HGTV

An incredible number of people are glued to their television sets each night watching strangers buy homes on this cable television channel. Shows like Property Brothers and Trading Spaces are all the same as (usually) couples choose a new home or completely gut it to bring it up to their standards.

On Trading Spaces, the winning home, whichever one it is, always seems primed for some radical transformation that will leave it looking vaguely like all of the other houses we see on the show. For sure, it means that the new home will (absolutely) have granite countertops in the kitchen.

I have never seen such an obsession for the need for granite countertops among these new buyers. It must mean that is just part of a power trip for the female member of the family – something she can show off to her friends. Unsaid, is that those friends will probably not be impressed because they already have them in their own home.

Another major issue that I have with the buyers on these shows is: Where do they get the money to buy the homes in the first place and how will they be able to make the required payments. While it may have been many years ago, but Carol and I paid $17,000 for our first home, and we both had jobs. That probably wouldn’t even pay for the front door of many of the homes the young people are bidding on or renovating on the shows today.

I can only believe most of these young folks have inherited money and are choosing to dedicate it to the purchase of a home. These shows never speak about the real estate taxes, insurance that will come due each year on the home. Yes, they vaguely mention the required “homeowners fees,” if the house in a gated area, but only do so as a secondary thought.

When renovations are required for the new buyers on any of these shows, we are frequently impressed when the sledgehammers come out and walls are demolished to make the home a “home” for the buyers, but we can also count on some unanticipated event arising during the renovations, such as the discovery of asbestos behind some wall that needs to come down or some unknown code violation that pops up. But then, cynicism enters the fray because we always knew it was going to happen, but we also know that the show only lasts thirty minutes, so it will need to be resolved before the show goes away – which is always the case.

In retrospect, these shows present a fantasy world, where we don’t need to spend countless hours wandering the aisles of Home Depot in search of some piece of hardware to complete a project. Just watch Jonathon and Drew Scott on Property Brothers as they promise a dream home to buyers by using a delusional budget, and yet the entire project is completed in the half hour the show is on television.

In America, the idea that our lives can be improved by consumption is an integral part of our cultural beliefs, say the experts who watch and comment on these shows for the rest of us. They always go on to say that the homes they comment on, are “inadequate beasts that need to be tamed.”

Consequently, this approach is used by the creators of these shows to convince all of us watching that “escapism” from the truth is part of the reality they are peddling.