Home Rules
Friendly Rating: All but the youngest viewers.
Safety Rating: Safe, safe, safe.
Quality Rating: Blah, blah, blah.
Series premieres on HGTV at 9 p.m.
I’ve been wanting to feature some of HGTV’s programming for a while now, since it is usually very family safe and oddly addicting. Or it used to be.
Home Rules features former WNBA player and current life coach Fran Harris supposedly laying down the law to help a troubled family pull it back together. If they agree to her “rules,” then she’ll fix their house.
The premise sounded interesting, the execution was not. It felt like too many other reality programs with the whole rules thing imposed on it. The worst of it is you see the problem (and in the pilot episode, there’s a teen-age daughter who decidedly needs to be knocked down a peg or two) and you see the solution, but not much in between. And you don’t see nearly enough of how the house comes together – just the before and after with multiple shots of contractors complaining about paint that won’t dry.
I decided to go ahead and write about it mostly because there might be some good conversation fodder. Parents can ask their kids whether they think they’re getting the whole story, where some of these folks’ issues match their own, what some other solutions to the problems might be.
That’s if you can get your kids to watch. And given that I had to force myself to watch, I get it if they won’t.
