Extreme Home Makeover

I have to confess to being enamored with ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I think it must be the combination of shop affinity with the theatrical install pace of the whole thing. After years of This Old House and Hometime its nice to see the genre finally be ready for prime time. Even if in order to get there it also has to be just a little bit unreal. I've been watching from the start because I wanted to see what they would do with Ty from TLC's Trading Spaces which also had a phase with me, as well as While You Were Out, & Clean Sweep. All fun stuff, you should check them out.

I guess I have since abandoned the TLC shows to make room in my television consumption for the Discovery Channel shows: Monster House, Monster Garage, and even American Chopper. I guess in some ways its just nicer to watch professionals working as opposed to homeowners. That, and the behavior of people on the Discovery shows is much closer to how people really behave in the field. Students watch Monster House and come away flabbergasted and I can't wait to tell them that they are as likely as not to wind up working for one of those guys once they graduate. Just a tiny little "Welcome to my world" moment.

I am wondering though if Home Edition is somehow a bad thing. Is there a possibility that people with problems are going to get to the point that rather than solving them that they wait for a TV producer to come along? House a mess? Wait for Clean Sweep. Overweight? Go on The Biggest Loser. Hole in your roof? Call in Extreme Makeover. Doesn't it at some level start to make people think that someone else is going to address their very real problems?

Don't get me wrong, the people that have been on Home Edition have all been very deserving. I think it will soon become a mantra when things get tough: "well, it's bad, but its not like the Extreme Home Makeover people are coming." These people's lives have all been devastated. At the end of the show this week I noticed that there is someone charged as "Family Casting." I guess this is the person that has the lucky job of going through what must now be millions of application videos and separating them into three piles: "truly pathetic", "not really pathetic enough", & "cry me a river." Talk about something to keep your own life in perspective. How would you like to be the family who's house burned down, mother lost her job, and father is shipping off to Iraq who don't get the home makeover because your life wasn't quite as hard as the people who's house was blown over by a tornado, dad lost his job, mom is shipping off to Iraq, and son has leukemia. Make no mistake, these are the major leaguers of hardship.

So yes, they are doing great things for deserving people. Still while asserting that, there is this little feeling that perhaps heaping all of that love on one family is exposing something. We have to be talking about millions of dollars here, and that was before it became somewhat traditional to pay off the family's mortgage as well. Tonight they build the family two houses, got the son an engagement ring for his fiance, made them a wedding, and gave them a $50,000 check to start their lives together, and of course every family gets a 7 day dream vacation while all the work is happening.

Is it just me, or can there even be an excess to charitable giving? All of the sponsors are quick to parade their logos in front of the cameras on the show. I saw the TrussJoist logo tonight, so I gather they likely donated some beams. The General Contracting company gets several plugs, and what amounts now to a two hour prime time network commercial. Sears donates tools and appliances. By the end of the season Sears will have donated something like, well I don't know, but I am sure on the last episode of the season their weekly "thank you for letting us be part of this makeover" commercial will tell me. But lets get real; Home Edition & its sponsors aren't Habitat For Humanity. It is still just TV and winning the lottery, not really charity.

I guess I shouldn't bash. They do a wonderful thing and change peoples lives. But every week I wonder if they would scale the effort down and not give so many pile on gifts at the end just how many more desperately needful people they could help. They gave one person tonight what was likely a $5000 ring, a vacation, and a house - all on top of the house they built for his parents. Couldn't the $50,000 nest egg have found a more deserving home? Maybe not, and again I don't want to diminish the giving or the graciousness with which all the families have received everything, but the thought is always there - do all of these families need 5 plasma TV's? Wouldn't it make more sense to auction the plasmas, buy them standard TVs, and donate the rest of the money to the community?

Two other wrinkles...

I assume that the families must sign some sort of agreement that says they won't sell. In most cases I would think that while the new house is great, they could sell it and the contents, pick a more modest but absolutely fabulous house, and walk away with a six figure profit. I haven't heard anything on the news about Extreme Makeover houses popping up on Ebay. Maybe the families aren't as cynical as I am.

How long do you think until we hear this on the news:

Last night in Smalltown, USA a family who had just endured a tragedy was forced to endure another. The Smith's had just found out last week that Mr. Smith has cancer and then yesterday their house burned down. Upon further investigation arson investigators discovered that the blaze had been intentionally set by the Smith's 6 year old son. Apparently the child was unhappy with his room and had figured the combination of a fire and a parent's illness might be enough to get them onto Extreme Makeover Home Edition. ABC television, which airs the program, declined the opportunity to comment.

Not possible, or just a matter of time?