From the typical insulation and gibbing cycle of early-in-the-week room prep to the Team Purple girls performing some cringe factor 10 act of inaneness to Orange’s incessant character assassinations of the Gizzy Hard crew, it’s beginning to feel like someone’s pushed the repeat button on the CD player.
But then Yellow crew’s Stu Watts walks into week 8’s Room Reveal wearing a jersey of epic retro magnitude. A woollen time machine that transports Generation X back to simpler days when “go home, stay home” was the outdoors game of choice, vegetables were boiled until they were transparent and meeting a mate did not involve six different handshakes and a man-hug.
The first impression of Stu’s historical fashion statement was that David Bain had a garage sale. On closer inspection, however, you realise the pattern is one of the pioneer arcade games — space invaders.
Those of us who grew up in Gizzy in the ’80s are instantly transported back in time to The Young Image, where the first space invaders game was installed. To the table spacies at the Sandown’s house bar. To Cliff’s Place. To Space World.
Cheers Stu, a nice Memory Lane aside to The Block goings-on.
One could even suggest Team Yellow frame the jersey to replace the self-produced artwork put up in their garage and storage area — a piece that looks like the remnants of a bird of paradise after being hit with the full tennis racquet face of a Rafael Nadal forehand.
The winners of week 8’s garage and storage reno were finally revealed last night.
With Team Purple having won the right to jettison another couple out of Room Reveal, and Team Blue leading after the first of the two judge’s scores were shown, Blue offered to split the $5000 with Purple . . . only, of course, if Blue won.
That meant eliminating Yellow from the equation, which the girls subsequently did.
Blue would have won anyway. They totalled 15.5 out of 20, half a point ahead of Yellow, whose score did not count.
Blue became the first team to “legitimately” beat Yellow in a Room Reveal, much to the delight of the president of the Stu and Amy Fan Club, Team Orange’s Agni, who was so happy to see them get zip that his eyebrows almost separated.
Yellow exacted their revenge later in the show when the team judging scores were revealed. They scored the girls a zero and had no qualms about it.
“Our theory is if someone takes us down at Room Reveal, then we’re probably going to take them down in team judging,” said Amy Moore.
Much to their surprise, Yellow, thanks largely to a score of eight from Team Blue, ended up winning the team judging and pocketing $2000.
Show host Mark Richardson was flabbergasted.
“They have now walked away with as much money for garage and storeroom week as you guys did, and you won it,” he said to Blue.
“You have got these guys running away with it at the moment, with a very, very full bank account going into the last four weeks, and these guys (Blue) just banked them more money.
“If you all want to be nice people, that’s well and good . . . if you want to be rich people, maybe think it through.”
Week 9 is kitchen and dining room week, potentially the make or break area when it comes to selling their Hobsonville Point town houses.
The pressure gauge is already nearing the red zone, intensified by the $12,000 in total the winners of Room Reveal will receive.
Teams are also required to create a themed centre-piece for their dining room tables. Team Yellow drew fire, Purple air, Blue earth and Orange water.
Last night featured one of the more interesting challenges, in which teams were required to design a backdrop out of offcuts of carpet and flooring, then dress up in costumes to provide the foreground of the scene.
Acclaimed artist Otiz Frizzell judged the scenes while suspended in a cherry-picker.
The boys won with their rampaging rhino safari scene, with Stu and Amy’s western cowboy scene second.
Blue won $5000 of Hannah Jensen artwork.
But they don’t have a Stu jersey.
Dum, dum dum dum . . . dum, dum, dum, dum . . .
n Stu’s jersey was bought for him by a friend from an opshop while they were in Auckland for an Iron Maiden concert. We suspect he didn’t wear it to the concert.
