It’s tools down for the teams on The Block, with the contestants preparing themselves for the upcoming auction day at The Oslo in St Kilda.
Ahead of the season finale, we caught up with some of your favourite Blockheads to find out more about their final days on the job site and their plans for the future.
Is it all too much for Jesse in the final week of The Block?
Jesse was “broken” in the final stage of the series.
(Image: Nine Network)Throughout this season of The Block, Jesse has been an unstoppable force.
The Melbourne real estate agent has even earned the respect of host Scott Cam, despite their frequent run-ins.
“I admire his tenacity,” Scott, 56, tells TV WEEK. “He worked until dawn to get the job done. He’s a bit lippy at times, we all know that, but he walked the walk as well.”
But this week, the final week of renovations, Jesse, 29, reaches his limit while doing the front garden.
“After hallway week, he was broken, he was tired, he’d had enough,” Jesse’s partner Mel, 31, says. “But by the last week, we were really struggling with money, so we decided Jesse would do as much of the work as possible. That was a hard week.”
Jesse tackles the paving on his own, even though it’s obvious the job is too big for him to do himself.
“I was like, ‘We’ve worked so hard this entire time – we’ve never given up,'” he remembers.
Will the hard-working couple fail to finish in the very last week?
Jesse says he’s been dreaming of going on the renovation show since he was 14. But he adds that it was “so much harder” than he thought it would be, both physically and mentally.
“I’m very strong-minded and strong-willed, but I struggled on The Block,” he admits. “It was very hard. It was actually quite emotional. I put on a brave face all the time, but I did struggle.”
Mel and Jesse: “A baby in 2021!”
Being on The Block won’t change Mel and Jesse’s timeline for parenthood.
(Image: Nine Network)Jesse and Mel are trying for a baby… but it will be in 12 months’ time.
Mel says that whether they win The Block or not, their timeline will stay the same.
“The plan is we’ll start trying for kids at the , end of next year,” she tells TV WEEK. “I’m 31, so you don’t want to leave it too late.”
She says winning big on the show would make their life easier.
“But if we don’t win much money, it just means I have to work harder for the next year,” she adds. “I’m a planner and we’re sticking to my plan.”
Mitch reveals: “I was in pain!”
Mitch hurt himself early on The Block.
(Image: Nine Network)A back injury in his very first week meant Mitch was in pain while filming The Block. He tells TV WEEK it came about from “just carrying too much”.
“I went to an osteopath for about four weeks, but it was getting worse rather than better,” Mitch, 56, recalls.
“I then decided I just had to live on painkillers and work through it. Basically, I learnt to trick my brain into not acknowledging the pain.”
The Sydney grandad says the injury made The Block tough for him physically from the second week on.
“And it stayed tough,” he adds.
But it didn’t stop him from taking on some physically demanding jobs, including using a jackhammer and laying tiles.
With his partner Mark helping him through it, Mitch kept working until the final “tools down”.
“I remember pretty much collapsing when it was all finished,” he says.
The good news is, with filming having wrapped several months ago, Mitch’s back is no longer painful and he’s fully recovered.
“I’m fit and young and ready to go again!” he says with a laugh.
A moment of clarity during the last week of The Block allows Mitch to suddenly realise something about himself.
“All through the show I’ve been wondering who the ‘evil person’ is,” he tells hosts Scott Cam and Shelley Craft. “And now that I’ve reflected on some of my comments to camera, it might be me – I’m the evil one!”
Shelley and Scott laugh at his insights.
“We could have told you that,” Scott says.
Now that Mitch realises how he’s come across on TV, will he regret what he’s said?
Andy is now feeling more love and less hate on social media
“People like me now!”
(Image: Nine Network)After three months of The Block, Andy feels that viewers have warmed to him. The stand-up comedian from country NSW says he saw a lot of negative comments about him on social media early on.
“At the start, people just didn’t like the stupidity,” Andy, 48, tells TV WEEK. “I took a screen shot of all the negative comments and I put them on a shirt: ‘You’re not funny’, ‘Do some work’, ‘You’re actually annoying’.”
His wife Deb, 46, admits her husband can be “very full-on”.
“But Andy works non-stop and I think being silly was his coping mechanism – and mine at times,” she explains. “It was so great to have his humour to make light of situations that weren’t light.”
Andy says people need time with him to warm to him, and that’s what happened with The Block viewers.
“You see the whole turnaround,” he says. “People are enjoying it a bit more; it’s quite weird.”
El’ise and Matt: “Mitch and Mark hurt us!”
Mitch and Mark’s comments didn’t go down well with El’ise.
(Image: Nine Network)El’ise has been hurt. On Sunday night’s episode of The Block, Mitch said the artworks she’d chosen made her house “basically a whorehouse”.
El’ise, 33, says Mitch didn’t say that to her that at the time.
“Mitch doesn’t say a lot of things to your face,” she tells TV WEEK. “He says it on camera.”
As the season has aired, the Perth couple have had a chance to hear the things Mitch and Mark have been saying about them.
“They called me an ‘extortionist’ and Matt an ‘aggressive white male’,” El’ise says. “They do throw a lot of things out into the public eye that have hurt us and the contestants along the way.
“A lot of nasty comments were made on TV which we’ve been attacked about on social media. I believe if they hadn’t have made them, we wouldn’t have been attacked the way we have.”
As for Mitch calling their house a “whorehouse”, El’ise insists it’s “classy”.
“Their house is very different from ours,” she declares. “I don’t expect them to understand.”
WATCH NEXT: Housekeeping with The Block’s Andy and Deb…
The Block airs Monday to Wednesday, 7:30pm, and the finale airs Sunday, 7pm, on Nine.
