Thursday, September 1, 2022

Passive-Aggressive Renovation Revenge

You ever watch Renovation Island? It’s completely ridiculous. This insanely wealthy couple, Bryan and Sarah Baeumler, is renovating and running a resort in the Caribbean. This season, they’ve moved from Canada to Florida and—hoo boy.

 

I don’t like the way he talks to her. Bryan just seems very condescending, and their arguments shade a little too far for me into uncomfortable territory. It just seems like he’s barely holding himself back from saying something so nasty they can’t come back from it. Sarah laughs a lot of that off, but it seems sometimes she’s trying to push away something deeper. I realize a lot of this is scripted and edited but it’s amusing to speculate on all this while I’m reading a book and half-watching the show on Sunday nights. (I’ve never watched reality TV, unless you count the HGTV shows.)

 

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Sarah surprised Bryan with the massive office space she bought. It was an empty shell that would need extensive renovations and Bryan, not unreasonably, told his wife he really didn’t want to spend his nights and weekends renovating the office space while still having to look after the island complex. Sarah did need an office space, since her office at the rental space wasn’t cutting it, but why she didn’t just rent an office that was already finished, I don’t know.

 

Bryan seems reasonable here but at the same time, he’s overseeing construction on a hangar to house his airplane. Must be nice to be able to afford a huge office space, incredibly expensive renovations on your home, a rental home while you renovate, renovations on your island resort, and a hangar for your airplane. So they’re both kind of insane. Then Sarah decides to up the budget on their home renovations to like $150,000, and when Bryan says she didn’t tell him, she does this “oops!” eyeroll, like someone who came home from the mall with a new coat. Again, must be nice. We just had our landscaping redone on our front lawn and it cost not even a fraction of what they spent, and I’m still feeling anxious about the cost of a crepe myrtle.

 

They should just call this show Passive-Aggressive Renovation Revenge because it’s so tit-for-tat.

 

It got worse. A few weeks ago, Bryan surprised Sara by buying a huge RV. It’s always a recipe for a great marriage when you don’t tell your spouse about six-figure purchases. Not only that, but he had to go to Winnipeg to pick the thing up, then drive the RV back to Florida. He was leaving imminently and it would take a few days. Sarah could watch their four kids and oversee all the construction when he was gone.

 

You know what, I would have had a process server track his ass down in that RV and serve him with divorce papers. Leave me with the kids with no warning while you journey cross-country to find yourself, and come home saying you really needed that time to decompress? You can leave that RV running in the driveway while you pick up the clothes I left on the front lawn. I would not want to be in that marriage.

 

Plus, Bryan’s assistant (I don’t know his name so I’ll call him Doug since they’re all Canadian) is totally in love with Bryan. A few weeks ago, he was thrilled when Sarah was off the island and the two of them could spend a day doing projects like repairing the resort’s sign, or go fishing or have a drink by the pool. Then Doug asks about skinnydipping in their pool, and takes his suit off when it’s just the two of them. And he’s happy to volunteer to help Bryan renovate for a few more weeks. Don’t go chasing that waterfall, Doug—Bryan’s a jerk.

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