Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC

By Ally Matteodo

ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition receives the accolade Best TV Show of the Week.  Airing at 8:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 28th, this time Ty Pennington and the design team journeyed to Lancaster, Texas to assist the Marshall Family.  The patriarch of the family, Carlton Marshall, now must use a wheelchair. Carlton participated in a routine search warrant with the Dallas SWAT team, and while on duty he was shot in the neck, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.  The Marshall’s house was a fixer-upper when they first bought it, a residence with land for their beloved horses and a barn.  However, with Carlton’s injury, many areas of the house and outside are now inaccessible.  Ty and his team are joined by the Dallas SWAT team, and together they demolish the house.  The SWAT team’s medic, Alex Eastman, comments on how important Lieutenant Carlton Marshall is to them, and how they are determined to take care of their own.  In addition, this week country musician Trace Adkins volunteered to help with the house renovations and anything else the team needed.  A former construction worker with a lumberjack build, Trace is the perfect man for the job. 

The team’s ability to make Carlton’s house accessible to him again is truly touching.  The frustration of a once-active man now wheelchair-bound manifests itself at the beginning of this episode, and Carlton’s inability to maneuver around his own home is clearly distressing.  However, after the renovation, this changed.  Now, Carlton can access the outside of his property and visit his horses -- he can even ride them, thanks to a seat installed by the team.  Now, he can use the kitchen counters and make a meal, and he can also tuck his son into bed.  Furthermore, a therapy room is built for Carlton so he can make the most progress possible in his quest to walk again.  In a moving moment, Carlton uses the parallel bars in the room and comments on how great it feels to stand. One of the design team members, Paul DiMeo, explains how he will never forget the look on Carlton’s face when he stood against those parallel bars.  This is what Ty Pennington and his team do: they take people who feel lost, hopeless, and frustrated, and empower them.  The team, along with the community, forged a beautiful new thing, all while smiling and knowing that helping those in need is its own reward.  This outpouring of generosity and caring is truly a microcosm for how the world at large should be.                

Best TV Show of the Week

The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org