Bill's Guide to Whipping a Dead Horse

I thought I had made my peace with Tim Gunn’s show yesterday. I complained about it, I poked some fun at it. Time to move on, right? Wrong.

Dawn and I watched it again last night….and the first five minutes of the show, of all of his shows, are unbearable. They drive me crazy. It’s like they flagellate temporal continuity.

The show opens with Tim and whats-her-name talking about this week’s subject. They decide she needs help. Fine, I’m with the show so far. They call her and the show cuts to the person answering the phone. They are surprised to learn that Tim Gunn is coming to help their fashion crisis….surprised? Oh really? Did the camera crew following her around town and being completely mic’ed not arouse any suspicions?

Then Tim says he’s going to be there in 20 minutes so they better be ready. The person freaks out because they have race back home and get ready for Tim. Tim is supposedly placing this call from his office in New York. Most of the subjects so far have been in New Jersey. I don’t think there is a chance in hell that Tim can even make it out of the city in 20 minutes. Why place a ridiculous, arbitrary, unbelievable time here?

Tim eventually shows up and the person is a mess. They are so shocked that they’ve been chosen to be on the show. They look in the closet. THEY ASK FOR THE PHOTOS THAT THE PERSON HAS TAKEN OF THEIR OUTFITS FOR THE LAST FIVE DAYS. The person who didn’t know they were going to be on the show twenty minutes ago. Arghghghghg! Kurplow [head explodes].

I don’t get the show’s dependency on needless, hopelessly artificial, staging. It hurts my head and diminishes the shows credibility. Tim, why do you hurt me?

I could go on and on about all the other things the show does that bother me (and there are many)…but let me highlight just one example of the show making my brain bleed.

Last night they determined that the subject felt guilty about taking care of herself, so they made her put on a weighted vest to help visualize the problem. They had her write things that she felt guilty about and attached the tags to weights. They proceeded to weigh her down with her guilt and then made her walk back and forth like a dunce. Then to free her from the guilt they had her cut the tags……but left the weights attached to the vest…. I can only assume the purpose of the exercise it to show her that she needs not know the name of her guilt…that she should just become accustomed to living with the crushing weight of impending nameless dread. Nice one Tim.

Ok, phew. That was cathartic. I promise no more posts in the near future of Tim Gunn’s show. I made the show the one thing I was going to do last night that wasn’t studying or homework. I feel like I did not reap any rewards for my investment.Didn’t I used to talk about technology? That always made me happy. Maybe I should focus the blog a bit more on that.