The new Showtime series The Curse opens with a familiar scene to any fan of home renovation shows such as Fixer Upper, Home Town, and the like. Beside his mother on his sofa, the episode’s subject recounts the hard economic times he’s fallen on to a couple listening intently, nodding sympathetically, responding in dulcet tones. The pair are the hosts of a reality show that invokes that tried-and-true HGTV series archetype: a cheery twosome (often, but not always, a married couple) takes it upon themselves to change someone’s life for the better with a home makeover. And, as has become more common in recent years, the production strives to earn extra feel-good points with viewers at home by setting the participant up for long-term success with any other career- or passion-related resources they might be able to offer, with the power of the network at their disposal. But that familiar scene transforms, losing its sheen, when one member of the hosting duo, Asher Siegel (played by Nathan Fielder, also a writer and cocreator on the show), takes his words back, calling for a redo. He hadn’t struck the right tone.
“Can we not use me saying ‘Jesus’?” he asks. “I just want to say a different response.”
Considering the purported documentary-style structure of such home makeover shows, The Curse’s behind-the-scenes imagining of these programs as very contrived is, purposefully, unsettling. The discomfort of the series’ first few minutes stretches on as Emma Stone’s Whitney Siegel delivers some good news: They’ve also arranged a new job for their lucky subject after months of unemployment! But the reaction of his mother wasn’t camera-worthy, warranting yet another take. “Happy, Yadira! Mommy, happy! Son has a job, right?” coaxes producer Dougie (portrayed by cocreator Benny Safdie) from behind the camera. He resorts to menthol and water to create the tears of joy needed for such a moving moment. “It’s a little TV magic for you,” Whitney offers, with a nervous laugh. The cameras start rolling again.
The obvious coaching of participants by the production and the wooden, manufactured quotes given by the everyday characters selected as the subjects are two boxes The Curse checks off inside of the first few minutes. Though the rest of the series is somewhat uneven—beleaguered by pacing issues in its second half in particular—the show takes aim at the beloved TV format and nails a number of the tropes to a T.
Safdie first became obsessed with the home improvement genre throughout his wife’s pregnancy, watching hours of the programming in waiting rooms where they played them nonstop. He and Fielder, who established himself at the vanguard of the “blended reality” space with HBO’s The Rehearsal, were fascinated with the idea of the relationships at the center of these shows and the image of their own lives they seeks to portray.
“When we’re watching a highly manufactured docuseries or reality show, there are so many things we don’t know about the quality of the people who are showcasing themselves as heroes of their community,” executive producer Dave McCary said. “Benny and Nathan could have made a down-the-middle version of that world, but, of course, we know that their minds are incapable of arriving at the basic version of anything.”
The result is a funny and at times excruciatingly awkward atmosphere—one Fielder clearly enjoys crafting for himself as a writer and luxuriates in as an actor. The Siegels are newlyweds with an uneasy dynamic, and they’ve set out to make a home renovation show about delivering eco-friendly passive houses to the residents of Whitney’s New Mexico hometown, Española. They’re depicted as well-meaning gentrifiers in a community largely consisting of indigenous and BIPOC folks, and the show they’re shooting is to be called Flipanthropy, alluding to the traditional house flipping format with an added focus on community building and integrating participants into their new settings. Ironically, the pair design mirror houses that stick out like sore thumbs in their surroundings, and which often entice birds to crash directly into them.
The anomalous appearance of the mirror homes is just one item on the laundry list of impracticalities The Curse satirizes. Despite their location in the southwestern desert climate, the sustainable dwellings require five to seven hours to equalize their temperature from the opening of any window or door. Their interiors—like many of the spaces lambasted on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, known for going all-in on immutable themes for certain rooms—were set in stone. Instead of being suited to the needs of their new owners, the abodes were conceived with Whitney’s rigid preferences in mind. “Homeowners have little to no ability to redecorate,” production designer Katie Byron said of the show’s passive-home design. “We had architectural lighting features and built-in furniture [wherever] we could, to further drive home the idea that Whitney doesn’t want any buyers to change the design.”
Byron aimed to create sets that painted Whitney out as having bland, unoriginal taste. “We were subtly poking fun at how homogenous design trends on Instagram are,” she said, nodding to the modern farmhouse style that has become so popular and so replicated that The New York Times recently dubbed it “Today’s McMansion.” “Most of these things we really like, but we wanted to make Whitney feel Type A and contrived when it came to cozy aesthetics.”
One would also imagine that a hyperfocus on the demeanor and image of any such program’s hosts is a fixation of the productions, with the goal of upping the likability factor and cementing their place in the hearts of viewers. The Curse makes a joke of this through the policing of the Flipanthropy hosts’ images—mainly Asher’s. His awkward disposition rubs focus groups the wrong way, especially compared with Whitney’s relative ease on screen, making them appear as a mismatch. (He’s subsequently enrolled in comedy courses, to little avail.) In fact, there are rules for the stars of home reno shows that ensure they’re holding strong to a carefully determined image, which go as far as outlining restrictions around their grooming habits. Windy City Rehab cohost Donovan Eckhardt’s contract stated that “if Eckhardt wanted to shave his beard, he would have needed written consent—unless he gave advance notice of five business days,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Eckhardt’s contract was also revealed to stress “moral uprightness, including the importance of taking a wide berth around the pornography industry.”
But the point The Curse is perhaps the most concerned with is the long-term investment such shows may or may not have in their respective communities and how easily the charitable pursuits at the heart of the programs can fall apart. Despite the best efforts of Whitney and Asher to make a real difference in Española, their work in the area is not built to last; the jobs they arrange for participants evaporate. Though the overarching effect of the current HGTV superpowers remains to be seen, some would argue the network’s ratings juggernauts have no choice but to operate with an understanding of their potential social impact these days. “The Gaines empire has been forced into a consciousness about its role in the city,” Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawson observed of the Fixer Upper and Magnolia–famous pair. “The company has, of late, been consulting with the local chapter of the NAACP and the Community Race Relations Coalition on racial-justice matters and given $200,000 to the cause—but their growing footprint has undeniably shifted the balance of the city and brought it the glare of the spotlight.”
Other programs like Home Town have had a similarly outsized impact on their small-town setting, putting them in a position of social responsibility. “Husband-and-wife duo Ben and Erin Napier have completely transformed the faded southern city of Laurel, Mississippi, with the success of Home Town, which pairs locals with an affordable house and then gives it a dream makeover,” Lawson wrote. He also questioned if the national attention garnered by the show might “badly alter the social fabric of a town like Laurel, where the median home price hovers around $100,000 and the median family income is only $30,000.” It was the first time the Napiers had been asked the question. “Gentrification’s not really a thing here,” Erin said with a laugh.
“Gentrification has a negative context with it,” Ben added. “Because I think it’s about trying to push a certain group out of an area. And we’re not trying to do that. When we do get to work in areas that are lower income, we’re trying to improve it for the people who live there. That’s really important to us.”
Fans of such programming would reasonably hope that the depictions in The Curse aren’t exactly true to life. But in holding a funhouse mirror up to the home reno show industrial complex, it at least succeeds in scoring some laughs and makes one consider the real-life nature of the characters who showcase themselves, like McCary puts it, as “heroes of their community.”
