Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ On HGTV, A Revival Of The ABC Hit, With Jesse Tyler Ferguson As Host

When Extreme Makeover: Home Edition first debuted way back in 2003, we loved it, and so did America; its second season attracted over 15 million viewers per episode on average, putting it in the top 15 Nielsen rated shows. In the pre-HGTV days it had the best of what people loved about home improvement shows: Great stories of homeowners who deserved a break, a personable host and innovative designers, and that big fat reveal at the end when the bus drives away and the people getting the new house can’t believe how great it is and how generous everyone is. Now HGTV has revived it, and made one tiny change: Making Jesse Tyler Ferguson the host. How does that work? Read on for more.

EXTREME MAKEOVER: HOME EDITION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Some scenes from the return of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (HMHE), with new host Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the design and construction teams and hundreds of volunteers either yelling, “Good morning, XXX Family!” at the beginning, or “MOVE THAT BUS!” at the reveal.

The Gist: This is the show that millions of people watched when it ran on ABC from 2003-12. Now, instead of having carpenter/model Ty Pennington as host (he’ll guest star on one episode), the host is… Jesse Tyler Ferguson?

Actually, this works. He may not have a ton of construction experience — he calls a table saw a “circle saw” in one scene — but he does know design and he does want to help the families that the show tries to help. You know the drill with this show; the crew rolls into a town where a family who has given back to their community is in desperate need for more space. The family goes away for five days, and the crew — including hundreds of volunteers — sets out to build a new house or do massive upgrades to an existing one in five days. At the end of the five days, the family’s brought back and when everyone says “MOVE THAT BUS!”, the show’s bus drives off to reveal the completed new home.

The first episode airing (the fourth one produced, so at least Ferguson has a tiny bit of experience now) goes to Bakersfield, CA and the home of social worker and “ultimate mother” Jessica Mosley. She has two biological children via a previous relationship (their father is one of the volunteers), but then adopted three teenage siblings that were about to go into the foster system and stay there, due to their age and the fact that they’re considered a “large sibling group.”

Jessica’s father was going to take out a VA loan to give the family of six a new house, but he died suddenly in a car accident and the loan fell through, forcing the Mosleys to move in with Jessica’s mother. Grandma was happy to have them there, but that means seven people are squeezing into a three-bedroom home that has one full bath. Space is so tight that Jessica and her mother share a bedroom.

So Ferguson, along with design team Breegan Jane, Darren Keefe and Carrie Locklyn, set out to demolish the house and build a new one from the ground up. The idea is to give everyone space while not isolating everyone. So the new house will have five bedrooms and four bathrooms; Jessica and her mother will each get a room that opens out onto a courtyard with an outdoor daybed; Miguel, the only boy in the house, will get his own room for the first time that has a bit more of a boy touch while also reminding him of his grandfather; the girls will share two rooms, but each will have their own space via an ingenious shelf system designed by Locklyn. The teens will have their own second floor “canteen”, i.e. a living room they can all hang out in.

And the kitchen? It will have not one but two islands in the middle, thanks to the efforts of Breegan Jane and guest designer and Food Network star Tyler Florence.

Our Take: All of the elements of EMHE that we described in the intro are in this new edition. But the small change from Pennington to Ferguson gives the show a tiny bit more juice. Why? Because, as much as we liked Ty, he was a bit of a bland hunk doing a bland hunk hosting job. He wielded his nail gun, flexed his muscles, but mostly played it straight. With Ferguson, though, we know that he hasn’t done any of this kind of work before, and we love to see him joke about it, the design team joke about it, and pretty much anyone he comes in contact joke about it. We also love the jaunty bandannas he ties around his neck to complement his t-shirt on construction days. And we’re pretty sure Pennington would not have named the excavators doing the demolition “Carol” and “Patricia.”

We have to give him credit, though; he’ll jump in. He did a weld on Miguel’s metal entertainment center, and retorts Keefe’s line that it’s just like using a glue gun by saying, “it’s exactly like using a glue gun… except with fire.” He gives just enough good-natured snark to the proceedings to let us know that he’s just as clueless as we are when it comes to construction, but he’s willing to try anything.

Because the show only has an hour (without commercials) to convey just how much work is put in during the five days, it’s hard to get a feel for where there might have been problem areas, where changes might have been made, or even where some of the material used was obtained. From the highlights we see at the end of the episode, we know that some projects fall behind and there are other random mishaps.

But there really isn’t time to ratchet up the fake reality-show tension, because, above anything, EMHE is about the stories of the people who are getting these brand new or extensively renovated homes. And, if the story of the Mosley family is any indication, the stories are going to make you reach for the tissues on a regular basis. We almost got misty, and we consider ourselves to be emotionless robots.

Parting Shot: A self-shot postscript of the Mosleys happily living in their new “forever home” weeks after they moved in.

Sleeper Star: We give credit to the design team who seem to have a plan, then they have to act happy when a “guest star” comes in to “help.” Considering the plans for this house were locked in well in advance of the construction week, that “help” is likely just a show for the cameras.

Most Pilot-y Line: We get it; construction shows don’t get by without lots of product placement, from companies who donate construction materials in exchange for shots of their logos, to stores that sponsor entire sections of the workflow. Wayfair’s participation, at least when it comes to furnishings, isn’t anything new (they’re in the new version of Trading Spaces, too). But the Best Buy design center takes the cake, especially when Breegan and Tyler are “assisted” by Kyle George, an “in-home advisor” who looks like he’s about 17. He “suggests” smart appliances for the kitchen and laundry room, which we’d imagine would be used anyway. “Sometimes you need the Geek Squad,” says Florence in one of the more cringe-inducing scripted lines of the hour.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you liked EMHE the first time around, you’ll like it now. And you’ll also like watching Ferguson fumble his way through these jobs and bringing his comedic touch to a show that can get repetitive after awhile.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

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