I had a hilarious conversation with an HGTV casting agent. She had reached out to our military audience to find a family that needed a home renovation. Lots of people applied.
"But these houses are beautiful," the producer wailed. "These people are living in nice, clean places. Yes, they could use a laundry room, but these houses are really nice. What am I doing wronnnnng?"
I nearly drove off the road laughing about that. This poor casting agent needs a dramatic kind of fix. She needs a hoarding problem that would make the neighbors gasp. She needs Mexican floor tiles you installed yourself so poorly that your floor joists have buckled under the weight of them. For the drama of her show, she needs a military family with a house that is dangerous, disreputable, disgusting. This casting agent needs Do-It-Yourselfers who have gone off the edge--so that she and her team can pull back into the land of the living!!
And that is exactly where the problem lies. I know the world thinks that we military folks are the most desperate, needy people on earth. And I know of a few wounded warriors who could really use a Sleep Number bed. But we are notoriously Do It Yourself people, aren't we?
I don't just mean the kind of Do-It-Yourselfer that spends all their time at Home Depot. I mean we military types are the proudest people on earth. The last thing we want to do is show you the bath renovation we did ourselves that went horribly wrong. We don't want the HGTV audience to know that our servicemember only thinks he is a handyman. We are secretly hoping that no one will find out that we spent a quarter of a million dollars on a giant mold or termite problem. Because surely, we can take care of that ourselves.
Thus, the only pictures this casting agent is getting are of orderly, polite, well-behaved homes and the got-it-all-together military spouses who run them. So, yay us. And yay this HGTV team who want to do something nice for people.
If you have a military friend who really is in a jam with her house (and is too proud to admit it) you may have to nominate them. Or this may be a chance to Do It Yourself by letting someone do for you.
They are looking for:
- A military family going through a deployment right now with elementary school kids, pre-teens or teenagers at home.
-A homeowner in need of a major repairs or dramatic renovation
- Living in the South
Interested? Shoot an email to castingrenovation@gmail.com.
