It’s worth noting that there is nothing I’m about to write that probably hasn’t already been extensively blogged already. However, since I’ve consciously avoided checking out the above mentioned subject for the past few years, it’s all new to me, hence the following:
The wife and I were killing some time before going to dinner last night and she happened to settle on a television program called Extreme Makeover, and for some reason I didn’t object. I know everyone is familiar with the premise of the show, but I’m going to go over it for my own selfish enjoyment.
ABC airs this little gem of a reality show in which the “Extreme Team” combs the underbelly of America, looking for the ugliest people the country has to offer. I think they had originally planned on just doing the show in Plain City, Ohio, but then decided it was better to broaden their market. Once they find these horribly deformed people, they whisk them off to some palatial compound in LA where the world’s finest plastic surgeons gratuitously plug their own services by fixing these people’s disgusting flaws. Then they get a haircut, some make-up, and a shopping spree at stores they can’t even afford the sales tax in, then they get shipped back to their home town for a big reveal in front of their equally ugly and flawed friends and family. Lot’s of tears ensue. It’s basically like What Not To Wear for your face. Then when the cameras are off, the formerly ugly people leave all their presently ugly friends behind in search of a community of attractive people until they start having complications from all the surgeries and they can no longer afford the make-up and haircuts and nice clothes and their lives spiral into an abyss of drinking, drugs, and prostitution until they crawl back home to their ugly friends and family, begging for their forgiveness and cursing ABC all the while. At least that’s what I gathered from last night’s episode.
At any rate, normally I wouldn’t ever let Sara watch a trashy program like Extreme Makeover but for some reason I was entirely gripped by the episode last night. So much so that I didn’t object when Sara set up the DVR to record it so we could go to dinner, and further so when we got back and I was the one to turn it back on.
In this episode, the Extreme Team found two absolute moneymakers, Micah and Chris. Chris’ story was actually rather touching so I’ll hold my sarcasm for the other one. Chris had lost his leg from the knee down in a motorcycle accident. Along with the leg he lost his job, his hobbies, and his manhood, so his life was basically on its way to being over. The Extreme Team intervened, gave him a new bionic leg, a brow lift, some botox, a haircut and a suit, and it literally turned his life around. That was until he got to the big reveal and saw his hag of a wife and realized he was still in hell.
Anyway, the real treat was Micah, a 30 year-old girl still living with her parents in Knoxville, TN (the fact that she was from Tennessee doesn’t have anything to do with it… Well, actually yes it does). In a freak accident as a child, Micah fell and landed on her face, breaking several bones above her mouth and below her nose. Apparently lacking x-ray technology in Knoxville in the mid-80’s, the stupid doctors never noticed the broken bones and therefore never did anything to correct them. Apparently also lacking malpractice lawyers in Knoxville at the time, Micah’s family never sued to recoup the millions of dollars in emotional damages she was about to incur throughout the rest of her life.
As she grew older, the true extent of the injury reared it’s ugly head when the top of her mouth grew outwards and her lower jaw grew inwards, leaving her looking amazingly like a donkey. To add insult to injury, she was legally blind, couldn’t chew because only four teeth in her mouth lined up, couldn’t talk, and apparently never learned to shower. As a little known fact, the part of the brain that controls one’s motor skills is located just above the top row of teeth1, and apparently Micah severely damaged it because she also moved her body like she was made out of wooden coat hangers.
Enter the Extreme Team. They did all kinds of facelifts and lipo and whatnot, then gave her like a complete mouth transplant and permanent corrective lenses in her eyeballs, which was amazing. They gave her a speech coach, which was hilarious because not only did he have to teach her to use her new mouth, he also had to teach her how to talk like she wasn’t from the mountains. Then, the best part was the physical therapist that had to teach her how to walk. The therapist was like, “I knew this was going to be tough, but it was so much worse than I expected.” Honestly, despite my earlier medical analysis of her condition, there really was no logical reason why she didn’t know how to move her limbs. It was like watching a marionette that was controlled by a blind 5 year-old.
In the end they pulled it all together, gave her some make-up and hair extensions to look like a whore, and sent her home for the big reveal. In all seriousness, she looked absolutely amazing and a complete 540 degree turnaround from before.
During the big reveal Sara looked up at me with tears in her eyes and I couldn’t even make fun of her because I was crying like a fucking baby.
After all of that, I banned the show from our house.
1. I didn’t have time to consult my wife, the Graves Medical book, or Wikipedia to verify this fact, but the empirical evidence from Extreme Makeover was entirely conclusive.
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