The Block NZ: Villa Wars contestants, Mitch and Brooke.
The Block NZ: Villa Wars contestants, Mitch and Brooke.
The two most awful people on television were looking a bit green around the gills last night, two fearful, haunted critters caught in the headlights, as sick as parrots. Good. Brooke and Mitch on The Block: Villa Wars had it coming.
The Christchurch couple were revealed as venal and grasping a few weeks ago during one of the show's many witless challenges, when they admitted they scored the other contestants with big fat zeroes.
They didn't see a problem with it. They didn't much care. Everyone in New Zealand wished a pox on their house, and that pox was duly advertised in last night's episode.
Occasional host Shelley got the gang together to announce the latest witless challenge.
You could make a handsome deck out of Shelley; her brief appearances are always wooden. She told the contestants they had to perform a skit onstage - and give each other a score. Hayden looked at Brooke and Mitch. He smiled a thin smile. Payback time had arrived, and not a moment too soon.
The odds are stacked in Brooke and Mitch's favour. They've won more money than the other contestants put together, and splash it around sometimes willy and often nilly on the kinds of trash and flash that impress Jason and Bernadette the judges, those two easily impressed drudges.
Most of the other contestants are broke. It's like playing Monopoly against someone who owns all the railways and both the utilities, and is drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars at their hotels on Mayfair - when all you've got is Old Kent Rd.
Sarah and Minanne don't even have that. They spent all last night thinking about how to landscape their back yard, and saying, "Um." And then: "Tee-hee!" Um and tee-hee doesn't cut it with their builder, Dale, who hasn't smiled once in the entire series.
Sarah and Minanne on The Block NZ: Villa Wars.
Have the sisters done anything right? Maybe they'll reveal a flair for dance or something in the open-mic challenge. Cat and Jeremy surprised themselves when they revealed a flair for comedy, or something, during their onstage skit in last night's show. Cat was especially surprising. She can actually talk. In character, she dropped the vocal fry thing, and it was a pleasure to hear her voice.
As soon as it was over, she was back to her old ways.
Not much else happened. Not much ever happens on The Block: Villa Wars. Sunday night's show was billed as, "A-Block-alypse!" It promised high drama and end times.
The reality was less than ablockalyptic. It rained, and a tree fell over.
The Block contestants Jeremy, Cat, Hayden and Jamie.
What, then, is the show's appeal? Why is something so excruciating so addictive? Beyond the ditherings and creakings of the individual contestants, what are the wider themes?
The subject came up on social media after last night's show, and Auckland musician Jeremy Jones - the dude who created that genius Planet Key parody - made an interesting contribution. He wrote, "I just miss stories about NZ life rather than real estate which ironically are now the stories of NZ life."
It's possible to view the contestants as minor players in the show - the real stars are the real estate. Houses one, two, three and four loom over everything; they're like powerful, bewitching music, and the contestants are merely tenants, in Leonard Cohen's words, who pay their rent every day in the towers of song.
Sarah offered another perspective. It was a valuable insight. "As if," she said last night, "there wasn't enough politics on The Block already."
Real estate and politics. Perhaps that's what it's all about. Maybe that's the potent attraction, and it comes with its own unique, wordless soundtrack.
