The villas are being fitted with expensive and unnecessary fireplaces and Dinner Wars hangs precariously in the balance – Calum Henderson ranks the Block NZ teams going into the break in living room week.

1. (Last Week: 2) – Brooke & Mitch – House 4

A low cloud of inevitability rolled over the Sandringham / Mt Roskill border on Sunday night when Brooke and Mitch won bathroom week with their nice but unadventurous design. These guys are playing a low-risk game and are almost definitely going to win. To add to their claims, the show’s worst-kept secret – that House 4 is this only one in the Mt Albert Grammar zone – was finally revealed this week as well.

Everything’s coming up Brooke and Mitch. They got a favourable draw for the extreme low-rent Come Dine With Me of Dinner Wars, cooking up a hearty South Island feast of whitebait fritters and venison. Then one of the builders found another clue as to House 4’s terrible and haunted past.

Like the valuer said, Brooke and Mitch carry a number of distinct advantages as we get into the guts of the competition.

2. (LW: 1) – Cat & Jeremy – House 3

For the first time in The Block NZ: Villa Wars’ long 3-week history, Cat and Jeremy failed to win a room reveal. They lost bathroom week, but have they also lost all their momentum? The fact that their bathroom still scored so highly despite being nowhere near finished suggests that they are probably still OK. Their strength seems to lie in room furnishing, so expect a big bounce back for living room week. Also we can look forward to seeing the robot Jeremy has been quietly designing.

While every couple seems to be rapidly running out of money, it looks like Jeremy has jacked up an under-the-table Sealord sponsorship to keep them afloat. Great enterprise, extremely grim product placement.

3. (LW: 4) – Sarah & Minanne – House 2

Sarah and Minanne can count themselves a little unlucky not to have notched their first room reveal victory in bathroom week. With Brooke and Mitch, they were the only other team to finish on time, and the cool tile mystic they met last week really came through with a stylish aesthetic. Things got reliably frantic, but they got over the line.

They looked to be on the up and up, but have hit a rough patch this week with some classic sibling passive-aggression, overdramatically dubbed “the biggest meltdown in The Block history”. Probably they could just do with a little time to themselves.

Still, weird how TV3 managed to secure an exclusive scene from the new Star Wars and then just quietly slipped in in the middle of The Block.

4. (LW: 2) – Jamie & Hayden – House 1

Shocker of a week for Jaymz and Haydz. Their bathroom had perhaps the coolest design, but one which proved too difficult to get over the line in the space of a week. In the end they just gave up on it and sat in the communal kitchen bleakly plowing through an enormous bowl of Nutrigrain.

A further blow for the pair arrived this week in the form of the valuer, who took one look at the rhombus daybed they bought off Cat and Jeremy and told them it added no value whatsoever to the house.

Tough times, and they may get tougher with Hayden doggedly pursuing his dark interior design vision of a black-walled house in living room week. On the bright-side they now have a ‘herringbone entertainment recess’ to compliment the rhombus daybed. It’s anybody’s guess how much value that’s going to add come auction time.