Block couple Mitch and Mark threaten to quit: ‘We’re not going to be bullied’
A tense confrontation with The Block’s own crew saw Mitch and Mark threaten to quit the competition with just one week to go.
The Block frontrunners Mitch and Mark momentarily snapped on Sunday’s episode, hitting back at the show for “bullying” and claiming to have been accused of cheating.
With the competition in its final days, the contestants’ already stretched budgets are by this point non-existent.
Mitch and Mark have had a tough week — having always prided themselves on their budgeting, they were horrified to learn they were in fact almost $10,000 in arrears.
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What little money they managed to claw back had to be spent on essentials: Namely, the 100-plus defects that foremen Keith and Dan had identified around their home needing to be fixed.
But during Sunday’s episode, Mitch and Mark had other ideas, ripping up some tiling at the bottom of their staircase that the judges had hated last week, so they could replace it with a less divisive option.
To Keith and Dan, it was a needless extravagance compared to the essential fixes they still needed to do to get the house on the market.
“They’ve only got enough budget to finish the defects — yet they’re in there ripping up tiles? It doesn’t make sense,” said a furious Dan.
“They’re wasting money on retiling. They haven’t got the coin to do that.”
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Keith and Dan entered the house to confront Mitch and Mark — and the confrontation quickly turned ugly, with Mark almost immediately threatening to quit the competition.
“We’re out. Mitch, we are out. We can’t do this. We’re not going to be bullied. Do you know how hard we’ve worked?”
“Well, everyone’s worked hard,” reasoned Dan.
“I don’t give a f*** about the others, WE’VE worked hard,” said Mitch.
In an interview to camera, Mark said he felt Dan and Keith were implying he was trying to cheat the competition.
“I felt like a dog that’d been beaten, trying to defend myself,” says Mitch.
Mark appeared defeated after the confrontation.
“We’ll just rip this up and we’ll leave it like this … and we’ll sell it like this. Cos I’m not doing any more.”
A pep talk from his partner kept Mark in the game: “We’ve got a week to go! We’ve invested too much to walk away. Don’t give up. If they force us to not have a property to sell, we will be forced. But we are not going to give up — we need to try to get something that’s auctionable,” Mitch told him.
Speaking to the camera, Mitch said he had never imagined it would be so tough.
“I didn’t think it was Survivor. It’s feeling more like Survivor than The Block right now.”
The Block airs 7pm Sundays and 7:30pm Mondays — Wednesdays on Nine.