I love Property Brothers.  It is simple and it is formulaic, but formulaic is just fine when you have a great formula.

And Property Brothers does.  The format is simple.  A couple has a list of wants and needs for their next home which they cannot afford in their local market.  The Property Brothers come in and help them select a home at a price which they can afford.  They then they proceed to renovate the home so that it meets the wants and needs of the couple and comes in with their budget..

Unlike most reality fare, I almost always like everyone involved.  The home buyers uniformly appreciate what the Property Brothers do.  I like grateful people.  And they pitch in.  I like people who pitch in.  And what can I say about the Property Brothers?  They’re here to help.  They’re not daunted by your problem—they can fix it.  Are they a little too pretty for dudes? Perhaps.  By darn it, they are useful guys to have around.

Property Brothers appeals to both genders because it gives each a steady does of what it craves.  For women, it is a show about nesting.  For men, it gives a steady stream guys solving problems with their brains and their hands.  It’s almost solution porn.

Let’s see what Cam and Joe have to say:

Cam:

When I first learned that I would be writing an article wherein Phil would choose the show to watch I groaned aloud. I did because I knew for a fact that it would be an HGTV show. My wife is an HGTV fan, I am much less so. She watches Property Virgins, Love it or List it, House Hunters, and International House Hunters pretty regularly and I’ll watch with her if I’ve got nothing better to do, like stick needles in my eye. My biggest complaint is that I can’t invest in these shows because they’re so fake. Everything within the show is so obviously staged that I feel like I’m watching shitty actors doing boring things. Imagine Breaking Bad if Walter and Skyler White looked at houses for an hour. Actually, don’t imagine that. Breaking Bad would have found a way to make that amazing. They made an hour of television about catching a fly for god’s sakes. Unfortunately I did not watch Breaking Bad, I watched Property Brothers. This series is so lame that even my wife doesn’t want anything to do with it. The show revolves around Drew Scott, a real estate agent and his brother Jonathan, a contractor. Two metrosexual twins who show “shitty” properties to prospective buyers and what they can turn them into. Then the buyers choose a property and they renovate the place and act super amazed when they see how different their home looks without walls.

The episode I watched centered on newlywed couple Rob and Janice, whose budget cap is $750,000. That’s another thing I hate about this show. I’m not trying to start any class wars, but these uppity rich people with their demands make me fucking sick. Very occasionally on Property Virgins they’ll show someone with an actual realistic budget, and those are more enjoyable to watch. It’s more relatable to me as a poor person to see a person have to choose between having a washer and dryer in their house or 1 full bathroom. Usually, and especially with International House Hunters, you’re watching people choose whether to live on the beach or have 100 acres. Anyways, in this episode the couple has a list of “needs” that include such banal upper-class bullshit like a modern house flow and a hot tub. Suck my dick, Rob. I understand that you’ve become somewhat successful to have a budget max of $750,000, but if a hot tub is on your list of needs you’re losing me as a sympathizer. The brothers show them a house that’s perfect and has everything they need and it turns out to cost 1.4 million fucking dollars, $650,000 over budget. I was hoping that this was to show them that they’re idiots and their demands are unrealistic, but it was more of a setup for Jonathan to tell them that he can renovate any old home to look just like this dream house. Do they do this every episode? I imagine this gimmick gets old fast. “Hey honey, what’d I miss?” “Oh you know, the dummy house part. They were so disappointed!”

The brothers then show them around to two different houses that look like palaces to me. Of course they act disgusted at every stupid thing they see. Sometimes I understand their skepticism when it comes to things like the kitchen layout, but when they’re criticizing stupid things like blinds and wallpaper I roll my eyes. You’re making the biggest decision of your lives, and can’t see past a 50 buck trip to Home Depot? This is actually a complaint I have in just about every HGTV show. This couple is particularly infuriating as they act as if they aren’t open to any kind of renovations. This is bullshit, right? This HAS to be bullshit, they have obviously agreed to take part of a show where renovations are one of the main focus’. Just more of the obviously fake stuff that takes me out of the show. They’re shown (via 90’s era CGI)  what the houses COULD look like, and they agree on a house, and buy it. The couple decides to help keep costs down by helping with the renovation themselves*. Yadda Yadda Yadda there’s some unexpected costs, and a hilariously staged fight between the couple prompting Jonathan to “kick them out” until the renovations are over. If that’s what arguing is, then apparently most conversations I have with my wife are actually arguments. They might be, I’m pretty oblivious to social norms. In the end everything fits into budget, including the hot tub! Thank god, I was really worried about that one. Meanwhile, I’m raising a family in a house that’s the size of one floor of their home, and 3 generations of Mexican families are living in shacks the size of their guest bathroom. I get the appeal of the show, it is escapist entertainment. It’s kind of neat to see houses transformed into different houses. Like watching an episode of Transformers where the creepily handsome property brothers take four weeks reassembling a truck into a robot. Except I’d rather watch that.

*Hell yes, I would be all over this shit. Unfortunately every single wall in my house is kind of essential, or I’d be sledgehammering the shit out of the place like Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes. Did anyone ever see Human Wrecking Balls on G4 some years ago? Now THAT was an amazing show. It’s the Property Brothers I’d watch every day. Literally it was just these two big brother guys that would go into a place and wreck it. Not with tools, but by punching and kicking the walls and appliances. I realize my love for that makes me simple, but I am simple. It was amazing! Why did it only last one season? They punched a Cessna airplane until it was nothing. If the show had gone on I’d like to think they would have just kept punching bigger things like a 747.

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Joe

I fucking hated Property Brothers. Reminds me of why I hate HGTV bullshit so much. WHO THE FUCK HAS 195K IN CASH TO DROP ON A HOUSE? “Yeah, you can probably offer about 5K less because the seller should be very receptive to a cash offer.” A FUCKING CASH OFFER? NO SHIT THE SELLER IS GONNA BE RECEPTIVE TO A FUCKING CASH OFFER. If someone made a cash offer on my house, I’d assume that it’s the fucking mafia, and I either accept the cash offer or I sleep with the fishes see. A fucking cash offer. Fuck that fucking bitch Olivia and her fucking gigantic Nancy Kerrigan meets Sarah Jessica Parker face. Fuck that bitch. Olivia sweetheart, if you’re out there, I’m sorry, but fuck you.

Rest assured, it’s not the property I hate about Property Brothers, and it’s not the Brothers I hate about Property Brothers. The houses seem to be run of the mill standard houses, usually not too outlandish like their House Hunters International brethren. The Brothers are affable twins, one of whom handles the real estate while the other handles the rehabbing. They seem like good dudes.

But the people, FUCKING SHIT THE PEOPLE. These types of shows only seem to attract a certain type of asshole, who does not comprehend that if you go on TV complaining about minuscule decorating details, or being as cavalier with your wealth as humanly possible, the vast unwashed majority of us are going to resent you to the point of wishing slow, painful, penis and/or vagina mutilating death. Either that, or the HGTV format just pushes people to over the edge of the fuckhead cliff, down into the valley of OHMYFUCKINGGOD QUIT COMPLAINING ABOUT THE CARPETING AND THE SMALLISH MASTER BEDROOM YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!

I’d love to watch this show with my wife once a week, if HGTV could promise me that they were only going to get everyday people who have to take out a mortgage to buy a home, and that they will be edited in such a way as to limit the number of times that I want to punch a hole through my TV and the wall behind it. Since I have years of evidence that suggests that’s never going to happen, fuck the Property Brothers right in their oversized and weirdly shaped heads.

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If you would like to decide for yourself, Property Brothers airs several times each day on HGTV.

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Dear 31 year-old Caucasian Aspiring King of His Castle,

Your wife seems nice enough and I genuinely hope that you can buy her a house with an open floor plan, an updated kitchen and plenty of closet space. However, you and I need to get some things straight:

1)You’re not manly enough to call a rumpus room your “man cave”.
Think of the manliest guy you know—the old guy down the street who stormed the beach at Normandy, your crazy redneck cousin who noodles hundred-pound catfish and makes jerky out of them or the guy who works with troubled teens in South Central. Does he have a “man cave”? No, he has a den. He doesn’t need a special secluded room where he can act as he wishes without his wife scolding him.

And let’s be honest about something—there is nothing manly about farting up a barcalounger while swearing at other gamers through your headset or screaming at the football coach through the television (providing the kind of insight one can only gain as the backup punter on a freshman football team) while your buddies who still live with their parents gobble Domino’s pizza. If we’re going to be honest here, that would make the room an “adolescent cave”.

2)You’re not Trump 2.0
No publisher is going to ask you to write the follow-up to The Art of the Deal because you offered $120,000 on that charming late-60’s ranch listed at $173,000, only to pay $168,000. Your lowball offer isn’t some clever stratagem which makes your next slightly-less-unreasonable offer look a dump truck filled with gold bricks. The sellers have a number in mind at which it makes sense to sell the house. If you hit that number, they’ll sell you the house.

And to that end, stop it with the tough guy act. Your realtor (wisely) isn’t going to pass on your huffy declaration that “I’m walking if they don’t include that dartboard” or “I’m drawing a line in the sand at $167,500”. This is a business transaction, not an Old West showdown. Stop thinking that anyone cares about anything other than the price you will pay and your ability to consummate the sale.

3)Stop sweating the small stuff
This is a big decision for you which will impact your life for many years to come. Try to maintain some sense of perspective. I watched an episode recently where a man disqualified a house because it had circular toilets rather than elongated-bowl, comfort-height toilets. You can buy such a toilet for $200 and have it installed for another $100. This fellow walked away from a $350,000 home over $900 worth of plumbing upgrades.

And when you get down to the final stages of the negotiation, don’t hold up a deal over a few thousand bucks. Do you know how much that extra $5000 is going to add to your mortgage payment each month at today’s rates? About $30. Do you want your wife to lose the house of her dreams for $30 per month? The sooner you develop an understanding of the concept of materiality, the happier you and those stuck in the same room as you will be.

The fact that I dislike you so much probably reflects more poorly on me than it does you. After all, you want what you want and you are certainly entitled to pursue it. But I’m the kind of guy who likes to root for people, rather than against them. Please take to heart my advice and enable me to wish good things for you.

I’m glad we had this talk.

The post An Open Letter to the Guy on HGTV’s Property Virgins appeared first on screensnark..