Trading slots in my Season Passes

I watched the "new" Trading Spaces last night - I'm very mixed in my opinion about it. The good points:

Two carpenters - one with each team

A little less "stagey" in feel than the last season or so seemed at times

The design process came off as a little more collaborative. But that may have been more due to the designers involved (Frank and Gen)

After the "reveal", the homeowners met the designers who'd been in their home

And here's what sucked:

No host to tie the narrative together and guide the reveals

Really horribly done reveals, while I'm at it. The homeowners had to stumble through their houses, trying to find the room that had been done. And there's no explanation of what happened in the room, since there's no host.

On balance, I think after another week or so it's going to disappear from my TiVo. The only useful competition to TS is ABC's EM:HE, which is both more interesting and has more behind-the-scenes action (on their Monday night show). Other than that, the home makeover show genre seems to be dying off fast.

I also noted tonight that Town Haul is apparently done after this past week's episode for now. That's fine, too - I was sick of it. There's only so much pseudo-drama and bad camerawork I can take at a time.