Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Guilty

I don't tend to go big for reality TV. The last one to which I paid serious attention was The Osbournes. I was transfixed by the day to day antics of Ozzy Osbourne and his clan. Watching the Prince Of Darkness fumble with cable TV remotes and blenders was straight up hilarious. Since then I have been made aware of a number of other shows with different ways to remind us all of our common humanity. And challenges with appliances.
Recently, a friend of ours was visiting and we happened upon a promo for new show on HGTV: A Very Brady Renovation. Perhaps because the Home and Garden Television network subsists almost exclusively on "reality," I flinched at the idea of giving them any of my attention. But Bradys. I watched A Very Brady Christmas. I watched The Brady Reunion. And The Brady Brides. I even watched their variety hour.
The folks at HGTV had their demographic squarely in their sights: Me. The conceit of this new series being that the house that was used for the exterior shots never matched up to the interiors because they were shot on a sound stage. The Brady Bunch was not a reality show.
I know, I know.
Getting the kids back together to do the work to get the outside to match the inside brings all that Brady magic pouring into the formula of all those "if you build it they will watch" shows. Want  to see Greg use a rip saw? Bobby with a nail gun? Marcia on the business end of a sledgehammer? It's all there. All in the service of recreating those iconic stairs, dining room, and kitchen. There are very few sure things in life, but this was, for me, one of them.
So I got my guilty pleasure, my baby boom fix. I started to wonder if there wouldn't be more of this kind of programming. Maybe HGTV could buy Mork's house in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Could they get Pam Dawber to come along and knock down a few walls to recreate that sprawling upstairs space in which all that alien zaniness took place. Or maybe they could invest in the Osbourne's old house and get Ozzy and his crew to come along for the fun. Just don't let him touch any of the power tools.

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