Okay, I totally missed this Myrnalene. How was she very controlling and abusive? I must’ve been in the bathroom or something in that part of the show.
Laureen, the neighbor, is the one who grated on our nerves a touch. She called her hubby spineless…yowsa!
Since this was your first show, grendel72, I can understand why you would think some of us are being hard on Pam and that the interior designer should have provided a design that accomodated the homeowner’s wishes. If I hired a designer, I would certainly be livid if they disregarded my requests.
However, the point of Trading Spaces is that HO’s invests their time and effort in exchange for a “free” professional design. You have little to no say in what goes into your room and your neighbor’s room. People have had their carpet ripped up and replaced with concrete sub-floor and unglued slate tile and their walls covered with straw and purple and yellow diamonds, and the work itself looks pretty shoddy (except by Vern, he rocks). Pam, and other complaining HO’s, should have realized beforehand what they were getting into and just avoided the experience.
Myrnalene: My sentiments exactly. Except, hay is wet; straw is what Hilde glued to the walls.
BTW, can the facade be removed?
Complaiming Ho’s?
damn, that’s cold…
Oh, nevermind, I guess HO=homeowner.
The facade was removed because it violated code by covering up the gas-shutoff valve.
I can agree that they knew what they were getting into if all of the designers are bitchy primadonnas, but that still doesn’t excuse the bitchy primadonna-ness of the designer.
That’s the point of the show; cultivating interest by manufacturing controversey. Doug plays the part of the bitchy cosmopolitan diva who loathes plebeian, middle-american, white-bread taste. If he wasn’t a bitchy prima donna, if he didn’t create controversey, what would be the point? No ratings = no show.
You can contractually state that certain items are not to be touched. If Pam and her husband contractually protected their fireplace, they were right to be upset that arrogant Doug did an end-run around that by changing it nevertheless, even with a supposedly fixable change.
And I agree, Laureen was the one who was pushy and abrasive. The whole continuous grumping with Doug over the fireplace and the calling her husband names thing was just over the top.
Pam, on the other hand, was charming. When she was drawing the fireplace screen with Frank, they were giggling and chatting in a very friendly fashion. And when she and her husband improved on Frank’s cute napkins-as-window-treatment idea, she was really adorable as she vascillated between doing it and waiting and asking him, and then finally taking the initiative and following her husband’s wishes and going ahead with the change.
I watched the entire episode and didn’t realize that I was watching “Crying Pam.” I expected Crying Pam to be some shreiking, hysterical, backbiting harpy. Talk about overblown characterizations!
She repeatedly grouses at her husband John, rolls her eyes behind Frank’s back, and in one scene when all three are draping fabric on the sofa, Frank asks, “Do we have enough to staple on the back?” Pam glowers to John, “No, we don’t!” before calling him a “dumbass” for failing to work up to her standards of fabric drapemanship. It is also a running joke between the three of them that John is henpecked and is yelled at all the time.
Laureen may have been more than a tad annoying but she did fight tooth and nail for the fireplace, which is ironic considering the first thing Pam does when she sees her at the reveal is to carp at her for not standing up for the homeowner’s interest. (How the hell would Pam know what went on in her house, anyway?) She was also the perfect foil for Doug’s childishness. He was trying to be all, “I’m the DESIGNER! How dare you meddle with my brilliant vision!” and she just smiled and kept trying to persuade him in her cheerful way. When he finally stomps out in a fit of showy pique she just looks at the camera and says lightly, “Well, now he’s a little cranky” as if her two-year old had just had a tantrum over his bathtime. I mean, hee.
I would also like to point out that the ONLY instructions Pam and John had for the designer were to cover their fugly furniture and to not paint the fireplace. So, I really don’t know what she was expecting to find in her house at the end of the show. I think she just spent all that time helping Frank create a room she would have loved to have and couldn’t handle the fact that her room was not like that. Personally, I would cry if I came home and found country-fied hand painting and valances made out of placemats and cutesy wooden people on my wall and fireplace.
Yeah, but “hay” is more fun to say and makes for better alliteration. Try it!