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"Flip That House," which began a few weeks ago on the Discovery Home Channel, is sickeningly watchable. Sickening because there's a kind of social Darwinism blithely on display that both clashes with the la-di-da home improvement tone the show adopts and neatly jibes with the desperation, fear and opportunism that has become synonymous with the Southern California real estate market.
Like many a show with a home improvement component, such as Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," "Flip That House," which begins its episodes at 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, is all presto-change-o wish- fulfillment. It's another series that takes homeownership from its basic principle (to have a roof over one's head) and into the realm of competitive fantasy, where installing new hardwood floors can weirdly come to signify the chasm between living a compromised life and realizing one's full potential on this planet we call Earth. Add to this a new wrinkle: You can also realize a six-figure profit in the span of a few months.
Granted, on "Flip That House," (not to be confused with A&E's "Flip This House," whose episodes begin at 10 a.m. Saturday -- more on that later), nice people are shown buying neglected houses in "up- and-coming" L.A. areas, fixing them up and trying to turn them around for quick profit.
Highland Park, already featured in two episodes, is "a natural destination for savvy house-flippers hoping to get a deal, do a quick makeover and turn it around for some fast cash," as a happy voice-over narration said the other week. No sleazy developers here, no fluctuating economy, no middle-class families suddenly priced out of their neighborhoods; week to week, the flippers are do-it- yourself regular folk with an understated entrepreneurial...