Flipping Off! – Take 10

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010. Filed under: kultuur

During the season four finale of Bravo’s Flipping Out! , Zoila confides to the camera: “But he like to poop in the bathtub.”

One can only assume she was speaking of the cat called Monkey. (Somebody needs a See-N-Speak!) But she could have easily been referring to Jeff Lewis or Andy Cohen, whom between all of the urination scenes, gave us a bathtub full of poop and called it ‘Season 4 of Flipping Out!’.

During this episode — and ‘episode’ takes on a whole other meaning with this show — Jeff is all stressed out because he wants all of his jobs finished before he goes on a trip to NYC. Not to be confused with all of the stress he put everyone under when he came back from the last trip to NYC, Jeff is going away and everyone else is going to pay for it.

Casa Vega: It’s Jeff biggest and most visible LA job to date, so Bravo spends less than five minutes and five sentences letting us know phase I is finished, looks good and the client is happy. Why waste precious time on design or construction when there are urination and pet poop scenes to be shown. Hearing Zoila talk about touching Monkey’s ass is surely gonna win them an Emmy, right?

The Lesbians’: Again, everything is finished and looks good, the clients are happy, so why waste time dwelling on it. Note to Bravo: demolition photos are not ‘before’ pictures! While I appreciate that the house looks nice now that it has windows and walls, it means nothing. Showing what the furnished house looked like before Jeff got his hands on it is how you showcase his work. Duh.

Here, Jeff once again demonstrates his total lack of ability in dealing with contractors, or really, any human being. After all, what the hell is a little girl’s birthday party compared to the importance of Jeff knowing the job is finished before he goes away on a trip. Little girls are so selfish!

The Breeders’: Jeff is freaking out because he doesn’t think the cabinets will be finished on time. They are. Everything is finished on time and looks good and the clients are happy. It is, after all, a TV show, although secretly I yearn for a “Clean House” or “Trading Spaces” type ending when you can just tell that the client hates the new decor. Now that’s entertainment!

We do get a treat though, as the client speaks for all of America and calls Jeff an “ass.”

House Beautiful ‘Kitchen of the Year’: Jeff is flippin’ his wig because he’s not in NYC to supervise the construction and micro manage the process. It’s all very tense and foreboding until they arrive and the whole thing is finished, looks great, and the client is happy. In other words, it turns out exactly like all the other projects, except without any of Jeff’s hands-on supervision. Hmmm….

Before the trip we are treated to another example of Jeff’s inexperience. All designers put dimensions on their plans. All contractors field verify the site dimensions before fabrication and installation. It’s how the entire industry works. Jeff’s reluctance to give basic dimensions doesn’t save him from any liability as he thinks, but only serves to make the contractor’s work a lot harder. To quote his own client: “You’re such an ass!”

So, now that I’ve spent twice as much time on Jeff’s design as Bravo did, let’s move on to the crazy:

Thank God Jenni was there and saw the white flies too. I was sure Jeff was finally going to be carted off to the looney bin screaming about teeming insects that didn’t exist. That was about the only ’sane’ aspect of Jeff’s reaction to the flies though.

Jeff decides to save $5 and exposes his employees to deadly chemicals. See, this is where I just can’t get on the band wagon. I know it’s suppose to be funny, but I’m just not amused.

Zoila gets a personal call during lunch and quickly tells the friend to call back later. From Jeff’s reaction, one can only assume that lunch was a business meeting, that Zoila gets paid to eat lunch, and that she signed a written agreement when she was hired that personal calls of any length were strictly forbidden. After all, she has a lot of poop to clean up, with no time left over for personal calls!

Jeff and Jenni’s dysfunctional co-dependent relationship continues for our viewing pleasure. He’s mad at her for no apparent reason, he’s just sick of her, so he makes a show of not inviting her to NYC with the rest of the office to celebrate a job she worked on. She’s hurt by the diss, so when he does get around to a last minute invite, she declines. In the end she relents and goes and life as it is goes on at Jeff Lewis Design. In the real world, Jenni would be a partner by now with a minority share in the business, but she is a co-producer of the show, so maybe that works out to be the same thing.

In the last five minutes of the show, Jeff gets an exciting new job that may be his most interesting yet! And that my friends, is how you script a finale to include a plea for a next season.

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