The Block 2025 Episode 35 recap: An unrepentant Sonny refuses to back down on his decision to block extended hours

Welcome to the world’s most uncomfortable dinner party, where side-eye and awkward silences are among the specials on the menu.

The tour of a lavender farm and intimate candlelit meal (as their prize for wining The Rex makeover challenge a few weeks back) couldn’t have come at a worse time for Sonny, Alicia, Mat, Robby, Can and Han.

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Han and Can at the world’s most awkward dinner party.

Still seething after Sonny vetoed the group’s request to extend the hours on site, a visibly furious Han wasn’t in the mood to make small talk over canapes.

Refusing to ignore the elephant in the room, Alicia asked Han what her problem was with them.

For Sonny and Alicia, the blockade hadn’t been personal. Yet to score a win and the only team on track to finish because they had planned ahead, Sonny simply wasn’t keen to make things easier for his competition.

“I’m protecting my game. My wife. My family. So, you can think I am an a***hole but I don’t give a f**k,” Sonny told his fellow diners.

Up until this point, Han felt Sonny’s move had been selfish and mean spirited, noting “it doesn’t align with my values.”

And so, Han was mad. And sad. And sporting what Mat dubbed “murder eyes”.

“I think she’s just hurt by the whole process of the game,” Can tried to explain to the group.

Sonny takes great delight in vetoing the teams getting extended working hours.

On this occasion, Han had good reason to be peeved. She had helped other teams out with retrieving their insulation the day before and Can had just spent five hours behind the wheel of a truck picking up tiles for Mat and Robby and Ben and Emma.

Sonny, being organised, hadn’t needed Can’s courier service (or so he thought, later, he was left high and dry when his tiles weren’t delivered and going round and round in circles on the phone with one of those AI helpers who give you nothing but overly cheery and irrelevant information).

Even though Sonny hadn’t called in any favours from Han and Can, they still felt he should show that same team spirit.

Can drives into town to collect the teams’ tiles.

The exchange came at a particularly low ebb for Han. She had just discovered that her game changing ploy to turn their shed into a home office could not go ahead because the space didn’t have an occupancy permit.

“So, I can’t even have a toilet?” she asked foreman Dan, looking for a way to salvage the situation by turning their office into an outhouse.

It’s hardly necessary, let alone a game changer given there’s multiple loos in the house and one in the pool house.

And is anyone clamouring to relieve themselves in an outdoor shed?

“Everyone has got their gamechanger or their secret weapon and we finally thought we had landed on something that could be that,” she said sadly of kissing the outdoor office goodbye as Can chortled awkwardly beside her.

“I don’t know what the path forward is. Maybe I’ll just do nothin’ it seems to work for everybody else.”

Han is told she can’t have a toilet in her shed.

A somewhat unsympathetic Dan believed the girls’ problems could be traced back to letting their builder Ben go.

That was proven when Dan discovered their new builder Shan had used the wrong screws in their framework and it would need to be redone.

Rather than admitting that giving Ben the heave-ho was a bad call, Han justified the steady stream of disasters to their lay-out changes.

And the fact Shannon was new to working on wet areas on The Block.

Dan also found plenty of problems at House Five. After watching Robby and Mat running around playing silly games instead of project managing their site, Dan walked in to discover a bombsite.

Dan has had enough of Mat and Robby’s shenanigans.

“This is a disaster,” he said. “Everything they’ve done, they’ve done wrong. This is all stemming from them changing the plans and putting the laundry where it shouldn’t be.

“Then I have gone in and seen that their waste pipe for their laundry is just sitting there. It seems to be just floating in no man’s land.”

To fix the problem would be no mean feat. It meant ripping up their waterproofing, extending their walls and levelling the fall.

Yep, what starts in laughter ends in tears.

MISSED AN EPISODE? HERE’S ALL OUR RECAPS SO FAR

Episode 1: Why no NSW applicants were good enough for The Block

Episode 2: The worst day on The Block

Episode 3/4: ‘Tear them off’: teams forced to rip tiles from walls

Episode 5: Judges feedback leaves one contestant vomiting

Episode 6: Dan and Dani’s heartbreak

Episode 7: The big problem with the Block house designs

Episode 8: Robby and Mat’s drunken blunder

Episode 9: ‘An up-market nursing home’