‘Has Your House Been Ruined By A Home Improvement Show?’: Watch This Hilarious Sketch About These Reality Shows
TV shows about makeovers, fix-ups, and general improvements done to people or buildings, are a secret passion for quite a lot of us. I think our love for those kinds of shows sprouts from the fact that they appeal to our desire to see (obvious) problems solved in innovative ways. Or to put it in another way, we like it when some order is brought into chaotic situations.
However, no-one can deny that some TV shows about fixing homes or giving houses well-deserved makeovers are hilarious, unrealistic, and don’t make much sense. The Canadian comedy video production house LoadingReadyRun pokes fun at nonsensical home fixing TV shows in a short but hilarious video. Scroll down for Bored Panda’s interview with Graham Stark of LoadingReadyRun about people’s fascination with home renovation shows, as well as reality TV.
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LoadingReadyRun’s sketch makes fun of home renovation shows on TV
In the video, the LoadingReadyRun team makes fun of how some TV shows that are all about fixing up homes end up making weird and seemingly-random design decisions that simply don’t make any sense. Like putting hubcaps on the wall or framing a pair of chopsticks.
Obviously, these are over-the-top examples meant to make us laugh. However, the comedy sketch highlights how some shows are so removed from reality that they don’t even notice it anymore.
Bored Panda talked to Stark of LoadingReadyRun about the hilarious sketch. “The inspiration for this sketch was the peak of home renovation shows, where the hosts would take one aspect or one niche interest from homeowners, and redecorate based solely on that with no concern for anything else, least of all aesthetics.”
“I think, in the case of the kind of show we’re parodying, a lot of it is the appeal of watching a train wreck,” Stark shared his opinion about why some people have such a massive fascination with home renovation shows. “People just like watching these shows and going, “oh, I would never decorate my home like that, these people have awful taste.”
In Stark’s opinion, home renovation shows warp our understanding of reality just like most reality television: “It’s hard to know what’s actually real, what’s been ‘smoothed’ by the producers, and what’s just fully staged. In the universe where it exists, Unf**k This House is definitely a documentary series.”
The fact is, home renovation shows have completely changed expectations and warped our understanding of what’s practical and possible. The Washington Post writes that renovation reality TV has influenced homeowners, real estate agents, home buyers, and sellers to a significant extent.
Blogger Kate Wagner from Baltimore said that these types of shows represent the idea that “if you improve or upgrade your house, you’ll improve your life. It’s appealing, but in many ways it’s escapism. Remodels and real estate transactions aren’t this easy in real life.” And as we learned from LoadingReadyRun’s jokes, not all changes are for the better.
The full clip can be found here
LoadingReadyRun has been making comedy shorts for over 16 years, since 2003. They’ve got an impressive CV, having produced videos for Wizards of the Coast, Penny Arcade, as well as Cards Against Humanity.
People thought that the sketch was brilliant
Because it's always a good idea to have your house renovated by some idiot designer with the most ridiculous ideas. In my country we had such a show for one season but the results were always impractical and hideous. The worst show was when they "renovated' a lovely wooden house with a beautiful stairway with handcarved banisters and painted that in the most awfull pink you can imagine. The houseowner sued them for vandalising her house. They settled out of court.
I'm half German, half Greek. They'd probably fill my house with ancient Greek style statues brandishing sausagers and beer.
I want to go to a designer's house and fill it with comfortable furniture, eclectic knick-knacks collected over a lifetime of experiences and love, and watch them freak out about the lack of aesthetic!
Just like Pimp My Ride, Xzhibit put a gold fish tank between two large Subs, couldnt feed it and the bass would kill it
oh, that's so sad... they didn't consider that before spending the money to do it?
Load More Replies...
I've always said interior design, like art, is in the eye of the beholder.
why is it that "some people have had to sell their homes because they can't pay utilities after their home has been renovated?" :) Please enlighten me, I know nothing about this
I'm a quarter Welsh, German, Dutch, and some bits of the Netherlands. I think they might turn my place (if I had a house) into a bar.
Reminds me of "Pimp my ride". Some makeovers were straight-up impractical.
Best "Changing Rooms" incident ever was Linda Barker coming up with this ridiculous shelving unit constructed of shelves connected by ropes and hung, swinging from the ceiling. They first add loads of heavy books, then the woman's beloved teapot collection.....you can imagine what happens next.
I always wondered about the shows finding a single item that the kid owned and using it as a 'theme' for their room. Other than that the shows were usually invited via an excited video begging for a renovation . I do recall one episode of 'Pimp my ride' where a gals ratty work truck was fitted with a huge plasma t.v. in the bed instead of say , a tool rack . That was kind of silly .
I remember these cheap BBC renovation shows in the 80s: Two friends/neighbours/colleagues/... would renovate a room in the other's house, helped/hindered by 'designers' and a very limited budget. So a complete 'Blue Peter' style "creative with wine corks" horrorshow. Sadly pre-RealityTV so the finished rooms but not the actual drama and fallout and ruined friendships were shown, sadly.
There is an equal show in Germany, but they change their designer only like every 10 years and the outcome (in the few episodes I saw) is mostly decent and nothing too crazy. Only the children rooms get sometimes a bit funky, but those will be changed a few years later anyway.
years ago I worked with a woman who was on Staycation (short lived HGTV show)and they glued black painted cut in half ping pong balls all over her walls like some weird braille art installation you'd have to be blind to enjoy...but certainly no one sighted could enjoy it.
Because it's always a good idea to have your house renovated by some idiot designer with the most ridiculous ideas. In my country we had such a show for one season but the results were always impractical and hideous. The worst show was when they "renovated' a lovely wooden house with a beautiful stairway with handcarved banisters and painted that in the most awfull pink you can imagine. The houseowner sued them for vandalising her house. They settled out of court.
I'm half German, half Greek. They'd probably fill my house with ancient Greek style statues brandishing sausagers and beer.
I want to go to a designer's house and fill it with comfortable furniture, eclectic knick-knacks collected over a lifetime of experiences and love, and watch them freak out about the lack of aesthetic!
Just like Pimp My Ride, Xzhibit put a gold fish tank between two large Subs, couldnt feed it and the bass would kill it
oh, that's so sad... they didn't consider that before spending the money to do it?
Load More Replies... I've always said interior design, like art, is in the eye of the beholder.
why is it that "some people have had to sell their homes because they can't pay utilities after their home has been renovated?" :) Please enlighten me, I know nothing about this
I'm a quarter Welsh, German, Dutch, and some bits of the Netherlands. I think they might turn my place (if I had a house) into a bar.
Reminds me of "Pimp my ride". Some makeovers were straight-up impractical.
Best "Changing Rooms" incident ever was Linda Barker coming up with this ridiculous shelving unit constructed of shelves connected by ropes and hung, swinging from the ceiling. They first add loads of heavy books, then the woman's beloved teapot collection.....you can imagine what happens next.
I always wondered about the shows finding a single item that the kid owned and using it as a 'theme' for their room. Other than that the shows were usually invited via an excited video begging for a renovation . I do recall one episode of 'Pimp my ride' where a gals ratty work truck was fitted with a huge plasma t.v. in the bed instead of say , a tool rack . That was kind of silly .
I remember these cheap BBC renovation shows in the 80s: Two friends/neighbours/colleagues/... would renovate a room in the other's house, helped/hindered by 'designers' and a very limited budget. So a complete 'Blue Peter' style "creative with wine corks" horrorshow. Sadly pre-RealityTV so the finished rooms but not the actual drama and fallout and ruined friendships were shown, sadly.
There is an equal show in Germany, but they change their designer only like every 10 years and the outcome (in the few episodes I saw) is mostly decent and nothing too crazy. Only the children rooms get sometimes a bit funky, but those will be changed a few years later anyway.
years ago I worked with a woman who was on Staycation (short lived HGTV show)and they glued black painted cut in half ping pong balls all over her walls like some weird braille art installation you'd have to be blind to enjoy...but certainly no one sighted could enjoy it.
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