I'm pretty sure this man is the devil. Most likely because he "cares."
Every once in a while, when I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I watch a bit of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. There's nothing more upsetting than watching a bunch of insincere showbiz nobodies go in to direct the demolition of more-or-less normal house in order to make room a God-awful McMansion complete with a polyethylene white picket fence and rose-tinted concrete faux-brick walkway. Obviously these guys have an idea about how to solve the difficult and painful challenges facing so many families across the nation: build a small subset of these Americans the biggest house possible—bonus points if it is too sprawling and lavish for the family to afford heat and maintenance on top of their dire medical bills/funeral expenses/crushing emotional baggage/etc..
But I really like it—secretly I do!
It also makes me pleased as punch to watch giant teams of (semi-)custom home builders rush around the site while the clownish hosts bellow through megaphones at short distance to dazed construction volunteers in matching t-shirts. Or better yet, how about when the producers halt all work on the site to organize a landscaping sequence in homage to the rake men of the Yankee Stadium's Seventh Inning Stretch. And I cringe along with the hosts when someone tries to put a hard-hat over his or her perfect hair. Unless said host is wearing a tank top, because then they just look even more badass.
"Yo' momma so fat, when she sit around the house..."
The premise seems to be that there is no such thing as an existing structure that shouldn't immediately be raised to the ground in favor of a new home with a three-car garage planted squarely over where the old hearth used to stand. But how can I blame them? If every project needs to be completed in just five days, why struggle with the complexities of the house that the family is now living in when it can easily be replaced with something constructed with a set of plans bought off the internet? If my heart bleeds when they try to—not kidding here—detonate a Vermont farm house, it is merely because I am a Communist or a sissy, or, more likely, both.
Kind of reminds me of the P.A.G.A.N. cult meeting in Dragnet, minus the fuzzy breeches.
I'll stop. The set-up of the show and it's low-wattage "design team" that just pimps sponsored goods is all too easy to take licks at, time and time again. What really made me lose recently--although I haven't had the pleasure of languishing in the bathos of one of these four projects--is that these Doyens of the Domestic have turned their attention to the hurricane-ravaged portions of the Southeast. I knew it was only a matter of time before they did a project down there, but to see the promos for the show this weekend where clips of a family lustily sprinting through the halls of their new home were intercut with aerial shots of the Ninth Ward under fourteen feet of water really turned my stomach.
It seems that there is nothing more American than this Small Screen Effect, where, if we can crop our field of view down far enough, and then fill it with just a temporary scene of out-sized retail therapy, everything will be all right. While the planning challenges that face the Gulf Coast—we should probably include Florida too—fall of the national radar, a TV show is sweeping in to provide an enormously expensive band-aid that will come unstuck and float away as soon as the water comes up again. The idea that rebuilding a community starts by fitting out one family with a McMansion is vile. Equally loathsome is the kind of self congratulation that surrounds the stars of this show after they dedicate a whole four weeks to the problem. I hope they all step on a rusty nail.
