Top Design: Something Oldham, Something New
Top Design, debuting tonight on Bravo, is the latest in a series of reality shows that are both good TV and brilliant demographic marketing. The makers of the addictive, high-middlebrow Project Runway have spun off their formula first to Top Chef and now to this interior-designer competition. What better way to get the upscale audience that Bravo targets than to take their favorite consumer indulgences--fancy clothes, fancy dinners, fancy home renos--and repackage them as cutthroat drama? Coming up this year is hairstylist showdown Shear Genius (originally called Top Hair). It won't be long, I'm sure, before we see Top Aromatherapist, Top Barista and Top Life Coach. (Excuse me while I call my agent and copyright lawyer.)
The show is unsurprisingly in the Runway/Chef mold: telegenic creatives of quickly recognizable types, including a Santino/Jeffrey "rebel" figure who rides a skateboard and calls himself "half Henry Rollins, half Evel Kneivel," a cranky old man, good-looking young guys of varying degrees of fabulousness, an eccentric with snow-queen hair who describes her style as "modern ethnic." (It's not quite as good as Vanessa's "glamalistic" from last summer's HGTV Design Star, but it'll do.) Design is a more inherently visual medium than cooking, and the first challenge--the designers make over a room for a "mystery celebrity" in pairs--gets the claws unsheathed quickly. ("How do you argue with someone who's a narcissist?" someone asks. As if there's any other kind of argument in reality TV!)
The big weakness of the first episode is the host, star designer Todd Oldham. I hate to say this: he seems like a sweet guy and his easygoing, Muppety hipster charm worked well when he used to guest on MTV's House of Style. But he's too laconic and herbal-tea for a reality-competition host. Even when he criticizes a team's unoriginality, it's gentle and between-the-lines--"Oh, I see a lot of you have chosen green!" (Tim Gunn would have touched his hand to his chin and scared the crap out of his apprentices with a crisp "This makes me worried.") Meanwhile, head judge Jonathan Adler is saddled with an awful exit line to see off the losers: "See you later, decorator!" I keep expecting someone to answer, "After a while, judge of style!"
Also, "decorator" is a kind of insult, because the term--distinguished from "designer"--describes someone who simply paints and buys things for a room, rather than seriously remaking its flow and layout as well. We know this from one of the contestant interviews, and this is where Top Design is as strong as its predecessors. It takes its competitors (and judges) seriously as professionals with interesting things to say about their work. There are problems to work out; none of the cast really pops in the first episode, and I wish they hadn't given the competitors the help of a carpenter, which loses the hands-on, who-stole-my-glue-gun drama of Runway. But the show has good bones. There's nothing wrong with it a little furniture rearrangement wouldn't fix.
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So Your Emminence, I was wondering what was your take on this season of Top Chef? Being a devoted fan of Runway, I gave a few episodes of Chef a chance but towards the end when it devolved into a group vendetta against Marcel, the snobbish gastronomical prick, it turned me off in a major way. How do you think the almost-but-not-quite violence against a contestant will play out in future seasons?
And to stay on topic, Coliccio from Top Chef is kind of a hard nosed guy while the Saintly Tim Gunn (give this man some kind of award please!) is more of a mentor/yoda figure. Where do you think Todd Oldham will fit into this scheme or do you think he'll be replaced next year by someone with more personality a la Padma of this year?
Love your blog as always!
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C., I was so not into Chef this season. Partly just TV-critic triage--other stuff that I had to follow--partly because the contestants didn't really pop for me early on. I'll watch the finale, though. I don't think Todd O. is a Katie Lee Joel-scale disaster. He's actually telegenic, just not telegenic in a way that befits a reality host. Contestants on these shows need someone to clash against, to challenge, prod or provoke them. They're oysters who need an irritant. (This is the genius of Jeff Probst, who I wrote off early on--he's a jerk on Survivor, but an effective jerk.) In the premiere, anyway, Todd is too easy-listening to serve this purpose, but if he--or maybe Adler--can evolve into that role, Bravo won't need to find a Padma.
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Huh! Well I never thought about it that way but you have an excellent point! (Which is why you're the critic and I'm...the schmuck keeping you from your TiVo.) Thanks for answering my questions Your Emminence! ^_~
P.S. Who do you think is going to bite it on Heroes? I'm praying for Simone.
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None of these shows interest me much because I can't help looking past the skin (food/interior design/singing/boxing/island/etc.) to the bones (start with a lot of people, compete, end with one person). Reality TV desperately needs a refresh from the inside out, but every new show approaches the task from the opposite direction. In the end, they're all variants of the same thing, and that's just not that interesting.
But Top Critic -- now THAT I'd watch.
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I'm not sure I'll survive Oldham's robotic sing-song voice.
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Hey James,
How are you? This is Vanessa De Leon from HGTV Design Star. I read this article and LOVED that you mentioned Glamilistic!!!! I also read a while back in Time mag. about reality tv and wanted to know,do you REALLY think I look like Janeane Garofalo? LOL Well feel free to email me back.
Thanks,
Vanessa De Leon -
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James,
Some good points on TD, but I have to say, if you have watched the last few episodes, the design just isn't very good! While the Runway contestants make interesting clothes (and even interesting failures) and the Chefs make food that certainly looks and sounds good, the designs on this show are a mess!
Don't know if you saw, but next up from Magical Elves: Top Producer! (TV is eating itself!)
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