HGTV’s New ‘Love It or List It’ Episodes Show the Moment COVID Ruined Everything

It started off like any other episode of Love It or List It. Couple Travis and Drew were arguing about whether or not they should stay put in their home (with the help of a renovation from Hilary Farr) or buy a bigger new home from real estate agent David Visentin. Travis was being persnickety about the size of their home. Hilary discovered a late minute hiccup in the floor plan. And what’s this? Wait. Why are Travis and Drew filming themselves on with a selfie stick? And why is David talking to them on Skype?

It turns out I was watching a brand new episode of Love It or List It filmed in 2020.

Yup, HGTV’s marquis level content has officially slammed into COVID-19 and they’re actually handling it pretty well. That is, they actually kept up enough production to finish full episodes of Love It or List It. (Not to mention a moment in Windy City Rehab where Alison Victoria stresses how much more important home offices are “now.”)

However seeing the creative ways in which shows like Love It or List It persevered with production throughout this flaming fart of a year is a bit unsettling. It both normalizes the strange way our lives have become while also pointing out how inherently fake HGTV’s suite of shows are in the first place. HGTV has fully acclimated to the pandemic and, uh, I don’t know how I feel about it.

To be sure, HGTV has been acknowledging the pandemic for months on air. Shows like Comedians on Couches Watching House Hunters, Design at Your Door and Martha Knows Best incorporated social distancing into their setups. However, the bulk of the channel’s content came, as always, from marathons of hit shows like House Hunters, Property Brothers, Good Bones, and yes, Love It or List It.

Watching HGTV sometimes feels like being unstuck from time. Episodes shot in the early 2010s air after relatively recent releases. Sometimes the only way you can tell how long ago an episode was shot is thanks to a combination of design trends or how old the recurring kid “characters” are. (How tall Chip and Jo’s kids are in a Fixer Upper episode is as good a time-marker as a mention of the “silos.”) HGTV shows are, usually, an escape from reality. A vision of how other people live their lives that you can judge from your own home. However these Zoom episodes of Love It or List It shatter that illusion while simultaneously proving how good HGTV is at churning out content.

It’s one thing to see a fully-produced episode of Love it or List it from years past or even a clip show clearly made during the pandemic. However it’s quite different to be lulled into thinking you’re watching an episode made in the “Before Times” only to slam into COVID quarantining mid-episode. The tonal shift is jarring. The references to everyone’s health and safety triggering. And watching the stop-gap measures put in place to finish the episode is utterly bizarre.

To go from a fully produced segment to watching the lead couple walk around with a selfie stick opens up a ton of questions. Only making the situation more complex? The fact that Hilary and David show up together on Zoom, leading viewers to wonder where they physically are…and if they’re quarantining together? Narratively, the episode I was watching — “Design in the Dog House” — didn’t encounter a hiccup. That just inspired me to wonder how much of HGTV’s hits rely upon their stars or their production teams. (Hilary did not stage that house. Has she staged ANY house?)

Seeing what COVID has done to HGTV’s marquis hits is unsettling indeed. It’s not only a reminder of how much our lives have been turned upside down, but it pokes at the picture perfect veneer of the network’s hit shows. Viewers are led to believe that HGTV stars fully committed to the projects onscreen, but these new formats undermine that myth.

In 2020, HGTV declared the show must go on, and it did. And now we have full seasons of HGTV shows that won’t help us become unstuck in time, but will instead drag us back to this year whenever they air in the future.

Where to stream Love It or List It