When we heard that there was going to be a new version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, we thought that the show had recently been rebooted. But that version, on HGTV and hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, was five years ago. Now, its back on its original home, ABC, and his hosted by the co-founders of the Internet- and Netflix-famous organization website The Home Edit.
EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, the co-founders of The Home Edit, sit down for an interview to introduce themselves.
The Gist: A new iteration of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is here, hosted by Shearer and Teplin, where deserving families will get new or extensively expanded homes, built out in five days with the help of an army of volunteers, donations from product-placement-seeking companies, and two designers. This time around, the designers are Wendell Holland (yes, the former Survivor winner) and Arianne Bellizaire.
This version of EMHE takes advantage of Shearer and Teplin’s ability to help people organize their stuff, which helps them organize their lives instead of drown in things they no longer need. So, while Holland and Bellizaire are on-site to help shepherd the speedy build-out and provide their own touches, Shearer and Teplin take everything out of the house and lay it out in a massive space called the “Edit Zone.” There, the homeowners and their families can go through their things room by room and eliminate what they don’t need anymore. It also gives the team an idea of what their storage needs are.
In the first episode, the team goes to the Austin, Texas area to help Gayle Warren, who lives with her three kids and her mother in the same small house she bought with her husband Fred in 1994. The family lost Fred to COVID in 2021, and ever since, things have been taking over their crowded space, with two of the kids sleeping in the living room/dining room.
More than anything, though, Gayle hasn’t been able to bring herself to part with Fred’s things, including the clothes he wore when he entered the hospital. They will be getting a new house in the nearby town of Hutto, which is closer to where their congregation is (Fred was a pastor and the couple owned a restaurant together).
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This new version of EMHE is pretty similar to the one that ran on ABC from 2004-12 and on HGTV in 2020.
Our Take: Given how the series is designed to give viewers the feels each and every week, we wondered why Extreme Makeover: Home Edition hasn’t been continually running for the last 20 years. More than ever, the good news aspect of the show is something that’s welcomed, even if the actual building of the house more or less takes a back seat in this version.
The show’s producers really want to lean on Shearer and Teplin’s specialty, mainly because it’s the best way to tap straight into the emotional difficulties the families they’re helping are having. In the previous versions, the families were sent on vacations, and we saw them checking in. Here, the families get to sort through their stuff in the “Edit Zone,” with its corresponding emotional wringer.
What we’re not sure about is whether the Edit Zone travels from location to location or if it stays in the same place. That would explain why we don’t see a lot of Shearer and Teplin on the job site. Either way, though, there isn’t a whole lot of footage of the actual building of the house; much of it is done in montage and time-lapse form. Perhaps other episodes will deal more with the house and less with the organization, but if you’re coming to the show looking for the trials and tribulations of having to build a house on an extraordinarily tight schedule, you’re going to be disappointed.
Sex and Skin: None. This definitely is a show for all ages.
Parting Shot: After the requisite scene where the bus moves to reveal the new home and the family goes through it, they celebrate.
Sleeper Star: The builders and volunteers are the real stars here. We just wish we saw what some of the difficulties of this kind of build are.
Most Pilot-y Line: Teplin’s signature look is her headbands. She even wears a headband around her hard hat when the group puts up the first framed wall of the house.
Our Call: STREAM IT. There is certainly a fair amount of reality show fudging in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and it’s fairly suspicious that the home build itself isn’t front and center in the show. But the show’s emotional pull is still there, and that’s basically what they’re going for, isn’t it?
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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