My daughter is a huge fan of Ghost Adventures, which features several super bro-y bros stumbling around old houses in the dark and occasionally shrieking “Something touched my neeeeeeck!!!”
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Oh cripes, THAT show! My parents love the various ghost hunter shows, and even they laugh at that one – with the lead ghost bro looking like Henry Rollins, stumbling around and going “dude” a lot and then squealing about noises in the dark. “It’s a g-g-g-ghoooost!”
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HGTV - An entire channel devoted to programs I do not want to watch anymore. My wife still will watch a few but I cannot stand them anymore.
I’ve flipped my share of houses and when I was younger some of these shows appealed to me. Now, I can’t even.
The shows are either looking at houses I’ll never afford (We have 1.5 million to spend on a place in Manhattan for when we are in town) , remodelling houses with so much faux-drama (We just found out the foundation was made of Plaster of paris), or ridiculous decorating ideas (We wanted texture on the walls, so we covered them with oatmeal and now painting over it)
I grudgingly watched Fixer-Upper for a while to see the Waco, TX shots…but it’s Waco…I saw it all Season one.
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I never caught that one. More recently, there seems to be an entire genre of shows about skilled craftsmen making just ridiculous stuff for rich people. There’s the guy who builds fancy custom pools, the guys who build fancy custom fish tanks, and the guys who build tree-houses that cost more than an average house. My kids like watching those shows, and I enjoy watching people who do a job well - that part I respect. But damn if I don’t walk away from each show thinking “you people have too much money!”
Speaking of competence, have you seen “The Reassembler” with James May? Each episode is just half an hour of James May being telegenic and knowledgeable and mellow, reassembling a machine from pieces.
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I mentioned this above I think … Survivorman … Les Stroud … he’s by himself (does all the camera work) somewhere . Amazing stuff. I’ve learned a lot.
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I used to love watching home improvement shows back when they actually taught you how to do useful stuff, but now they have changed to this competitive model with the reveal and I hate hate hate that. And the projects are so stupid and crafty looking.
I also despise watching people shop for houses. I’ve bought and sold many homes and it is the WORST fucking thing in the WORLD. I get hives watching those house buying shows. House shopping and house selling are CRAP, mostly because realtors are so desperate. And then once you buy a house, you get to MOVE. Boy does that suck.
The real estate porn is just ridiculous in these shows. It’s always, of course, the bigger house that they can’t really afford that they buyers purchase.
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I had to stop watching Grand Designs because I just couldn’t cope with another hour of hyper-privileged idiots throwing tantrums because their $20,000/ft marble benchtop wasn’t quite the colour they were expecting.
A bloodthirsty communist revolution gets more appealling every time I watch one of those shows.
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I did enjoy “Australia’s Best Houses” for that reason. It’s nice of them to provide a shopping list like that, come the day.
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It’s not a coincidence that the best ones were the ones the people built themselves.
Like the woodsman’s cottage or that cave one.
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Or the collectively-built worker’s cottages, or McCloud’s little off-grid recycled shack from Man Made Home.
I’d happily watch him do a series on realistic houses that normal people can afford. The world is increasingly shifting to a state where the working class are permanent renters, though.
Home ownership has never been a realistic possibility in my life, despite the fact that I’d be perfectly happy in a dirt-floored single-room shack. All I need is a place to keep my bed and books out of the rain.
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That’ll be a very short series. 
Well, we’re all spending our hard-earned on smashed avo, eh. 
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Howzabout Kevin McCloud’s Why McMansions are Shit?
One of my regular worksites is out near Hinchinbrook, repairing an artificial wetland created in the middle of a newly-built suburb. Western Sydney, exposed site, no shade…and every single one of the houses is a two-story no-eaves big-window monstrosity built to within inches of the property boundary.
They’ll be completely uninhabitable without 24/7 aircon; it’s environmental suicide.
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If you have toddlers then never, ever let them watch this show on Netflix.
Literally the entire script of every episode is some stupid anthropomorphic crayons with annoying voices reciting their various names as they color in a painfully un-challenging coloring book page. And for one especially taxing nine-month period it’s practically all my kids ever wanted to watch.
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And here I thought that years of Elmo, Blues Clues, Dora, Diego, the Back-Yardigans, Pinky Dinky Doo, etc was as “bad” as it got; you make me really thankful mine is well past that age.
Also props to whomever it was up-thread that said Caillou is some of the most irksome shit ever created for kids.
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Our kids ages must overlap significantly. You left out Lazytown. Higglytown Heroes. And The Wiggles. It all goes so fast. I encourage parents to embrace the suck. Sing the theme songs. Just not in the shower. They’ll be watching Jane the Virgin before you know if.
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I’ve sat through all those too, but “Color Crew” makes Elmo and Caillou look like HBO prestige dramas in terms of entertainment quality.
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So I did. I also left out The Upside Down Show, Jack’s Big Music Show & Yo Gabba Gabba, which actually wasn’t bad.
Higglytown & the Wiggles didn’t make it onto my screen; there’s only so much I can take.
You think I didn’t?
Dude… I can still sing along with I dunno how many Laurie Berkner songs, to this very day…
#O_O
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The most entertaining part for me were the dramatizations of how the person got the tattoo. They were so over the top and ridiculous.
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Lol nah didn’t mean to imply that. I liked Jacks Big Music Show. I looked forward to new episodes! Stanley was my favorite though. Theme song by Baha Men!
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Oh, I can’t stand this new reality show, American President.
Fucking idiots, every single one.
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