Chloe and Ben: $104,000 richer (Photo: Three)

Pop CultureOctober 10, 2022

The Block NZ auctions were an absolute shitshow

Staff writer

Chloe and Ben: $104,000 richer (Photo: Three)

It was shock o’clock on The Block last night as the four townhouses went to auction. Tara Ward recaps.

In a perfect world, everyone would win big on The Block NZ. Three long months of stress and hard work would be rewarded with a healthy profit on auction day, but last night’s pre-recorded finale of The Block NZ: Redemption reminded us that the real estate game isn’t interested in being fair. This year, four teams from previous seasons returned to redeem themselves and win big bucks, but the Orewa housing market had other ideas. Auction day began with James and Maree winning the People’s Choice Award, but it was all downhill from there.

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Stacy and Adam won the right to choose the auction order, and having made no profit in their 2019 season, put themselves first to capitalise on the available buyers. Hopes were high as their auctioneer called their townhouse “biblical”, but thoughts and prayers were needed when bidding began at a low $700,000. One Ray White agent appeared to be negotiating directly with the text app on her phone, and bidding climbed painfully slowly before the auctioneer passed the property in at $1.05 million, nearly $100,000 below reserve.

Despite every effort to avoid a repeat of 2019, Stacy and Adam made no profit again, and suddenly this was the bleakest finale of The Block NZ in years. “I might put a bid in,” Adam joked, but he and Stacy were understandably devastated. This isn’t how redemption is supposed to work. The ghosts of auctions past returned to haunt them, and while this kind of outcome is always a risk with The Block NZ, nobody wanted to see it happen.

Host Mark Richardson explained that if a passed-in property gets an offer behind the scenes during the auctions, that team goes back in the running to win the grand prize of $100,000. That was little comfort for Adam and Stacy, or Quinn and Ben, who had the biggest house and the highest reserve. “Let there be light, as someone once said,” their auctioneer pronounced as he opened the bidding, but someone needed more than magical sunbeams – again, the auction failed to reach reserve. “Is this real?” Chloe asked. Last year’s record-breaking profits seemed like a cheese dream now, and the other teams were speechless.

But this wasn’t Mark Richardson’s first rodeo. He was there the night The Block NZ shat itself, and knew what he needed to say. “We’re not that far off,” he consoled Quinn and Ben. “We’re not a million miles away,” the auctioneer negotiated off camera, but we could have been wedged inside Maree and James’ laundry chute and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The buyers shook their heads. They knew how much they were prepared to pay for Ben’s curved plaster wall, and it was 50 thousand dollars less than the reserve.

The mood was as flat as Chloe and Ben’s big screen TV that rotates so you can watch TikTok videos of dogs doing funny things. The other teams were visibly shocked, but Quinn and Ben remained stoic in the face of heartbreak. This is also the second time they’ll leave The Block NZ with barely anything to show for it. “Times are tough out there right now,” host-judge Shelley Ferguson reminded us, sympathising with the buyers who could only afford to pay one million dollars for a house. Quinn said she’s gutted to have spent three months away from her children for nothing, and Shelley welled up. Bloody hell, we’re only halfway through.

Then it was Maree and James’ turn. “Rip the band aid off,” Shelley told Mark, because this was going to hurt. Maree said they knew the market would be tough, but they were still shocked when bidding stalled nearly $70,000 under reserve when a phone buyer pulled out. “All they get now is regret,” said the auctioneer, and it was hard to know who he was talking about. “We’re not too far away,” Mark told Maree and James, and after negotiations, a bid of $1,152,100 was made. That’s a full $100 profit, and at last a house was sold. “We’ve got petrol money!” Maree joked. Everyone laughed, but that won’t even fill the tank.

Finally, Team Chloe and Ben. “Let’s get this last auction out of the way,” Shelley said, willing this to be over. Chloe and Ben’s house was voted best on The Block, and they only needed $101 profit to win the grand prize. Ben made an offering to the real estate gods by vowing to shave his moustache, but like every other auction, bidding was painfully slow. The Ray White agents put their paddles over their faces; even they couldn’t bear this anymore.

“It’s not all over,” Mark said when the auction paused, because we’re never too far away. The mood was grim; the crowd had shrunk. The auctioneer returned with a bid of $1,145,000, meaning Chloe and Ben’s house sold for $4,000 over reserve. They celebrated like it was four million, though it was a long way from Tim and Arty’s $660,000 winning profit from last season. Mark announced the two passed-in houses did not sell, making Chloe and Ben the winners of The Block NZ 2022 and $104,000 richer.

“What a rollercoaster!” a relieved Ben said, stroking his moustache for the last time, but Chloe’s thoughts were with the other teams. Maree and James were gracious at having victory ripped from their grasp, but there was no escaping that this was more awkward than the time the bloke from The Feelers turned up for Dinner Wars. “I wish there could have been a better outcome for everybody,” Chloe said as she clutched the winner’s bouquet, and nobody disagreed.

For Mark Richardson, though, there was no better time to toast to redemption. The show ended by announcing the other two houses sold post-auction (teams whose houses sell after auction receive no profit – call the police, that’s a crime), and Mark popped up to call for applications for next season. Tell him he’s dreaming. After watching that emotional tumble down the property ladder, who would voluntarily put themselves through such agony? This time Mark, you really are a million miles away.

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The Block NZ: Redemption is available to stream on ThreeNow.

Hear me out: All these things? Make them longer! (Image Design: Archi Banal)

OPINIONPop CultureOctober 8, 2022

Hear me out: Make all entertainment longer

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

Hear me out: All these things? Make them longer! (Image Design: Archi Banal)

Among all the complaints that films, TV and games these days are far too long, one man is brave enough to argue the opposite. That man is Sam Brooks.

The Guardian asks, “Are today’s TV shows too long?” Variety queries “Are movies too long now?” Kotaku says that games are “too big (long) to fail”.

I say: make them ever longer!

When I read complaints like the ones above, I find myself shaking my head. Things aren’t too long these days; actually, they should be even longer. Now, I love a short burst of joy. I love it when I click on a reel or TikTok a mate sends me, I have one sharp laugh, I forward it onto three other friends, and never think about it again.

But when it comes to great TV, novels, games and cinema – to art? Slow and steady wins the race in my book.

Emma Thompson as the Angel in HBO’s Angels in America. (Photo: HBO)

Don’t get me wrong: there are downsides to time intensive pieces of art. Most obviously, they take up a lot of your time. Time is a non-renewable resource, and if you happen to have, say, a job, dependents or other hobbies, you simply might not have the time or the desire to watch a show with a million seasons, read that thousand page book, or play that 60 hour game.

The upside? Long art can be extremely rewarding. Ten seasons of a show means 10 seasons of watching characters grow together, and explore the nuances of those relationships. Eight hundred pages of a fantasy novel means 800 pages spent in a world that has been carefully built, lore-piece by lore-piece, to be worth spending weeks, if not months, inside. A 70 minute album is 70 minutes spent blissing/rocking (choose as applicable) out. Basically: if you invest in the right thing, you get that investment back.

Similarly, if you invest in the wrong thing, you get that investment right back. If you watch 70 hours of Hoarders, you shouldn’t be surprised if you end up with a dimmer view of humanity and what it’s capable of. People spent a decade of their lives invested in Game of Thrones, only to see that investment thrown back in their face in the last few disappointing hours. An investment in a piece of art that requires serious time from you is by definition a risky one. But it’s one that I love.

I’m aware this sets me up to be a huge goddamned nerd. One of my favourite works of art, of all time, is the play Angels in America. The whole thing takes seven hours, and I’ve sat and watched it twice, and watched the equally long miniseries about five times. I’ve watched all 10 seasons of Friends all the way through multiple times. Every year I schedule a reread of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a 14th century novel about a war in 3rd century China which runs to 120 chapters of varying length, depending on the translation I read.

Looks cartoony? This game takes 50 hours to complete, you guys.

Perhaps the most intense recipient of my obsession with art that requires a massive time investment is a video game series called The Legend of Heroes. Since 2004, this Japanese roleplaying series has released 13 games. They are all set in the same world, with an extremely dense history and swathes of text to play through. The narratives are full of wild twists that require knowledge of previous games to fully comprehend. Each game adds about five or so playable characters, to the point where the latest, Trails of Reverie (yet to be released here), has 50 of them, plus dozens of non-playable characters you meet in every game, many of which carry over. Each game takes about 50 hours to complete, and that’s if you’re not doing every piece of side content, talking to every person you possibly can. Though why wouldn’t you? What else do you have to do?

I have spent, no joke, at least 1000 hours of my life on this game series. I don’t regret a single one of them. The most recent entry in this series, Legend from Heroes: Trails from Zero, has a scene that represents what I love most about it, and about long art in general. At one point, I ventured far off the beaten path, knowing that this series intends you to do so, and ended up watching Estelle and Joshua, two of the protagonists from Trails of Sky (a game released nearly two decades ago) visiting a blind girl and encouraging her to learn braille. Because of all that had come before, it was profoundly moving.

It’s the kind of moment that doesn’t really hit unless you’ve put the time in – hours and hours of it. A scene like the one above is a warm tickle of acknowledgement from the makers: if this means something to you, it’s because you cared enough to stay with us.

That’s why I love long things. They reward you for putting the time and putting the effort in, for making a sacrifice. Short and sharp entertainment is a tequila shot; fun, furious, fast, and quickly forgotten. But art that gives you back as much as you put into it? That’s a glass of really good wine, to be savoured and remembered.