I usually like home improvement shows but not this one There is just a vibe about it that makes me cringe, and it has nothing to do with the host - yes she is a little over the top, but that doesn't bother me at all. What DOES bother me is that everything just seems so fake. Now, to be fair, when I watch shows like this I tend to be most interested in the problems they encounter and how they fix them, or maybe in learning a new way to do something. But you don't get much of that here. What you do get is a lot of frenetic activity with people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, always acting (and it does seem like acting, and bad acting at that) like they are really stressed out because things aren't happening as fast as they should. There are a few places where they go into some small bit of detail about how they did something but that's pretty rare.
Then there are the recipients. I feel like this is just a regurgitation of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in that the people behind the show feel the need to convince us how deserving the recipients are. Except that what they think makes a person deserving often is not what a lot of other people would think makes a person deserving. The first show was pretty good in that regard but then after that it went downhill. For example having a lot of kids doesn't necessarily make a family deserving, nor does the fact that they are active in their church. I would personally prefer that they don't try to sell me on why a person or family is deserving; that's not at all why I'm watching the show. But also, when I see church and/or homeschooling plus large families mentioned in the same show, I wonder if this is being made in a LDS area. I get the vibe that this show could have come right out of Salt Lake City. I really don't want or need to know the recipient's religion; it's none of the viewer's business and it should not make a family any more or less deserving. You get the distinct feeling that an atheist with no kids or aging parents who live with them would be completely out of luck for consideration by this show.
I would be really interested to know where this show is made. As others have pointed out, there seems to be no thought given to building permits, the effect on the neighbors or anything like that Also, when things are done in a huge rush like that, you know the house can't really be ready to be lived in. Paint has to dry, adhesives have to set, and the smell of those things would likely be pretty intense for at least a day or so.
Then there is the fact that the family always gets antsy to go home about half an hour to 45 minutes before they are supposed to. Oh, puh-leeze! Once or twice I might believe it, but every show and you know it's staged. We all know that "reality" shows are faked to some degree but this one is so fake they might as well have the host shouting "THIS IS FAKE, PEOPLE!" into a megaphone. I don't doubt that the remodels actually take place, but I do doubt that they are always completed within the 12 hour window (nothing always goes according to plan in real life) and I doubt that most of the "drama" isn't staged. And how is it that they never have complaining or nosy neighbors around?
One final nit, at the start of the show you always see shots of them chucking the family's possessions into boxes, but you don't see any of those possessions come back except maybe a few pictures. So of course I wonder what happens to those items. Is the family left with the task of unpacking them and trying to figure out what goes where? And when they do, does that mean all of the original clutter returns? I hate to point it out, but in most places entering someone's home without their knowledge and removing their possessions is very much frowned upon by law enforcement, but yet you never see the cops show up and ask what is going on (at least not in the episodes I have watched). And yet we are supposed to believe the family has no clue any of this was going to happen. Something just doesn't add up here. In my opinion this show is much too fake to be believable; it's like a bad movie parody of a home improvement show that you might see on the Hallmark Channel. For me personally, there's really just not much to like about this show, and that's not something I would usually say about a show in this genre.
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