Why can’t I quit The Block?
Honesty is the best policy, so I’m just going to say it: I’m watching The Block again.
Let’s cue up the relevant gif from The Godfather: Part III. “Just when I thought I was out,” laments a greying Michael Corleone, “they pull me back in.” Am I equating viewing Australia’s leading renovation reality series with maintaining a leadership role in a vast organised crime syndicate? Of course not. The Block is far more insidious and seductive.
Every year I roll my eyes and shake my head – sometimes simultaneously – when a new season of the show rolls around. I tell myself I don’t need to watch The Block, that I know its structural failings all too well. The sponsored content is blaringly overt, one or more contestants will have a sense of entitlement that makes my teeth grind, and the mid-week challenges are sometimes asinine. None of this is a mystery.
Scott Cam and The Block contestants have been doing this for years.
As far back as 2011, I was lamenting how Nine’s then ascendent trades and tiles was drawing me and 2 million other people in. “The more you watch The Block, the more it presents itself as a soap opera,” I wrote. Was I done with it? Of course not.
Some years I simply watch Sunday night’s showcase judging episode, where the week’s lavished-upon room is unveiled and dissected before the writing of marks on a chalkboard proves to be way more gripping than you would expect. This year, however, it was the Tuesday night edition from the show’s second week that caught me out, exploiting a quality that The Block has weaponised: abject dismay.
Meet Kristian, an electrician from South Australia competing alongside his wife, restaurant manager and actor Mimi. In the show’s second week, as the teams sweated over the guest bedrooms of the former Phillip Island resort they’re restoring, Kristian got a little antsy. To speed along the tight construction schedule, he forged two signatures on the show’s internal permit system. He was quickly caught and received a minor punishment of an hour’s delay in starting the day’s work.
This was just a dumb move, and ethically somewhat worrying, but curiously the show downplayed it. It turns out this was merely the first step in Kristian screwing up. Soon he was doing a visibly shoddy job installing insulation. “It should be right,” he noted. It was not. He didn’t check material specifics. He didn’t measure properly. He used the wrong insulation tape. When these errors were pointed out, Kristian tried to gaslight Mimi. “Maybe I’m the villain and I don’t know,” she wondered aloud. I was throwing my hands in the air and urging her to consider divorce. The Block got me.
The Block’s contestants in this year’s Phillip Island challenge.Credit: Nine
Here’s what I saw when I rewatched the Kristian-at-work narrative again a week later. The post-production work was exceptional. The Block’s editing team have become masters of gift-wrapping the egregious. Kristian’s travails were presented as a self-contained tale – ‘Kristian Cuts Corners: A Series’ declared the title card, and they keep adding to the count. When they flashed up part six I wondered if Mimi’s formidable mother, seen in the couple’s introductory montage, would come and rescue her daughter. Dropping Split Enz’s History Never Repeats at a key moment was cruelly sublime.
I’m still skipping the challenge episodes, even if they’re related to Phillip Island’s penguin colonies, but what I have seen of The Block reveals some subtle but crucial changes. One that’s been particularly noticeable is the adversarial role of hired tradespeople. Traditionally seen but not really heard, tradies have been arguing on camera with contestants over their invoices, or getting fired after a major waterproofing mishap. Having milked cheating scandals over the last few seasons, tradie conflict is a potent new source of drama.
The show is also comfortable acknowledging its own pitfalls and constraints. New South Wales entrant Courtney was complaining about sleeping in tents early on, before a bedroom was ready, but acknowledged that she and husband Grant had no choice. “We’ve got a contract,” she conceded. Still, the pressure The Block creates is genuine. After a rocky month West Australian couple Jesse and Paige exited the show on Monday night because her mental health had deteriorated and their relationship was foundering.
That voyeuristic departure aside, this is how a show in its 20th season impressively stays atop the free-to-air ratings. Astute tweaks and twists. And it works – I’m the evidence. It’s easy to enjoy the ludicrousness the storytelling also liberally flirts with. Can judge Darren Palmer find a way to flex his well-proportioned forearms in every room he assesses? He’s going to give it a real crack. The Block makes me shake my head but I keep switching on.
The Block screens on Sunday 7pm, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 7.30pm on Nine.
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