Showing posts with label HGTV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HGTV. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

If you can fake being sincerely annoying. . . .


Oh, thank God.

The people on House Hunters aren't that priggish, superficial and annoying all by themselves. That's just who they play on TV. Just like they're playing at actually looking for a house.

Because the HGTV "reality" series is a great big ol' fake. We heard the news today -- oh, boy!


Er . . . I mean, Yahoo!

The blog Hooked on Houses is giving fans a dose of reality about the HGTV series "House Hunters." According to an interview with a former participant, Bobi Jensen, much of the popular show, which has been on the air since 1999, is faked.

The premise of 'House Hunters' is that viewers follow a buyer as they anxiously decide between three different houses. Jensen says that, in fact, one house has already been purchased--the producers wouldn't even finalize her as a subject until after the closing. "When I watch other episodes of the show now I can usually pick out the house they were getting based on hair-dos alone," says Jensen. Houses are sometimes shot months apart. While the two rejected properties may be on the market, in Jensen's case, "They were just our two friends' houses who were nice enough to madly clean for days in preparation for the cameras!"

A former subject of the spin-off "House Hunters International" confirms that one house on the program has already been bought before filming begins. Ted Prosser, who did his real estate search in the Virgin Islands, said in an interview with a St. John blog: "The show is not really a reality show. You have to already own the house that gets picked at the end of the show. But the other houses in [my] show are actually the other houses we considered buying."

Hooked on Houses originally busted the program for using houses already in escrow in 2010, but now they are providing more dirt about other phony details. Jensen says producers tweaked her storyline to make it more TV-friendly. "The producers said they found our (true) story--that we were getting a bigger house and turning our other one into a rental--boring and overdone." Instead they had Jensen emphasize that their old home was too small, something that she claims makes her "cringe" with embarrassment when she watches the episode.
I GUESS at HGTV, if you can fake insufferable, you've got it made. Such is life in this land of bread and circuses.