Your Home Belongs to Renovation TV
In the new Netflix horror series The Watcher, which follows a family as a stalker turns their new suburban dream home into a nightmare, the first boogeyman the viewer meets is the home’s carrara-marble countertops. The house is, by all indicators, an impeccable domestic fantasy at the time of purchase, and its new owners had to empty their savings and investment accounts to fend off rival bidders and afford the final price. But the family finds the house’s gleaming white Italian counters so offensive—so five years ago—that they take out an additional loan in order to remove them immediately.
The series edges into absurdity—in a bit of inspired casting, Jennifer Coolidge plays an aggressively divorced, Mercedes-driving New Jersey real-estate agent—but the family’s immediate desire to renovate an already lovely home is played completely straight. And for good reason: Real people do this all the time now. They do it on instructional HGTV shows, on social media, in publications such as and and . On real-estate TV, brokers and buyers wince and gag
