While You Were Out

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While You Were Out
 ?
While You Were Out
Genre Reality
Running time 60 Minutes
Creator(s)  ?
Starring  ?
Country of origin USA
Original channel TLC
Original run 2002–2006
No. of episodes  ? (5 seasons)
IMDb profile

While You Were Out is an hour-long American television reality program on the cable channel TLC. The format of the show is similar to TLC's Trading Spaces (which, in turn, is based on the BBC TV series Changing Rooms). While You Were Out adds a suspenseful gimmick by keeping the entire redecoration a secret from the homeowner.

Contents

[edit] Premise of show

The series began with the following premise: An individual sets up a friend or family member with a surprise room redecoration. A typical example of an episode would be a wife who wants to surprise her husband by having the living room redone. The person being set up is sent out of the house for two days on a phony premise, such as a vacation.

While the person is out, the friend or family member with the help of a designer redecorates one room in the house, though gardens have also been made over. The initial budget for the makeover was U.S. $1000, later raised to $1500.

The designers must work with the home owner to come up with a design, shop for supplies and redecorate the selected area within a 32-hour time frame. While the redecoration is in progress, a "secret shooter" trails the person who has been sent out of the house and films an interview with the unsuspecting person. The footage is then used for the purpose of quizzing the spouse, friend or relative at home. If the person who sets-up the individual answers the questions correctly they will win a prize that further enhances the room's décor.

At the end of the show, the person being surprised returns home to the redecoration and their reaction is filmed. The surprised person is then quizzed for the opportunity to win a further prize.

One of the aspects that made both Trading Spaces and While You Were Out stand apart from previous home renovation shows was that they openly depicted conflict between the cast, crew and home owners. These conflicts were usually fairly friendly, but sometimes devolved into rather bitter arguments. While You Were Out, in particular, revealed many personality quirks of both the cast and guests.

On some occasions, the individual to be surprised disliked the redesign of the home. Teresa Strasser's final episode has become infamous for just this reason. The home owner returned to find that his deck had a large hole in it, and subsequently launched into a lengthy tirade while his wife wept.

The premise of the show evolved somewhat as the series progressed (see below for details).

[edit] Show history and seasonal variations

During season 1 there were four quizzes. The individual who was arranging the surprise (referred to as a "homeowner") for their loved one had to answer three of the quizzes. For each quiz there was a "booby prize" in case the homeowner failed the quiz. Normally the "booby prize" was a fun, toy version of the real thing (for example, a globe pencil sharpener instead of a real globe). The show was first hosted by Anna Bocci, who swiftly departed and was replaced by actress and writer Teresa Strasser, who remained for the rest of the first season. Strasser never considered herself terribly handy but compensated with her empathy for the homeowners—their travails drove her to tears on several occasions—and a sometimes dark sense of humor. During the Strasser era, the humorously "sneaky" aspect of the show was stressed, and many episodes began with Strasser and the designer hiding in a van or a neighbor's house early in the morning and observing the departure of the unsuspecting makover subject.

At the beginning of season 2, Evan Farmer came aboard as host. An actor, singer and former boyband member, Farmer was much more high-energy than Strasser and was a skilled carpenter in his own right. While Strasser's humor had been verbal, Farmer tended more toward physical comedy. Farmer also enjoyed a teasing relationship with the show's designers and carpenters: where Strasser tended to lead with a nervous, mother hen approach, Farmer was likely to chide the crew for wasting time or for their personal quirks such as Jason Cameron's sideline as a bodybuilder. New music and some new graphics were introduced, the quizzes were reduced to three, and booby prizes were eliminated. The homeowner only had to answer two quizzes, and the unsuspecting person would answer the third quiz. The third quiz question was always the same: Why did the homeowner want to do the room makeover for their loved one. Only once did a unsuspecting person get the answer wrong and lose the prize.

Both Strasser and Farmer had considerable difficulty letting guests lose prizes; on more than one occasion, they would offer "hints" so obvious that they essentially gave the prize away.

In the beginning of season 3, the budget was raised to $2,000 and quizzes kept the same. Toward the end of season 3, the quizzes and secret shooter were eliminated entirely. The homeowners also became more involved in the designing of the room.

Season 4 was the show's final season, with the concluding episode airing August 5th, 2006. The final episode was beset with setbacks, including illnesses on set and Farmer's flight not arriving until the final day of the shoot. The episode ended without an obvious acknowledgement that it was the series finale, although Farmer did passingly refer to the final scene as "the end of the era" and designer John Bruce addressed the camera in close up to say, "Thank You, While You Were Out." At the very end, Farmer told the audience, "We'll see you next time on While You Were Out," perhaps out of habit or perhaps so that audiences would keep watching reruns without knowing the show was no longer in production.


[edit] Other variations

Over the series, the producers have created different formats of the show including:

  • Having only one carpenter in the episode
  • Having one day of filming instead of two
  • Bringing in designers or carpenters from Trading Spaces (and vice versa--the carpenters from While You Were Out have made several appearances on Trading Spaces)
  • Having one of the carpenters, or the show's host, design the room
  • Having "on the fly" designs in which the designer does not see the room until the day before the makeover begins, although the carpenters and host are sometimes allowed to see it early. Recently, they have started filming the carpenters and designers shopping for supplies on what is called day 0 (the day before general filming).
  • Remaking a room with a celebrity guest: these guests included Penn Gillette (for his partner, Teller), Shannon Elizabeth (for her then-husband), and football player LaVar Arrington, for his brother

[edit] Cultural impact

Both While You Were Out and Trading Spaces were very popular when they were new, and for months TLC aired them in prime time continually, often airing them back to back or in a marathon format. The shows arguably influenced dozens of clone home renovation shows. (HGTV's series Debbie Travis' Facelift, for example, uses almost exactly the same format as the early seasons of While You Were Out). Both shows were widely parodied, as in a series of Comedy Central commercials for phony reality shows that included one called While You Were Drunk, about couples hooking up while intoxicated. However, faced with so many home renovation shows on so many channels (and the many, many Trading Spaces specials and spinoffs), audiences eventually burned out on the format. TLC changed its format to focus on more sensationalistic fare, (with shows about tattoo artists, little people, and reality shows starring D-list celebrities like Tanya Tucker and Adam Carolla). The network's older shows were either cancelled, or underwent format changes and were moved to less desirable timeslots. While You Were Out changed timeslots so many times that even hardcore fans lost track of the new episodes, and it is unknown whether these endless timeslot changes were the result of the show's fading popularity or the cause of it. During the fourth season, TLC aired the show's final episodes on Saturday afternoons, randomly pre-empting them for other, newer series' without advance notice. Judging by the show's official message board, the reaction of many longtime fans to TLC's treatment of the show was extremely hostile.

[edit] Cast

A list of the crew is as follows:

Hosts
Designers
  • John Bruce (season 1 - 4)
  • Chayse Dacoda (season 1 - 4)
  • Nadia Geller (season 2 - 4)
  • Mark Montano (season 2 - 4)
  • Stephen St. Onge (seasons 1 - 2)
Landscape Designers
  • Peter BonSey (season 1)
  • Mayita Dinos (season 1)
Carpenters

[edit] External links

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