Anyway, it’s a fun watch, I recommend it.  What it isn’t is an accurate representation of the real estate process, which I didn’t realize until I went through it myself.  For instance:

You’re going to look at way more than three places.  I realize this is a TV show and can’t cover the whole home search process.  And yet I maybe believed that everyone would look at three places and be like, okay, of these, I can choose one.  And maybe some people can.  One of my friends looked at one condo, immediately put an offer on it, and done.  I looked at literally all of the condos in the city.  Every single one of them.

Your price point and offer are not as negotiable as you want them to be.  This is going to depend on your situation, and the market you’re looking in, but in general, on House Hunters, a lot of people end up going way over their budget because they find somewhere great, or they offer something significantly below the asking price and get the place.  As a single person buying a place, I definitely didn’t have the option of going over my budget, because at the end of the day, it’s just me on the hook for it.  If you’re a couple or a family, their might be multiple salaries coming in and more wiggle room in your budget.  As for lowballing on offers, this failed for me multiple times, no matter how many times I was like “But they do this on House Hunters!”  Again, it’s incredibly dependent on your market; in big cities, things tend to be a lot more competitive and it’s often expected you’re going to offer close to the asking price.

Making an offer is the most nerve-wracking thing ever.  On the show, all the angst is over picking the place, and once that’s done, there’s a tiny bit of tension while they wait to hear back about the offer, but nine times out of ten, they get the place.  What they skip over is the 9000 pieces of paper you have to sign to actually make an offer, and the subsequent terror that on one of those pieces of paper, you actually signed over the rights to your firstborn child.

Your place will not be in the state you think it will be six weeks after you move in.  At the end of every House Hunters episode, they do a flash forward to six or eight weeks after the people have moved into their new home, and it’s always painted and they’ve got their furniture set up and it looks great, or if it was a fixer upper they’ve made some sort of significant progress on the renovation.  I’ve officially been in my place six weeks and it looks alarmingly similar to the day I moved in, except that there’s now food in the refrigerator.  It’s easy to make grand plans about painting and getting new curtains and rugs and furniture, but it turns out (at least for me) the timeline for making this happen is significantly longer than on TV.

So, House Hunters:  fun to watch.  Not an accurate representation of the real estate process.  Next time:  we cover what’s on each of those 9000 pieces of paper in your offer.

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Snow White

Aurora

Cinderella

Ariel

Belle

Jasmine

Pocahontas

Mulan

Tiana

Rapunzel

Across the board, all the princesses are wearing way more makeup to go with their sparkly new outfits.  They all have impossibly tiny waists and impeccably coiffed hair (Cinderella in particular looks like she was put on a diet and bleached her hair).  While this sort of aesthetic might work for real life princess Kate Middleton, it’s a little unachievable for the rest of us.  Long before they start reading fashion magazines, Disney princesses are the first definition of beauty that little girls are exposed to, and it’s one they can’t achieve.

While I’m sure Disney will argue that these aren’t makeovers but ‘updates’ to make the princesses look stylistically consistent, why does that style have to be airbrushed and photoshopped?  All of these princesses are wearing more glitter than Ke$ha and doing enough “smizing” to win them the title of next Top Model.  These princesses aren’t just trying to appeal to young girls; they’ve got a certain sexy aesthetic which is even grosser when you consider their actual ages.  There are so many more interesting updates to Disney princesses; why do we have to choose one that presents such an unrealistic image to impressionable young girls?  Do they really need to believe that beauty is defined by impossibly smooth hair and a lot of blush?  Disney is a huge influence over young girls, and they took a huge step forward creating a princess like Merida, a role model who isn’t afraid to fight for what she believes in.  Let’s hope they rethink the step back they’ve taken by making her over.

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You’d think everyone would be excited to jump on the Uber bandwagon, but you’d be wrong.  New York City, of all places, is still a raging battleground in the fight between “e-hailing” phone apps like Uber, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission.  While Uber doesn’t operate its own cars and just functions as a dispatch for existing car services, other companies are apparently still worried about losing business to Uber.  This seems pretty ridiculous, as I’m pretty certain that cabs in New York are not hurting for business, so hopefully they’ll eventually recognize that Uber is the way of the future and get on board.  One can only hope that after Uber conquers the Big Apple, they’ll move on to providing service to other major cities that don’t yet have it, like Miami, Portland, Austin and Vegas.

I personally am a huge fan of Uber.  I’ve never really liked cabs, but they’re sometimes the only option when you don’t want to bother with driving and finding parking or for getting around after public transportation has shut down for the night.  My issue with cabs isn’t the cost (though they are way more expensive than walking or taking public transit), it’s the ‘sketch’ factor.  Whether it’s dirty cars, drivers who don’t know where they’re going or drivers who spend the entire ride talking on their cell phone loudly in a language I don’t understand, there’s nothing pleasant about the experience.  Uber eliminates all that; every ride I’ve taken has been in a pristine black sedan with a driver who knew exactly where he was going and was incredibly courteous.

So when I read that a woman in DC had allegedly been raped by her Uber driver, I was really troubled.  Taking a cab is supposed to be the safe decision after a night out when you’ve had a little (or a little too much) to drink, but in this case, it meant putting an already vulnerable person in harm’s way.    Obviously the alleged actions of one driver don’t reflect on the entire Uber system, and interestingly, the way Uber is set up allowed the woman’s attacker to be easily tracked down.  When you order a car, the system keeps track of it and you’ll be sent a receipt with your driver’s name.  Uber also immediately terminated their affiliation with that driver after the allegation was made.  As scary as this story is, I don’t think it reflects a problem with Uber specifically; in DC, complaints by women about sexual harassment or assault by taxi drivers are far too frequent. The problem isn’t with car services or taxis, it’s with rape culture; why anyone’s spending time fighting about whether or not New Yorkers can order cabs via smartphone when there are much, much bigger problems in our society, I have no idea.

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10.  Technology starts to seem scary. I remember when I was a little kid, I’d get really frustrated when my mom didn’t know how to do something on the computer and I did. I am now waiting for kids to start getting frustrated with me. Most 3-year-olds were using iPhones before I learned how. And still, I use mine for things like phone calls and texting. I don’t understand Instagram or Snapchat or any of these other wacky things that “kids these days” are using.

9.  The disappearance of your ability to metabolize both food and drink. Remember in high school, when you could eat like, Cheezits and cheesecake for lunch and wash it all down with regular Coke and still fit in your pants day after day? I remember, and I miss it. Now, it’s like I eat one thing with too much added sodium and I’m too bloated to fit in my pants for a week. And to go with your fun new inability to process food, you also get to experience and exciting new level of hangover. Ah, those halcyon days of the early 20s when you could have a late night out with your friends, and then wake up at like, 8am the next day and feel great. Now, I have two glasses of wine at dinner, and when the alarm goes off the next morning it’s like, “NOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYYYYYYY.”

8.  You can’t tell how old kids are. I think when I was a kid, I knew how old other kids were, but once someone passed age 20, I had no concept of adult ages. I still don’t (just this weekend I found out a guy I thought was my age was in fact 34), and now, I can’t tell kids’ ages, either. If they’re not in a stroller, they could be 5, or 8 or 13. Regardless, they’ll be better dressed and have a nicer phone than me.

7.  You start waxing nostalgic about the “good old days”. This is a sure sign you are turning old., because no young person is ever uncool enough to talk about how great things used to be. I keep having these moments of “Hey, do you guys remember what everything was like before the internet? When payphones were still a thing? When you had to actually watch commercials on TV?” I’m not yet to the point where I talk about how much better the old days were, which means I’m not yet geriatric, but I fear I’m getting close.

6.  You start paying for things. It’s not all bad stuff that comes with getting older. There are some high points, too. In college, we would routinely walk several miles to go out to dinner, rather than shelling out $2 to ride the subway, or the ungodly amount a cab would have cost. When you’re an adult, you’re like, “Eh, my time is worth $10 to take a cab or pay for parking.” And there’s nothing more adult than the feeling that comes at dinner with friends and you have the ability to just grab the check and say, “I got this!” rather than doing the awkward, always-short cash count of your younger years.

5.  You begin thinking about developing a “skincare regimen”. I remember when I used to just ignore all skincare ads that had “anti-aging” in them and only paid attention to the ones for acne. Now, it turns out, I pay attention to both. It’s a cruel joke that they tell you to use sunscreen as a kid when you’d rather just get outside and start playing already, and then suddenly as an adult, you’re like, well, I guess I should have actually listened to that, and now instead I will contemplate paying an absurd amount of money to have skin that looks like it did when I didn’t care about what my skin looked like.

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The key to keeping this snack from getting boring is switching up the hummus.  In college, I was all about roasted red pepper.  Up until recently, I was a big believer in roasted garlic.  That was before I went to a housewarming party where I was introduced to Trader Joe’s Spicy Hummus.  It is the best. It’s not super spicy, and I think tastes a little like curry or some other Indian spice, and I think it’s delicious.  I will warn you that opinions at the party were divided, and some people thought it was the weirdest thing ever.  Others, myself possibly included, immediately went to Trader Joe’s and bought mildly embarrassing amounts of it.

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The Spice Girls

Yes, they already have a movie, but it turns out Spice World isn’t actually a documentary.  Who knew?  This means that we need an actual biographical Spice Girls movie.  I think Emma Stone has the hair and the attitude to make a mean Ginger Spice.  If you have suggestions for the rest of the Spices, I’ll take ‘em.

Hanson

So apparently Hanson is back?  I’ll be honest, I was pretty okay with them being gone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see the ‘MmmBop’ glory days relived in motion picture form.  I’m thinking we could just cast the Jonas Brothers, and make them all wear long blonde wigs.

Madonna

I’m shocked that there hasn’t been a movie about the Material Girl yet..  Since Lady Gaga is sort of trying to be the Madonna of our generation, what if she just played her in a movie?

Alanis Morrissette

Anyone who says they don’t want to see the surely awkward romance between Alanis and Dave Coulier reenacted onscreen is surely lying.  I’d like to watch Kat Dennings give good old Joey Gladstone a piece of her mind after he dumps her.

Britney Spears

Is it too soon to relive the journey from being America’s sweetheart to batshit crazy back to relative normalcy?  I think not.  As for casting – we’ll go with the obvious.  Let’s revive Amanda Bynes’ acting career, though I think she would have looked the part more if she’d kept her old nose.

Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC

We could pretend that these bands have wildly different back stories…or we could do a mashup of two very unique boybands formed by the same man in Orlando in the ’90s, and have both bands played by the members of One Direction.

Jessica Simpson

Yes, I know I lumped BSB and NSYNC into one movie, but no one in either of those bands ever went on national television unclear on whether a can of Chicken of the Sea contained chicken or fish.  Also, I think Ashely Tisdale would nail this role.

S Club 7

I never had a dream come true til the day that I found S Club 7.  As a bonus, this would be a super cheap movie to make as you don’t even have to film one, just recut some footage from their ABC Family show.

Ke$ha

So I’m pretty sure by conventional standards, it is “too soon” for a Ke$ha biopic.  But I can’t wait, you guys.  Spirit animals!  Past lives!  Ghost sex!  You can’t make this stuff up, but you can make it into a movie starring Lindsay Lohan or Miley Cyrus.  (Fortunately, while I wait, Ke$ha is getting a docu-series on MTV.)

Carson Daly

So he’s not an artist per se, but don’t we want to know the story of the man who brought us all our favorite songs on TRL?  He could be played by his modern day equivalent, Ryan Seacrest, or by pretty much any moderately good looking and moderately bland actor.

Whose biopic do you want to see?  And who would you cast in it?

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10.  The Royces (Suburgatory)

I have already made it known that I love Dallas Royce as a human being.  I think I would also very much appreciate having her as a mother.  Being a child in the Royce household means you get a custom bedroom skylight and a pet kangaroo.  A pet kangaroo.  Enough said.

9.  The Tanners (Full House)

They’ve pretty much got it all – great house, great dog, great catchphrases (you got it, dude!) – all that’s missing is their mom.  While nothing can really replace the parent that DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle lost, Uncle Jesse and Joey are a pretty awesome substitute.  It’s not every kid that gets to be raised by a neat freak TV host, a rock star who cares more about his hair than I ever will, and a puppeteer who dated Alanis Morissette.

8.  The Tanners (Alf)

These Tanners were a pretty standard family until a visitor from the planet Melmac crash landed into their garage.  You have to be a pretty cool set of people to just adopt an extraterrestrial into your home.  And if you’re going to add an alien to your family, it had best be Alf – he’s funny, he’s adorable, and he’ll only occasionally threaten to eat your cat.

7.  The Spellmans (Sabrina, The Teenage Witch)

Obviously the biggest perk to being a member of the Spellman family would be the magical powers.  Even if those weren’t on the table, though, I think Hilda and Zelda are pretty great as guardians go.  Aside from the questionable choice to pursue relationships with school administrators, they have a fantastic sense of style, plan great vacations (who has aunts who take them to places like Hawaii and Mars?), and teach important lessons like the value of a good flan.

6.  The Bartlets (The West Wing)

So here’s the thing – Jed and Abbey are pretty much the best ever, but I was always a little underwhelmed by the Bartlet daughters, which is why I think I would be an excellent addition to this family.  Sure, it would probably get annoying to have a father who thinks he knows it all, is usually right, and also gets to keep tabs on your every move via the Secret Service.  But the awesome factor of having a dad who is a genius and the leader of the free world would probably balance that out.

5.  The Marins (Pretty Little Liars)

Sometimes, you need a parent who’s really going to be on your side.  In Ashely Marin, you get a parent who’s willing to run a guy over with a car if it means keeping her daughter safe, then come home, have a glass of wine, and be all “Hey honey, how was your day, mine was okay, I maybe killed a guy to keep him from murdering you, no big.”  Ashely’s also not above lesser favors, like stealing money to keep Hanna in the latest fashions, or sleeping with a cop to get him to drop shoplifting charges against Hanna.  Okay, so maybe she’s not a great role model, but she is a mom who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect her daughter’s well being.

4.  The Crawleys (Downton Abbey)

They may not be the most affectionate family on TV, but unconditional love and support is not why you join the Crawley family.  You join for unadulterated aristocratic awesomeness.  What the Crawleys lack in warmth, they make up for in tradition, and a gift for making cutting remarks.

3.  The Mars family (Veronica Mars)

You wouldn’t think a family with an alcoholic mother who abandons her family would make it to near the top of my list, but the fact that it does speaks to the fact that Keith Mars is pretty much the best single dad ever.  Watching the show, you never feel like Veronica is missing out on that much with her mom gone, because her dad clearly loves her more than anything in the world.  More than that, he knows when to treat his daughter like an equal, and when to treat her like a parent; the rapport between father and daughter is excellent, and usually hilarious.  Between the prospect of Keith as a dad and sassy spitfire Veronica as a sister, I would happily join the Mars clan any day.

2.  The study group (Community)

So this isn’t a family in the traditional sense, but if TV has taught me anything (and it has taught me many things), it’s that the family you create for yourself is just as important as the one you’re born into.  There are tons of families like this on TV, but the community on Community (ha!) is so special because it’s an interesting and diverse group of people who came together out of randomness, and have grown to truly love and care for each other.  If going to a community college meant I could find a group like that, I’d already be enrolled.

1.  The Cohens (The OC)

The best part about the Cohen family is that you can believe you might actually be a part of it, as Sandy has a thing for taking in stray humans.  And once you’re a member of the Cohen family, you’ll have two caring parents, a hilarious and geeky brother, the ability to celebrate Chrismukkah, and access to the best that Newport Beach has to offer.  Most importantly, you’ll get to see Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows every morning over breakfast.

So that’s my top ten of TV families I’d like to join.  Who’s on your list?

*I apologize for the lack of traditional TV families, such as the Cosbys and the Bradys, on this list.  I have been told by friends that these, among others, are incredibly awesome, but apparently there was some sort of pop cultural void in my childhood where I didn’t really watch any of these shows.

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