Wed, July 23, 2003

I think criticism should spring from appreciation. I'm not about to say that you must love anything you critique, but at a bare minimum, there should be respect and understanding. CNN and Ari Fleischer bear the worst of my vitriol on this site, and in each case I feel I don't come at them out of bald, furious ignorance. CNN is still where I go if I need access to breaking national news; they've built an impressive information network and they've certainly maintained their integrity in the last two years more than the other 24/7 nets (not saying much, of course). And Fleischer, as much as I hate him, is a smart and successful man. I believe that, at times, he is professional and respectful. I've even heard him appear downright diplomatic in exchanges with others who don't share his views. (Not often, but I've heard it.) I was able to watch his recent appearance on Letterman without throwing my copy of Living History through the TV screen. I can even respect Dubya's obvious political prowess and his innate ability to create strengths from his weaknesses (and the strengths of his father's political cronies). I wouldn't be able to write anything worth reading about him if I didn't, because without any dimension it couldn't possibly hold a reader's interest. (This is why you won't find me writing about Jay Leno or Michael Gross anytime soon.) If you're going to bitch about it, you'd better appreciate it or at least know enough about it to realize its fundamental makeup. And if you're going to make fun of it, you'd better love it.

And that's what disappointed me so much about the recaps I read today on Television Without Pity. I can't read most of their recaps because they apply to shows I don't watch like The Amazing Race or Smallville, but I found some recaps of Trading Spaces and, having caught up on the last few episodes over the weekend, I dug in. The problem was, the snarling, angry recaps weren't much fun to read because they just oozed with unchecked meanness. I enjoy poking fun at the TV shows I watch as much as anyone, but I would never watch a show I didn't like just to make wisecracks about it. TWOP's recaps indiscriminately berate the homeowners, the designers, the designs, the host and everything else about the show.

Which doesn't make sense to me; these recaps are for the enjoyment of people who watch the show, right? Who watches the show that hates it? Apparently, TWOP. I mean, sure. You can hate certain homeowners; you can certainly hate Hildi; you can even hate sweet Paige (although I can't begin to understand that; it's one thing to hate Julie Chen for being the worst thing to happen to the abysmal Big Brother, but Paige Davis embodies everything that is Trading Spaces). But you can't hate the show, or its saccharin sense of humor, because it begs the question "Why watch it?" If you poke fun at the show from a position of reveling in its flawed beauty, great, but if you just hate it through and through, it's not a compelling read.

Maybe this is an error in my perception. I have this idea of TWOP and Fametracker contributors as these bright, well-read, scrubbed-shiny twentysomethings who bridge intellectualism and pop-culture with equal ironic snickering at each. They may have a snarky sense of humor and they certainly see that the world is in many ways a big futile nightmare, but they're happy people because they realize that the big futile nightmare is what you make of it. They deconstruct their entertainment not because it's the closest thing they can do to eradicating it, but because they love it so. Deborah Birkett (the Trading Spaces recapper), on the other hand, seems like some stooped 85-year-old spinster who hates everyone and everything she comes across. (If this is her take on sarcasm, she needs to retool and find a new approach that includes more winking at the reader and less stabbing at him with the smoldering end of her cigarette.) She's just way too angry. Her husband "Frink" and site editor (and Fametracker fave) Wing Chun get in all the best lines. (Frink refers to the histrionics of Trading Spaces homeowners when designers introduce their paint colors as "paintgasm.") And in the case of Wing Chun, offer corrections to Deborah's abysmal misinterpretations of what happens in the show. It's my understanding that TWOP recappers have to watch the show a few times over to craft their columns. How can she remain so misinformed?

Also, the shot-for-shot recap is a little tiring. I suppose this was a policy choice at TWOP early on, but it seems unproductive. The recaps are too necessarily snarky to serve as an actual reference for someone who missed the show and wants to catch up, so there seems little purpose in covering every moment of the action regardless of its impact on the recap as a whole. (On a show like Trading Spaces this is more noticeable because of the frequent cross-cutting between the two teams; even if we're switching back and forth between the same two projects, TWOP seems hellbent on including at least a dry, stark sentence for each new "scene.") It's like Family Guy – can the family hear the baby or not? Are we supposed to read the recap after we've watched the show to grin at the witty jabs, or are we intended to read it only if we didn't watch the episode?

Contributing to the "am I missing something?" factor is the fact that the other readers can't seem to get the point of the site's humor any more than Deborah can. Television Without Pity is pretty clearly a humor/TV appreciation site. To say that sarcasm is the primary tone is to woefully understate the painfully obvious. However, when Deborah writes her "quick polls" for readers to vote while they read the recaps, she always includes one non-ironic option on the list and her readers devour it. Where's the fun in that?

For example, there was a moment in a recent episode where a male homeowner referred to a nail gun as a "man tool" in front of dreamy carpentress Amy Wynn Pastor and she mocked offense. (Pastor, a tad more easygoing than Deborah, knew that it was unintentional and saw the humor in that.) Deborah's poll (my comments in brackets):

What's this nonsense about tools being for men?

a) It's a phallic thing. [Okay, a little obvious, but this is the first one.]

b) Ladies are weak and could hurt themselves. [Good, it reminds me of Newt Gingrich, which is funny. There's value in oversimplifying the opposition's view for humorous effect.]

c) Some men sublimate their feelings of inadequacy at not being able to bear children with an unnatural attachment to saws and winches. [I believe the term here is "Reeyyyrr!" This overdoes it a bit, but it's a snarky comment in a site of snark, so it passes.]

d) If tools were for women, they'd be pink, duh [Great! That's good funny.]

e) Only tools think tools are for men only.

Needless to say, E won. With double the votes of its next-runner up (you guessed it, C). 13% of the votes were shared by the two funny options, B and D (which still made fun of a patriarchal point of view). Am I the only one that gets humor? On a humorous site like As The Apple Turns, the ironic poll options are taken as just that – ironic. But the fact that Deborah has to put in a "real" answer and that half of the voters pick that one indicates that we're not all on the same page. It's not a real poll, people. This whole site should be about the funny! We'll organize the feminist rally later. (And lest I seem chauvinist, I remind you that all of the answers were feminist in nature, it's just that some accomplished that ironically and others did it overtly.)

For contrast's sake, a good poll from TWOP was about Smallville:

Is it gay?

a) Yes.

b) Yeah.

Omar – a recapper who gets it!

I suppose it frustrates me because the show is brimming with silly things that are worthy of ridicule, but it's defined by its unique, relatively self-aware tone that is fun if you buy into it. (This is one of the reasons that I can watch Trading Spaces, unlike most reality TV. It doesn't take itself too seriously.)

How can you criticize the stupid play-acting that occurs when the teams are emptying the rooms in time-lapse? This is one of those things that's just part of the show. Nobody really likes it, it's just tradition, and it's clear that it's done with a roll of the eyes. Or Deborah's teeth-gnashing failure to observe the ironic humor of the Paige's Mickey Mouse impression in a recent Orlando-based episode. Paige is kneeling in front of the Magic Kingdom with a kid in a Mickey suit (from the park, not a TS staffer) when she delivers the "Time's up!" message in a poor attempt at a Mickey Mouse voice. Mickey covers his eyes and shakes his head. You're telling me the producers wouldn't have ordered Mickey to do a less ashamed take two if they had actually thought Paige's Mickey was good? It was supposed to be awful!

If you want things to make fun of, select those elements that aren't part of the show's style. It's like criticizing trains because they don't fly. ("What are these rails? Everything's so rigid and runs on the ground! Bitch, bitch!" No, friend. You want a plane.) Leave the show's actual building blocks alone; there are plenty of better things to chuckle at. (Like the paintgasms – thanks, Frink!) For example, designers and homeowners have this obsession for painting messages on walls and furniture before they paint them. They think it's so cute because it's like naughty graffiti, but it'll be covered up, so it's "safe." Well, no. My dad tells a great story about painting a neighbor's deck as kids. They started by painting smiley faces and silly stuff all over the place, and later went about painting the deck all over. Years later, when the paint had weathered, those areas that had two coats of paint (a smiley and a real coat) stayed bolder than those that only had one, and their playful mischief was revealed! Admittedly, furniture and walls won't weather like that, but they will fade in the sun, and the sheen of the paint will be different from day one where there's extra. Somebody smack some sense into these homeowners!

Also, what's the deal with putting doors on everything? If a carpenter is asked to build an entertainment center, it must have doors. If an existing entertainment center will be in the room, doors must be crafted for it. What? Not only does it contribute to an atmosphere of mighty obelisks dominating the room, but it really makes it a bitch to watch TV. If you're sitting more than 30 degrees off-center from the screen, a bulky door is blocking your view, and often they can't even open that far because other doors from side shelves are blocking the way! I can understand opaque doors on pantries and other shelving that is pure storage, but do we need to be protected from looking at neatly arranged rows of CDs? Or other knick-knacks, shouldn't these be on display? Maybe the designers just can't relinquish control and they figure if homeowners put things on those shelves that don't coordinate with the "feel" of the room, those starkly colored doors will obscure the "bad" and bring everything back into alignment. (Ommmm.)

And finally, why does Trading Spaces find it so important to closet any homosexual homeowners? At least a half dozen episodes have featured a man and his "college friend" or a woman and her "co-worker" where one party has to pretend to be just a helper, uninvested in the final outcome of the room. They're just along for the ride and they hope their "friend" likes the room when it's done, because it's the friend who'll have to live with it. I guess it wouldn't seem so confounding if it were less transparent. But Paige and the designers frequently talk about whether they will like the room or how they will use it when it's finished, so it's clear that everybody knows it's a couple. I suppose the show decided it was more "family friendly" to sweep the gay stuff under the rug, but how silly. There's no reason to flaunt it like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (another brilliant makeover show) but you could at least not make the guy feel like a second-class citizen in his own home. (I'm really curious what that meeting is like before they start filming, too. "Sorry, but you can't be gay on the show... So, okay, who's going to be the homeowner and who's going to be the 'friend'?")

I read one recap by another contributor, Kim, who seemed to be much more enthusiastic and engaged than Deborah, but was perceptibly reining it in – presumably deferring to the dominant recapper. This is a shame, because I think if Kim were left to her own devices, she'd produce recaps that are much more like the tone of the rest of the site. Appreciative, snarky, but fun to read and ultimately celebratory of this flawed but fabulous medium we call TV.

THE LATEST FROM POOP READING:

© onebee · all rights reserved