Friday, January 26, 2018

Property Brothers

After a brief run, HGTV has canceled the cult classic Property Brothers. The show was undeniably a departure from the network's usual insufferable couple clamoring for a white kitchen and a walk-in closet. The premise revolved around two Rohingya Muslim brothers, rendered stateless by the Burmese government, who fled Myanmar to the hopeful shores of Thailand where they were sold into slavery. Their brutal Thai owner worked them mercilessly. The show followed the brothers' lives.

Critics of the show came from a variety of arenas. Matthew Smith, head of Fortify Rights, a human rights group that tracks abuses against the Rohingya complained, "I spend my entire life in the service of the Rohingya, learning about the horrific genocidal actions of the Burmese military. I just want to go home and watch some jackoff whine about not having a jetted tub in his en suite. I'd rather not think about man's inhumanity towards man."

TV critic Art Wise agreed. "I loved the witty banter between Drew and Jonathan Silver Scott on the original Property Brothers. But there was no witty banter between the two nameless Rohingya brothers on the latest version of the show. And the little they did say was in untranslated Rohingya. We were witnessing, as Orlando Patterson described, these men's social death. Not unlike when Jonathan tells some unfortunate couple that a load bearing wall that separates the kitchen from the living room will undoubtedly hurt their ability to entertain."

The network has also decided to pull two other shows of similar sensibility.

Famous for its tagline, "What's unique about Flip or Flop Raqqa? We're ISIS!" only the pilot episode aired. In it, the ISIS flippers captured a church, destroyed all of its scriptures and portraits of Jesus, and turned it into a dungeon for infidels replete with cages. The flippers lost money on the project.

In Fixer Upper - Yemen, Chip and Joanna Gaines battle with Saudi bombs and Houthi rebels in an attempt to rebuild the country of Yemen. The show was canceled after the couple was murdered within a week of arriving.

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