First, let me say, this is a great premise for a show. Here are two women who aren't afraid to jump into the fray when renovating a house.
Second, Karen, the mom, is GREAT! I feel as though I could be friends with her. She's creative, artsy (but not too much), handy, and has some really great ideas. She also seems like she'd be a lot of fun after she got a couple drinks into her! She hints at a wild past, and, of course, Mina pooh poohs her, as though she's the one who invented fun.
Mina, the daughter... Not so much. She always chooses the same white cabinets. She always uses the same Carrera marble, and always in various shades of white, with some splash of grey. She always chooses the same backsplash. She always chooses the same countertops. She always chooses the same tile for the bathroom.
There's someone in my neighborhood who is doing the same thing as Two Chicks and a Hammer. He's buying the distressed houses and making them whole again. While it's doing wonders for the sale prices, you can always tell which houses are the ones he does, because they have the same faux rock around the bottom of the exterior. Always. Every single time.
Mina's doing the same thing. And given it's made ABUNDANTLY clear Mina's the one in charge, it's sad, really. Karen has some great ideas to make things a little different each time, and Mina will 100% of the time screw up her face, purse her lips, and shoot her mom down so fast. She doesn't even stop to consider Mom's ideas. She's just, "NO" like a bullet from a gun. Were Karen given more autonomy for her her ideas, were Mina to stop to consider that someone other than her CAN have a good idea, the homes would look less like cookie cutter interiors and more like a home. Karen usually comes up with little design things that are unique to the home.
And then there's the whole thing of Mina treating her mom like crap. I mean, it was her parents who taught her everything she knows, but she acts like her mom is just some idiot lackey standing on the sidelines waiting for scraps to be thrown her way from Mina.
Whenever I see someone like Mina, I always think to myself, "If this is how they treat someone in public, imagine how much worse they are when no one's watching?" I shudder to think of the verbal abuse poor Karen's forced to take when there are no cameras near.
I was just watching the latest show today where Mina and Karen had decided to cover a brick chimney with marble and Mina changed her mind, to do it differently, but didn't tell Karen. Mina, being her usual narcissistic self, arbitrarily made a decision and refused to budge from what "she" thought was best, and she wasn't quiet about it, either. When she was done ranting and yelling at her mother, Karen stood there for a second or two, just staring off into space, then put her hands on her hips, leaned over a bit and took an extremely deep breath. It was obvious she felt Mina had gone too far, this time, and was treating her like crap. Karen has so much class, a lot more than Mina, and didn't say a word while on camera.
It just seems, the longer this show is on, the worse Mina gets, to the extent everyone on the crew, Mom included, are afraid of her temper. When something goes wrong on a job, they almost argue with regard to who's going to tell Mina? Sorry, but if everyone is walking on eggshells around you, it's time to self-assess and make the hard decision it's you with the problem, not the rest of the world. Being a narcissist, though, means Mina will never come to realize what at truly horrible person she is.
Maybe this is why Karen's decided to take a step back from the business, because she can't take any more of being around Mina and her steamrolling everyone, including the woman who started the business with her.
And this is going to sound awful to say, but it almost made me feel good to see Mina crying when she found out she was unable to have any more children. It made her human. Especially this latest season, Mina's just been so hard. To see her soften up on this was almost a relief. It made me empathize with her. I was almost shocked to see her have actual feelings other than anger or simple tolerating everyone around her.
Finally, while they're not making a huge profit on the houses they sell, what the show doesn't fully explain is they have several projects going at the same time, in various stages of renovation. Sure, they're only making about $20,000 on the house we're being shown, but multiply that by the other six they have going on at the same time, and now you're looking at over $100,000 of potential profit at all times. I wish they'd share at some point just how many houses they manage to reno a year. That would be interesting to know.
This could be a really great show if Mina would stop treating Karen like dirt and give her an equal voice in the renovations, and actually allow some of Karen's idea to come to fruition.
