I've mentioned before that Plainbellied really likes "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," and that I think its smarmy and lame. I'm more of a "This Old House" kind of person, not a "Queen for a Day" type. Well, it looks like "Extreme Makeover" is getting sued by some of the people it featured on an episode of the show. I actually remember the episode pretty well, and I have an idea of what's going on in the case (I heard about it when they first sued a year or two ago). It's an interesting case that deals with two issues: our litigation-happy society and "reality" television.
Here's the gist of what's going on. A group of five siblings lost both of their parents and were taken in by another family. The kids nominated their new caregivers for the "Home Edition" makeover, and ABC signed a contract to rebuild the house. They sent the family on vacation and got to work, putting together a massive house for all of them to live in (the older kids got cars and stuff, too). This all took place in a short time, then ABC basically left. Within a short time, the kids had been kicked out of the house and separated, living among friends. Then they sued ABC the family that they had been living with, and the builder.
The specifics of the case are disputed, but the kids say they were intimidated and bullied in a deliberate campaign to get them to move out of the house. The family they had been living with says that after the show, the kids stopped respecting the rules they had agreed to when they moved in, which led to fights and ultimately to the kids moving out. One key point of contention is that the parents had asked the two oldest siblings to get jobs to help pay for expenses.
Now, I'm not a legal expert (or even a fan of big companies), but I'm a little confused about how ABC is responsible for this. The company didn't sign a contract to build a home for the kids. They agreed to build a home for the people who took them in. Obviously the details will be hammered out in court, but I think it's a tragic situation, made worse by the fact that it played out on reality television. Money really changes people. The way that reality television portrays things makes it seem as though they can somehow swoop in, drop a ton of stuff on people, then leave and expect everything to be fine and dandy. I've seen what they give to people, and often, it seems like they are only trying to give lots of stuff, without a real thought about how it might be used. For example, they built a house for another group of siblings who had lost their parents. In an effort to give them "together" time, they put in a wall of televisions, and each kid got a headset, so they could all be watching different things, lost in their own little world, but since they were in the same place, it somehow counted as "family time" (TV as family time is another issue, and I don't have the space or time to cover that here).
The kicker in all of this, though, is that ABC knew the kids had been kicked out when they re-ran the episode a few months later, but they left it exactly as it originally aired. This is hard for me to fathom. I guess it's just one more way that they manipulate the "reality" to get ratings and advertising dollars. Well, maybe "Pirate Captain" will be better.
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