestants to go jump in a lake, and Sarah did it in a bikini. The prize was $20,000 worth of double glazing. It was the happiest they've looked all series. They even walked with a kind of swagger in their own dwarfish way.

Nothing much else happened. Nothing ever does. The four teams of contestants work steadily to renovate their villas, and auction day looms ever closer. Waiting for Pero, sort of thing. To relieve the usual tedium, they went out for dinner last night with judges Jason and Bernadette. It made the usual tedium look fun.

They stared at a bowl of fries and sat around a table in an empty restaurant. "Creak," croaked Cat. Jamie chanted slogans: "It's better to try and fail, than fail to try." Brooke looked deep into her glass of wine. Minanne chewed on a chip. Cat creaked, "Croak." Jason roared with laughter at his own jokes.

How did that goober ever end up on TV? As if to show him how it's done, Colin Mathura-Jeffree made a cameo appearance. Even with his hair tied in a bun, he radiated star quality and expert grooming. It's been a while since he's graced our screens and it was good to see him back where he belongs. "It's huge! It's magnificent!", he raved about something that caught his fancy. Was it a mirror? The dude looks as big as a house these days. It was as though he was starring as the fifth villa.

The only other highlight was that Hayden painted over his black bedroom wall with white paint and shaved his beard, though not at the same time. Or maybe he did. It was hard to concentrate. The lingering shock and mystery of Sarah and Minanne's advertised grief was too great.

What's in store for the sisters? And how come Brooke stood up for them? Is she, in fact, human? So much could happen between now and auction day. And so little. Tonight, possibly: we get to watch Hayden's beard grow back.

- nzherald.co.nz