re: #269 Shiplord Kirel, Friend of Moose and Squirrel

Too true. This has been a pet peeve of mine for 60 years, ever since I watched “average American housewife” June Cleaver vacuum her immaculate 2-story mansion in pearls. Average TV families are RICH compared to the real average, from the Cleavers and Father Knows Best to the unlikely clan in Modern Family (though I see more than a trace of parody in the latter). Not only are they rich, with no knowledge at all of common daily struggles, they are at the cutting edge of social and consumer sophistication. The idea, of course, is to present the dull masses with lifestyles and situations to which they should aspire, by buying the advertisers’ products.

I’ll cop to watching a lot of these shows, because they’re an unobtrusive background when my wife and I hang out in the evenings. And we enjoy making fun of the entitled assholes who often show up and look at a perfectly good house and reel off the usual ‘wish list’ - ‘open concept’ living area, gut the kitchen, need an island, gut the bathroom, the appliances are outdated, etc.

Maybe a lot of that is scripted, or maybe they watched shows that told them what they wanted, and they’re mindlessly repeating it. Either way, it’s fun to mock just how dumb they sound.

We did have an extension built on our house five years ago, but that was borne more out of the need for more space than trying to ape the dopes who populate those shows.