3/17/10 – By Alessandra Stanley – New York Times
“The Grants are getting a divorce,” Ian Kleier says after studying the gossip pages at the kitchen table of his Park Avenue apartment. His wife, Michele, is not surprised. “I had my suspicions,” she says, and starts to list the warning signs while scrambling eggs for “the girls,” the couple’s trio of white Maltese. Ian cuts her off. “It’s not a pretty divorce, and I think you should jump right on top of it.”
It’s like a scene from “The Real Housewives of New York,” only the Kleiers are the Real Realtors of New York, owners of a family-run real estate firm and, beginning on Thursday, stars of a new reality series on HGTV, “Selling New York,” which focuses on just that. The Kleiers, who are grandparents, sell multimillion-dollar apartments to an older Upper East Side clientele. They and their two daughters are matched up against younger, hipper brokers from another firm, Core, catering to young professionals willing to pay more than $2 million for downtown views, double sinks and rooftop pool parties that are, as one events planner puts it, “a little Puff Daddyish.”
“Selling New York” is a bit of a jolt because, at first glance, it looks like a flashback to pre-recession values. But it’s less a harbinger of economic recovery than a midcourse correction for HGTV, a cable network that fed and feasted on the fantasies and delusions of the housing bubble and then, when that collapsed, went into austerity and atonement mode with series like the 2009 “Real Estate Intervention.”
HGTV is getting its building buzz back, but gingerly. Most of the new series, and there are six of them in prime time alone, focus on modest middle-class home sales and improvement projects.
And like “Selling New York,” these new series have learned a lesson not from housing starts but from the “Real Housewives” franchise on Bravo: There is no dip in the market of people making spectacles of themselves.
Reality shows like “Real Housewives” be they of Orange County, Atlanta, New York or New Jersey “The Bachelor,” “Jersey Shore” (and a hair salon knockoff, “Jerseylicious,” on Style beginning this weekend) keep growing more stagily preposterous and rococo. Paradoxically, a few of them are tiptoeing around the housing market collapse too: Lynne, one of the housewives in Season 5 of “Orange County,” was forced to downsize, then was served an eviction notice on her Laguna Beach rental.
HGTV, however, is seeking shelter in Manhattan penthouses, beauty makeovers and home improvement for the heart. When it began, “Real Estate Intervention” taught distraught homeowners how to deal with the collapse of the housing market. Now “Home Rules,” which had its premiere on Monday, teaches distraught homeowners how to deal with the collapse of their marriages while renovating their houses.
In the first episode the host, Fran Harris, a former WNBA player who is now a life coach, helps an estranged couple, Matt and Heather, rekindle their ardor; a new master bedroom and a remodeled kitchen are dangled as rewards for completing communication assignments, like listening. “You work on your inner house,” Ms. Harris says, “we’ll work on your outer house.”
While workers tear out pink countertops and replace rotting planks, Matt and Heather renew their vows on a gauzy, candlelit set that rivals the most poignant rose ceremony on “The Bachelor.”
HGTV calls “Tough as Nails,” which begins on Thursday, a docudrama, but it looks more like a docu-telenovela, a weekly series about a tough, comely Boston developer, Cindy Stumpo, who barks orders at all-male construction crews but cannot still the yearnings of her own heart. Like Bathsheba Everdene, the Thomas Hardy heroine who is torn between a loyal farmhand and her rakish runaway husband, Cindy mistily tells the camera that she trusts and relies on Michael, her foreman, but still has “feelings” for her ex-husband, Joe.
“Marriage Under Construction,” which began on Tuesday, follows a pair of newlyweds in Toronto, Natalie and Rod. Their marriage and tangential real estate problems are served up as a kind of romantic sitcom, an HGTV version of “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood.” Rod, who has a burly “King of Queens” physique, is good-humored and somewhat slothful; Natalie is attractive, determined and a little bossy. While brushing her teeth, Natalie asks Rod, seated in front of a laptop, what he is doing. “Looking at houses,” he replies though he is playing backgammon on an online gaming site.
“My First Sale,” starting Thursday, focuses on a different family each week but milks each housing decision for melodrama and whatever naughtiness it can glean. Shelly and Brian have a new baby and no privacy in the loftlike, one-bedroom that they’re selling. They have to lower their price and just barely wrangle the mortgage for a bigger house.
They are last seen in their new kitchen, doors closed and blender whirring. “So, is it bad that we sold our house and bought a new one so we could drink after the baby goes to bed?” Brian asks. “No,” Shelly coos. “No. I’ve been waiting to have margaritas for months.”
Even “The Antonio Treatment,” a design show that began on Sunday and stars Antonio Ballatore, the heavily tattooed winner of Season 4 of “HGTV Design Star,” tries to give some reality show hype along with moldings and ceiling frescos by focusing on his wacky construction crew, which includes heavy-metal musicians and an English bulldog named Chewy. Mr. Ballatore puts it this way, “We all got these crazy personalities going on.”
And on HGTV it’s the personalities that have room for improvement.
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