Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

[selkie]

admin said:

Wow...this is pretty awful.

The apparent story is is that the Higgins kids became unruly after the house was redone and stop being respectful to the Leomiti elders.
The eldest Higgins wanted to be put on as an equal titled owner with Mr and Mrs. Leomiti and when he wasn't things started going downhill.
Also another family has taken in 3 of the younger kids, have made themselves 'legal guardians' and are also suing ABC and the Leomitis.
Huh.

indygirl said:

At least the second one is fron a different show. Dr. Phil's son is the shoddy laborer. Ty's team didn't do shoddy work. His team's work was too good. That's why the homeowners are booting out the orphans; they don't want to share!

No, the Leomiti family were a kind American Samoan family who graciously had the orphan kids move in with them.
They 're not the bad guys here.

[Hamatron]

Yeah, I really don't get the basis of the lawsuits against ABC... they um, fixed up a house and made everyone turn greedy? I'd have to know more about what went down between the kids and the Leomitis the feel strongly one way or the other.

That Fox lawsuit sounds awful though-- if it's true that they basically built a "movie set" and everything is as dubious in contruction as it sounds. Don't these reconstructions have to pass state building codes?

I could see this being the beginning of the end of these types of shows depending on how the suits pan out. I could see networks being nervous about greenlighting projects that could be potentially litigious. I've been waiting nervously for something really bad to happen on one of those plastic surgery shows for awhile. *shudder* I hope it never does happen but it seems like a matter of time.

[indygirl]

selkie said:

indygirl said:

At least the second one is fron a different show. Dr. Phil's son is the shoddy laborer. Ty's team didn't do shoddy work. His team's work was too good. That's why the homeowners are booting out the orphans; they don't want to share!

No, the Leomiti family were a kind American Samoan family who graciously had the orphan kids move in with them.
They 're not the bad guys here.

Sorry, Selkie. I hadn't heard about the behavior of the kids after the house redo. I was just going by what the linked article said. I should have known there was more to it. I'm glad to hear the host family had good intentions all along.

I was mostly trying--and failing obviously , to be funny while pointing out that the second link was for a different show. Ty's show might destroy makeshift family units, but at least they don't leave exposed wiring after they go!

[chiqui]

I could see this being the beginning of the end of these types of shows depending on how the suits pan out. I could see networks being nervous about greenlighting projects that could be potentially litigious. I've been waiting nervously for something really bad to happen on one of those plastic surgery shows for awhile. *shudder* I hope it never does happen but it seems like a matter of time.

I think it's the beginning of end. Once the door starts to open, there's gonna be a flood.

[Hamatron]

Yeah, I think so too. I have mixed feelings about it since I really don't enjoy reality TV anymore, but I think the ones where they fix up poor peoples' houses, or pay for surgery for people with cleft palates, or can't afford to fix their teeth are nice, or at least have better intentions. I can't wait for all the 'I wanna be... X' and Fear Factor-type shows to kick it though.

[Deleted]

Gosh, they just got done redoing a soldiers house here who lost his leg in Iraq. didn't go and sweat in the sun for 8 hours just to get a glimpse of future skin cancer victim Ty Pennington. I like that EMHD helps people in real need, but what happened to those kids is just shitty, and finger of shame to the people who sold out their story.

[dragonfly80]

I had to dig a little to find this thread!

Did anyone watch the past two episodes? Last week it was a divorced single-father soldier who lost one leg and had four children living in one home? It seemed very touching until I learned that the mother of some of the children really is still in the picture. Apparently some of the kids even live with her the majority of the time. I had wondered why the two daughters got separate rooms but the boys had to share.

Last night they did a a home for a family who had a 19 year old son who is blind, has some other physical handicaps but it a great piano player and is in his college marching band. His father moves the wheelchair on the field at halftime to allow him to participate with the others. I think he was on Oprah or Sixty Minutes before. Anyway his family was great and I really liked them but I couldn't help but be a little annoyed. For 19 years he has been in a wheelchair and it never once occured to the family to widen the front door? Instead they bang the wheelchair into it all the time? They looked somewhat well off and there has to be some sort of program out there to help disabled people make their residences useable. They also showed how hard it was for him to wheel out of the bedroom into a hall but from one angle you could see that the wall in the hall opened into a huge living room. It just seemed that they could have done some renovation work themselves that would have made it easier on their son to live there.

[berrybearie]

dragonfly80 said:

Last night they did a a home for a family who had a 19 year old son who is blind, has some other physical handicaps but it a great piano player and is in his college marching band. His father moves the wheelchair on the field at halftime to allow him to participate with the others. I think he was on Oprah or Sixty Minutes before. Anyway his family was great and I really liked them but I couldn't help but be a little annoyed. For 19 years he has been in a wheelchair and it never once occured to the family to widen the front door? Instead they bang the wheelchair into it all the time? They looked somewhat well off and there has to be some sort of program out there to help disabled people make their residences useable. They also showed how hard it was for him to wheel out of the bedroom into a hall but from one angle you could see that the wall in the hall opened into a huge living room. It just seemed that they could have done some renovation work themselves that would have made it easier on their son to live there.

I missed the beginning so I don't know if it was addressed then, but I saw the dad made a few comments about how the EM:HE renovations (before he saw what they were) would make possible things he couldn't afford. Maybe they put their extra income to music lessons for the kids or other things like that rather than the accessibility issues in the house.

I do think there's often a bit more story behind the story than what we're shown, but they sure do a great job of tugging at heartstrings like when Patrick Henry's non-functioning eyes started to tear up. He wasn't the only one who needed a tissue.

[LurkerNan]

It just seemed that they could have done some renovation work themselves that would have made it easier on their son to live there.

I wonder that about a lot of these episodes. For instance, there was this episode a while back about a girl who was allergic to the sun, and they showed her bedroom window being shoddily covered by an old sheet. A sheet! Even though her parents lived on a huge tract of farm land and the rest of the house looked pretty well decorated. It's like they tossed up the sheet in an effort to make the family look so pathetic that they couldn't afford 10 dollar blackout shades from WalMart.