The Good:
- I like the McGee Design esthetic: it's perhaps not mayorly innovative, but it has a good taste level. Shea knows what she's doing and i think her work is inspiring.
- Shea has good design tips which is educational: at what height lamps should hang, how to make a cramped space look bigger or ceilings higher. Really good stuff. Could be more!
The Bad:
- The husband: he does absolutely nothing! At least nothing we see him do. I imagine him running the business at the back-end, but that isn't featured, so we are stuck with a lazy surferdude with a Peter Pann complex behaving like a student who laughs about everything.
- Shea's staged personal life in general: the kids, the husband, EVERYTHING IS STAGED. From family fun time on a bouncy castle so Shea can claim she really savors precious moments with her fast growing kids (as if she has time!) to a staged and unfortunately not very effective pedagogical didactic conversation with their daughters about telling lies. Everything is sugarcoated, staged and acted. Or as Shea's daughter putted it, after she was "reprimanded" for lying: "We do it for the camera's". Yes, even this four year old sees through the continuous shenanigan. It's hard to watch.
- Last but not least: the astonishing blindness to their privileged lives. "Oh, i saw a bouncy castle so i bought one." Or clients who build an enormous baseball hall on their own enormous terrain, to 'give something back to the community'. Yeah right.
So what would make it better?
I believe it would be so much better if we could see Shea for real. Let us see she is angry at times, a tough cookie, manipulating at times. Let us see she's human. And don't stage that! Let it just slip in the montage. Stop with the personal life instagram campaign and focus on the actual make-over proces. Her personal life is way to perfect to be interesting. Her design work on the contrary is.
So season three: please cut back on the instagram on steroids. Let us enjoy Shea McGee for what she really is. I'll bet that'll make this program a much bigger succes.