HGTV, I love thee

For the past three weekends, Home & Garden TV has almost completely my obliterated my Sundays. I tune in for one show, and find myself still parked in front of the TV three hours later.

HGTV is one time-sucking black hole of a channel -- but why?

For one thing, I get a voyeuristic kick out of watching people shopping for homes, negotiating the pitfalls of the real estate market, and, yes, making mistakes.

Additionally, if you're a lookee-loo, HGTV more than fulfills this urge without ever leaving your abode. (Or, as HGTV would have it "property").

But HGTV isn't all schadenfreude and voyeurism. There's actually quite a bit to learn about the real estate game. Curb Appeal is all about that first impression, and House Hunters takes the Goldilocks and the Three Bears approach to home-buying.

So I like to think it's educational.

Maybe I'm just kidding myself. There's a whole series based on nothing more than bald-faced consumerist greed. I Want That! has spawned I Want That! Kitchens, I Want That! Baths and I Want That! Tech Toys.

I think there's some American mythologizing going on here, that taps into the Henry Ford Model T story. This is America, damn it, and if you can't get hot dog toaster here, you can't get it anywhere. (British readers shouldn't feel smug; the Teasmade is merely a hot dog toaster with a timer. A bit more clever, but the same idea: take a culture's quintessential food and make it fast and convenient.)

We'll invent it first, and we'll mass produce it and make it affordable for everybody.

The pull of novelty also drives these shows, for this simple reason: the emotion of astonished delight is pleasurable. It's the "What-will-they-think-of-next?" factor. You can see at work online at a website like Engadget, and it's one reason it's become the most popular website.

Returning to the home shows: I don't own a home and yet I was glued to the tube to find out what the 20 Ways to Add Value to Your Home were. Would you believe number one was new siding? Okay, maybe you had to be there.

Some of the shows have a kooky element. I'm thinking of World's Most Extreme Homes. There's a high kook factor on that one, which makes for great viewing. But I also like how it acts as a window into non-normative ways of living.

The owners are happy, and they clearly don't care what anyone else thinks of their bizarre homes.

In fact, it's the occasional oddball program that keeps HGTV interesting. Decorate Your House Like the White House, anyone?

I switch over to A&E for Flip This House, which offers the spectacle of transformation. They take a shabby, often abandoned and absolutely filthy property, and transform them into a beautiful, saleable, and above all, clean home. There's a kind of negative awe going on for me, when I see the clutter and dirt that people are willing to live in.

HGTV, I love thee.