Junk Brothers on HGTV (the review)

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

What do you get when you take two Gay Canadian Guys who love junk, send them on a semi-legal scavenger hunt, and make them fix the stuff they steal and bring it back? You get HGTV's new TV show, Junk Brothers. The show debuted last Wednesday. Screw me for being a bit late.

As I've said, they roam around on trash day and pick up junk like old stoves and dressers. They take the stuff back to their Secret Gay Mounted Police Shop in Canada (eh?), they 'fix it up' and then they bring it back to the people who previously discarded it. They even ring the doorbell and hide so they can watch the reaction. This sounds awesome, right???

Okay, let me just say that as a basic premise for a show, this is probably one of the greatest ideas to come along in a while. It's kind of like a benevolent prank show. Plus, who wouldn't want to see their old sh*t picked up by two Really Burly Gay Canadian Grease Monkeys, redone, and then dropped back off in new and awesome condition free of charge? The commercials looked so promising, I had to tune in.

Now the bad news. These must be the two Most Boring Canadian Born Gay Repairmen ever. With echanges like this:

"You cut the hole there, eh? I'm going to the store."

"Okay."

*scene of cutting hole there*

"I'm back."

"Okay."

"Let's put this together, eh?"

"Okay."

"This is going to look good."

"They're going to be suprised."

"Did you cut the hole, eh?"

"Yup."

"Good."

You can see why I was a bit disapointed. Alright. So these guys don't quite have that Sparkling Gay Canadian Personality I was craving. At least I'll learn something, right?

Wrong. The show seems to have been edited by Jethro Tull. Often times I'd get through one of those montage 'getting things done' scenes and forget if I was still watching the same show. There was very little in the way of explanation of what they did. Some of the things were never even mentioned, but clearly were done to the object.

Well, maybe the show's saving grace would be the reaction of the owners when they see the newly fixed object? Nope. The first reaction shows a woman looking out her front door and then going back inside. You can tell that they cut at that point and informed the people that they were going to be on TV, and so they came out and acted shocked. The second set of owners' reaction is so over the top that you know for a fact that the director was not taking any chances.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, I give Junk Brothers a giant ONE, as in one fingered salute. The moral is, never trust a Canadian, let alone Two Gay Canadian Lite Ice Fix It Twins.

Murk.