Los Angeles: Murietta Avenue

MPDP appears in a pair of tastefully ripped and worn jeans and a white t-shirt which has caused as much reaction on the forums as Frank would were he to appear in a tutu. It's a white t-shirt with puffed cap sleeves and a black and white drawing of...well, it's anybody's guess. I thought it was supposed to be Keith Richards, but other people have guessed Alice Cooper, Lisa Lisa, David Bowie, Steven Tyler, and Jim Morrison, among others. The more I think about it, the more I think it's Keith Richards. It looks a bit like that photo of him by Ethan Russell in the early '70s, in which Richards is leaning near an anti-drug sign at an airport (something like that, anyway). But I'm not sure it's a good idea to think harder about MPDP's clothes than she does. MPDP has seen fit, for reasons best known to her and God, to clip the left side of her neckline with a pin that looks like a metallic barrette. My husband (the usually understated Professor Frink, who has declared that for the purposes of this episode he would like to be referred to as P. Frinky), asks, "What's with the shoulder pads?" I explain that she's not wearing any shoulder pads; it's just a badly designed shirt with really ugly sleeves. He gives me the same look he always gives me when we see some woman in a miniskirt, nylons, and high heels picking her way along an icy sidewalk or shivering her ass off at a bus stop in Siberian weather. Anyway, MPDP informs us that she's in Van Nuys, where they've found "four hip homeowners, hoping for some rockin' new living rooms!" P. Frinky declares the rock clichs "already excruciating." Dude, we're, like, a minute into the show. Brace yourself.

Keyboardist Teddy Andreadis and his wife, Lisa want their room "tuned up" with colour. Their neighbours, JT and Rick, want a woman's touch added to their living room. Cut to a tattoo parlour, where Gen and Laurie are getting crummy-looking fake Trading Spaces tats on their biceps. Laurie pretends to be suffering excruciating pain. She should listen to MPDP's puns. Amy Wynn watches. MPDP grinds her hips and growls that it's "all about time, budget, and rock and roll!" Oy. We may need sex and drugs to get through this. Consider yourself advised. I would just like to register my objection to having a show involving rock musicians and failing to assign Hildi, thereby depriving me of the many Appetite for Destruction and Welcome To My Nightmare jokes I could have otherwise made. Thanks for nothing, Trading Spaces. Sheesh.

Rick and JT (called "Jay" mostly by the others on the show, but listed on the TLC site as "JT") have a long, rectangular living room with white ceilings and walls and a strip hardwood floor. There are various pieces of chunky, dark furniture (a sofa, two club chairs, and a wicker chair) arranged around the perimeter of the room with nothing in between. There's an armoire (with the doors removed) along one wall; it holds the TV. The sofa is arranged on an odd angle into the room. There's a large picture window -- which I think faces out onto their patio -- on the wall behind the two big chairs. There's a small dining room off the end of the living room with a small round table and four traditional chairs in a medium wood tone. Between the two rooms are doors to the outside. JT says he's gone back and forth between rustic, French country, and old world, and he can't decide which one he wants. Rick wants crown molding and soothing, earth tones, like light brown or chocolate. JT hopes not. Where is Doug when you need him? JT teases Rick that he thinks he's Vern sometimes.

Lisa says that they have three dogs, including a 185 lb. Great Dane (P. Frinky: "That's what I weigh!") and two cats, and they live, work, eat, and do everything in that room. It's a long, rectangular room. The end wall is a soft orange colour; the other walls and the ceiling seem to be off-white or possibly even a pale peach. The floor is strip hardwood. There's a fireplace with very textured reddish bricks that I think has seen better days. There's an Alice Cooper doll-statue thing on the hearth. It has no idea what it's doing in this Good Housekeeping living room. They've got a red and cream flowered sofa and loveseat, a pine coffee table, and a pine shelving unit which houses the TV. The door into the room is unusually narrow. There's a French door leading outside. At the opposite end of the room is a sort of breakfast bar that divides the living room and kitchen. Lisa says the fireplace is very dark, and she'd be happy to see it painted and made lighter and brighter. Lisa says they like colour. Teddy and Lisa emphasize that they really like lots of good, fun colour. No white or off-white. Nothing bland. Lisa says that Teddy's more like Martha Stewart than Rod Stewart. Hee! (Martha, bloviating about scoring duck breasts: "The first cut is the deepest...") Apparently, Teddy's the master decorator -- the one who likes to do the homemaking and fiddling. Lisa just comes in and adjusts things. Teddy's secure enough in his masculinity that he doesn't need to disavow any of this, even though all his macho rock star friends could see it. Teddy's so cool.

Key swap. MPDP says the group is very musical. Apparently, JT is a dancer. He starts jigging and shuffling around as proof. MPDP says Lisa is a standup comic and she expects some witticisms. MPDP turns to Rick to say something about him and Rick quickly says that he's "nobody." JT says that Rick is a math professor. MPDP says he can help her with the budget.

Rick and JT find Laurie studying some photographs on the wall. She says that they have a big, big, big, big, big challenge in that room. They're putting the doors back on the armoire and moving it to a different wall. The TV will be housed in a cabinet that's going to cover one wall completely. They're lightening up the furniture and fireplace, and painting the walls in bright, lively colours. They unload the room amidst much dancing and skipping about. P. Frinky: "I like the way Laurie speaks using a combination of verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech." Frank's and Gen's habits of speaking in loosely connected series of nouns gets on his 'nads.

Lisa and Teddy find Gen tittering over some wooden boxes with carved doggies on the lids. P. Frinky notices that Gen's tat's all smeary: "Presumably, she bathed." Me: "Bathing's not very rock and roll." Gen hands them the boxes, which are skeeving her out for some reason, and says that she thinks she just picked up a dead doggie. Lisa knows the name of one of those doggies; she calls it Maggie. Those aren't...cremated remains of pets, are they? Yikes. Gen says she's found a note from their neighbours indicating that they're welcome to use any furniture in the house or garage as they see fit. Lisa says there's a lot of furniture out in the garage. Gen says she's bringing back an "old school L.A. aesthetic that has a bit of an Egyptian flair." Hmm. Okay. She's been good lately so I'm going to trust her. She says it's going to be romantic but masculine and very classic. She says they're not doing French country: "People say that when they don't know what else they want." She says they're going to do a cool room Rick and JT can party in. They unload the room.

Laurie explains that the cabinets they're building will be thirty inches deep. She says it has to house that "mama TV." Their TV isn't all that huge. I think she would have gone into a swoon if she had to handle the TV Vern did in last week's episode. Laurie says they're going to be doing some horizontal stripes on the walls, and one vertical stripe: "It's going to be kind of like a piece of plaid." I'm not feeling the love.

Gen reveals her paint to her team and MPDP. Gen says that the room gets a lot of light, and shows them some very dark red paint. Nice. She says that's going on the living-room walls. MPDP asks if she's doing the dining room, too. She is.

Laurie shows her team the primary (heh) paint colour: it's a light, warm orange. She describes it as a "pretty, kind of golden, camel colour." I don't see enough brown in that to call it camel, but whatever. It's extremely close to the colour already on the accent wall in the room. The other colour is a "buttery yellow." Rick likes it. Laurie says it will be accented by a "really soft, soft, soft, cream colour." The cream will be the stripe, and also the colour of the bookcase and fireplace.

Gen's got her fabric out; it's a barkcloth print on a black background with dark red and mossy green foliage. The colour of the dining room is a slightly lighter colour than the living room, almost an intense salmon. MPDP gets everyone to "ooh" and "aah" in unison. The bumper to the commercial is Amy Wynn studying some stock tattoo images and Gen pulling her away by the hair. During the commercials, I endure the standard rants from P. Frinky about Swiffer, the annoying Welch's grape juice kid, and Leeza Gibbons.

Laurie's outside trying to intimidate the living heck out of Amy Wynn by describing how major and important her carpentry project is. For some reason, she's decided that the cabinet on the right-hand side of the door is going to be hollow, and nailed shut. It's just a faade. I don't understand that at all. Why not make it useful? That's quite a few cubic feet of a not-enormous room to waste.

In Gen's house there's much confusion and discussion over whether ceilings are being taped and painted, and if so, what colour. Gen has a tiny, good-natured "I'm the designer -- do what I say" fit.

Laurie asks her team whether Lisa and Teddy entertain a lot. Rick says that they entertain their dogs a lot. The fireplace is being primed. It already looks a lot better. Rick and JT say they expected to start entertaining more once the room is made over. Laurie says they're creating more seating for them.

Gen's started painting the living room, and instructs MPDP to work on the dining room right around the corner from her. She mentions to everyone that colours like red sometimes need as many as three coats. MPDP asks for more explicit instructions (having already been "yelled at") about the taping. Gen shows her where to start painting; MPDP complains that Gen already got plum in her salmon and salmon in her plum. Yeah, yeah, chocolate, peanut butter, whatever, just pick up a brush and let's move on. Gen gives the camera an exasperated look and suggests, with that Jenny-Jones-guest- head-waving thing, that MPDP stay an inch away from her.

Gen tells Teddy it's craft time. Teddy: "Yay!" They're outside with a very small writing desk with a fold-down front and a shelf inside. Gen says they're going to make a bar out of it. That's going to be a pretty small bar.

Laurie wonders how "Ted" is going to feel about all the floral stuff. I bet he was the one who picked out the floral furniture. JT says it's not a frilly floral, so he thinks it will be all right.

Gen and Teddy sand the desk. She prods him about not being at all worried about his own house. He's really not. He says he's just happy to have the Trading Spaces people around him. Gen pretends to be all moved by this and Teddy warns her not to get sappy on him.

JT says sewing is not his forte, but that Rick is good at sewing. So why not get him in here? Laurie wonders the same thing.

Gen instructs Teddy to prime the desk, now that it's sanded, and she's going to prime two planters. I think they're the same ones she used in "Austin: Wampton Way." She says they're going to put an antiquing top coat on the piece when he's done priming it. She says the stuff cost about $12 and will cover eighty-five square feet, so they're making two pots and a bar look custom-made for $12.

Rick and Amy Wynn work on the cabinetry in the living room. MPDP appears to tell Amy Wynn that it's a very ambitious project. Amy Wynn assures her that she can get it done.

Gen tells Amy Wynn that she wants to build three shelves that are lit from underneath so that the bottles displayed thereon will glow. One short wall where there used to be a mirror will be devoted to these display shelves. She also wants crown molding to break up the darkness of the walls and ceiling. Pretty easy stuff.

Rick and JT are outside painting furniture. JT is painting a side table the orange/camel colour; Rick says it's the kind of colour he wants in their place. JT hopes Rick doesn't get his wish. Rick loves it. JT thinks it's too dark.

The camera cuts quickly to their living room, which is now almost totally dark red. Gen and her team are nearly finished painting. They chat about the time Teddy went out of town and JT and Rick helped Lisa redecorate their bedroom. Gen says she's seen their bedroom and that she thinks they did a pretty good job. Teddy: "A lot goes on there, let me tell you about that." Everyone laughs. Gen: "That's another show, Teddy."

Rick and JT aren't sure if they need to paint the inside of some piece of furniture.

Gen disses Laurie to her team, saying Laurie's good at delegating and mysteriously disappears when it's time to paint. Gen says she's a sucker who stays in the room.

Cut to Laurie instructing MPDP, Rick, and JT as they tape up the wall. Laurie says she's thinking of eliminating the stripe she had been planning around the middle of the room. MPDP's all for that. Laurie's reasons have to do with design, not time issues.

Lisa and Gen recover the dining-room chair seats with a very similar barkcloth print on a white background.

Laurie pontificates about where the stripes should be on the wall.

Lisa and Gen continue working on the chair seats.

Laurie's got two horizontal stripes taped off around the top of the room, and says that she wants everything below the stripes painted yellow. MPDP's annoyed, and wants to know why they just painted the whole room cream instead of painting the room yellow to begin with. Laurie says that when they peel the tape off, they'll have a cream stripe. MPDP thinks they could have just painted a strip of cream. Laurie says it's no big deal (to have painted the whole room?) and that they needed to prime the room anyway because the walls were dirty. Well, they didn't look that dirty to me. And use primer, if you're going to prime something, and not paint. You may have heard: there's a limited amount of money, here. Laurie says there was "stuff coming through the wall" and assures MPDP that it was no big deal. MPDP's not buying it, and you can tell she's socking away this nugget for when Laurie runs over on time and budget. Laurie goes back to telling them what colours go where. Walls: yellow. Stripes: Orange.

Lisa and Gen, still stapling fabric to chair seats. They're very giddy with their success.

Amy Wynn instructs JT on how to shape the metal for the ductwork. She reminds him to put on safety glasses, because "it's that one random time where something flies in your eye and it's really gross." No argument here.

MPDP spraypaints the dining room chair frames red as Teddy plays polka music on an accordion. MPDP jumps and skips around; despite her prowess as a dancer, though, I'd say she hasn't yet mastered the polka. Probably not much call for it in her career, though. Nobody does big, splashy, sexy shows or films like Chicago about polka.

Gen tells her team that everything that's white is going antique white. She lifts up a light fixture, one of the better ones I've ever seen on the show. It's a schoolhouse-style pendant fixture with a white glass globe and silver-coloured stem and fittings. Frink -- sorry, P. Frinky -- and I bought one almost exactly like that at Christmas for our upstairs hallway. I liked the fixture a lot, but we ended up returning it because it was just too much for the space; when it was on, it was like a big full moon glowing in an otherwise empty hallway. It was quite disorienting -- i.e., blinding -- when you turned the corner at the top of the stairs and got a big eyeful of it all at once. So back to the store it went. It needs a bigger space to work well. Fixtures like that look great in large, semi-fitted, or unfitted kitchens. Gen says that the fixture is very 1940s. Teddy and Lisa like it. Gen says it's new and yet has a classic edge at the same time. I would agree. Gen and Lisa praise its timelessness. Gen tells them to keep painting, and that they did a fantastic job.

Day Two. Laurie arrives and is thrilled with the room. The walls are painted, as is the cabinet, and her team is in the process of removing the tape that defines the stripes. Laurie confesses that she's in a tizzy because the rug she ordered isn't going to be delivered on time. She's got a sample of some outdoor carpeting that she was having shipped from home, but it won't be there for two more days.

Gen arrives and exults over how the room looks. The new light fixture is hung over the dining-room table. Looks very nice. Teddy and Lisa say they've been up all night. Gen doesn't believe them. P. Frinky: "Yeah, they're probably not used to late nights, what with his being a rock musician and all."

Laurie continues fretting about the rug, saying it was absolutely necessary to define borders in the room, and they have to have an area rug. She got the original one for twenty-eight cents a square foot; $45 for an 8' x 10' rug. Rick asks how much they have left in the budget. Laurie says they don't really have anything -- I suspect she can't return that carpet -- so she thinks she'll have to go over. She has to talk to MPDP. I just realized that some of the lyrics of "Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black)" work really well for this show: "Out of the blue and into the black/ You pay for this, but they give you that/ And once you're gone, you can't come back/ When you're out of the blue and into the black." You know, in case they ever decide to get rid of the goofy music and get serious. Mind you, I bet Neil Young would fight tooth and nail to make sure his song couldn't be used as a TV theme.

Gen says they're going to focus on fun stuff today: crown molding, curtains, furniture, lighting, art. She says there's some other fun stuff they don't even know about. Lisa's quite excited about that. Gen says they're doing well on time.