TV Preview: Hank Stuever reviews WEtv’s reality show ‘Downsized’
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 6, 2010
It’s taken some time, but the Great Recession has at last produced a commendable reality show about the tug of shame and recompense that accompanies foreclosure, bankruptcy, underemployment, and the half-truths we tell ourselves about the economy and our personal values.
The show is WEtv’s arresting “Downsized,” which premieres Saturday night. It follows one family through money woes but also, bit by bit, chronicles the depressing loss of their middle-classdom. By no means a pure documentary, “Downsized” often feels as if Dorothea Lange had turned her lens on a downtrodden Brady Bunch: There’s a tender and no-nonsense tenor to it, which is a welcome switch from most of reality TV’s junky tropes. And since Saturday night on cable has curiously become a time in which we can communally fret about finances (a la “The Suze Orman Show” and “Til Debt Do Us Part”) “Downsized” also offers the viewer a smidge of hard-knocks catharsis.
Here is the Bruce family of Anthem, Ariz. — a Phoenix exurb — already well-wedged between their stucco-covered rock and a hard place: The 40-year-old husband, Todd, is a prideful, barrel-chested housing contractor who went belly-up in the real-estate mess. His business fell from what he says was an annual revenue of $1.5 million to zero. Hoping for a turnaround, he went bankrupt using his credit cards to meet his employees’ payroll.
His wife of five years, Laura, also 40, teaches first grade in a public school, earning $39,300 a year. Between them, Todd and Laura have seven children from their previous marriages, all of whom are among the most expensive kind of people in the world: American tweens and teens. They live together under one Spanish-tile roof — a 2,800 square-foot rental house that costs $1,700 a month. (The Bruces lost their much larger house to foreclosure in 2009, as well as a condo Todd bought as an investment property at the height of the market. With those losses went a host of luxuries — golfing, vacations, mall binges and some, but not all, of the usual array of electronica.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110503763.html -
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10 Financial Lessons for Parents from ‘Downsized’ - DailyFinance
16 Aug 2011 … Downsized Tuesday’s season premiere of the reality show “Downsized” (We TV, 9 p.m., 8 p.m. CDT) reintroduces the Bruce-Rumsey clan of …
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/08/16/10-financial-lessons-for-parents-from-downsized/ - 113k - Cached - Similar pages
Tuesday’s season premiere of the reality show “Downsized” (We TV, 9 p.m., 8 p.m. CDT) reintroduces the Bruce-Rumsey clan of suburbanites turned dumpster divers. After getting sucked down the recession’s spiral, they’re clawing back up to rejoin the middle class.
When we met the family members on the show last year, they had two homes in foreclosure and a construction business on life support. The second season begins with the blended family of nine having a total of $18,000 in the bank. Everybody has a job, too.
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