Extreme Makeover: Home Edition - Update

You may recall from an earlier post (here) that the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition crew came to town and built a family an amazing new home. That episode aired on January 22. I'm sure a majority of the television sets in this area were tuned to ABC that night, in hopes of seeing, not only the story of the Hebert family and the amazing transformation of their home, but of seeing some of their friends, neighbors, and coworkers among the crowd. We were sorely disappointed.

This show bears out, yet again, my contention that you absolutely cannot believe anything you see on TV, nor most of what you read in magazines and newspapers. Watching this episode, one could assume that:

• a) Sullivan Homes is a local family-owned business (that's what Ty Pennington said)
• b) to enter the local Sears, one must ride an escalator (they showed Ty riding the escalator, at the top of which was the entrance to Sears)
• c) the house was built on-site, from scratch, in 7 days (they showed all these people putting together walls, excavating, working all night)
• d) Eric Hebert's sister had only two children, the twins in the show (they never mentioned any other children)
• e) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition provided everything necessary, except manpower, to build this home (I never heard them talk about anyone else providing anything but manpower).

Every one of those assumptions would be 100% incorrect. The truth?

1. Sullivan Homes is a Spokane homebuilding company. It may be family owned, but it's NOT local. Spokane is almost 100 miles away.
2. The local Sears is on the first floor of our local mall - The Bonner Mall. The Sears in the show is located in Spokane at the Spokane Valley Mall.
3. The walls of the house were all prefabricated at Sullivan Homes' facility at least a month before the construction was started (that was reported in all the regional newspapers).
4. Eric Hebert's sister had a son from a previous marriage. He is 14. He lives about 40 miles from Sandpoint with his father and stepmother. He was never once mentioned, not included in the generosity of the show, wasn't sent on the trip to the Bahamas, yet HIS mother died too! He suffered a horrible loss as well, and he lives in a tiny trailer with his family. Why was he excluded? Oh, I know, it's not quite as poignant a story with him in the picture, is it?
5. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition supplied virtually nothing for the construction of this house except the stars of the show. All the supplies, labor, food for the laborers, furnishings, appliances, everything except the $50,000 for the family, was donated by local businesses and local people. In order to even access the site, a road, to the tune of $40,000, had to be constructed. When the local paving company balked at providing that much in donated materials and labor, they were told that if they didn't provide all of it, (they balked after providing almost half the cost), another company would be brought in to complete the job, and that company would get all the publicity. Interstate went ahead and did the entire job, but I didn't see one second of publicity for any business but Sullivan Homes, Sears, and whichever company it was that donated the $50,000 (I forget). Oh, maybe during the credit roll at the end they may have listed Interstate, Pucci Construction, and some of the other dozens of local businesses who donated thousands and thousands of dollars in time, materials, food, etc. but if they did, it went by so quickly I didn't see it.

So, this project was done for this family, which is really a neat thing for them, and they are more appreciative than words can express. It was a great thing for the community to come together and do. But even the most generous business, when giving out so much, hopes for at least some recognition, some publicity, some measure of goodwill, in return. They got nothing. The cameras didn't pan the crowd long enough, or slowly enough, to make out a single face in the crowd, though I know dozens of my friends were on hand for the unveiling. But boy, we sure saw a lot of Ty, Ed, Eduardo, and everyone else in the cast, who, by the way, spent almost every night during the project partying at the two "hot spots" in town, drinking, dancing, and basking in the attention the star-struck residents of our small town heaped on them.

How much nicerm how much more meaningful, this show would be if it focused on how well a community can come together to do something wonderful for their residents in need - and the residents of Sandpoint did just that. Instead, the show depicts what a generous bunch the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition gang is for doing this wonderful thing for the Herbert family, making Ty Pennington and his crew look great, generous, thoughtful, and so on. How sad, and what a lie. Another nail in the coffin of the believability of the media.