While You Were Out

While You Were Out is an hour-long American television reality program on the cable channel The Learning Channel. The format of the show is similar to TLC's other show Trading Spaces, which in turn is based on the BBC TV series Changing Rooms, although While You Were Out adds some suspense from its central gimmick of keeping the makeover secret from the homeowner.

Premise of show

The series began with the following premise: An individual sets up a friend or family member with a surprise room redecoration. For example, a housewife will surprise her husband by having the living room redone. The person being set up is gotten out of the house for two days on a phony premise of one kind or another (usually some type of mini-vacation or other leisure outing). While the person is out, the friend, relative, or family member (with the help of a designer and two carpenters) redecorate one room in the house; sometimes it is a section of the yard or garden. There is usually a budget of U.S. $1500, and a time limit of approximately 32 hours.

While the redecoration is in progress, a "secret shooter" film-interviews the set-up person while he is out, the footage of which is then used for the purpose of quizzing the person at home. If the at-home person gets the question(s) right, he wins prize(s) for further enhancing the room decor.

At the end of the show, the set-up person returns home to a surprise redecoration, purposely caught on camera for posterity. Usually the reaction is quite favorable. The surprised person is then quizzed with one question for the opportunity to win one more prize.

The designers have to work with the homeowner to come up with a design and then shop for supplies that day and hope they are able to get everything in time for filming.

Usually the homeowner applies to the show a few months prior to filming. The room is filmed and measurements taken. The designers have about 3 weeks to come up with a design for the space and then get to visit the room the day before filming begins to make sure everything is in order. This visit is usually not filmed.

The show producers prefer to do spaces for extraordinary people or those who have suffered hardships and could use a little boost, but they also do spaces for ordinary people on behest of a loved one who just wants to show their love and appreciation.

One of the things that made both Trading Spaces and While You Were Out stand apart from previous home rennovation series was that they openly depicted conflict between the cast, crew and homeowners, conflict that was usually fairly friendly but which sometimes devolved into bitter arguments. While You Were Out in particular revealed many personality quirks of both the cast and guests. Andrew Dan Jumbo, for instance, had a troubling habit of vanishing in the crucial, final hours of a job, and was once discovered, after a lengthy search, doing his laundy in the homeowner's washing machine. On several memorable occasions, the surprisee absolutely hated the redesign of their home. Strasser's final episode has become rather infamous, when a homeowner returned to find his deck now had a large hole in it, and he launched into a lengthy, angry tirade while his wife wept. Overall, however, the mood of While You Were Out was kept light, and the majority of episodes ended with the homeowners happy with the new design.

The premise of the show evolved somewhat as the series progressed (see below for details).

Show history and seasonal variations

During season 1 there were four quizzes. The individual who was arranging the surprise (referred to as a "homeowner") for their loved one had to answer three of the quizzes. For each quiz there was a "booby prize" in case the homeowner failed the quiz. Normally the "booby prize" was a fun, toy version of the real thing (ex. a globe pencil sharpener instead of a real globe). The show was first hosted by Anna Bocci, who swiftly departed and was replaced by actress and writer Teressa Strasser, who reamined for the rest of the first season. Strasser never considered herself terribly handy but compensated with her empathy for the homeowners (their trevails drove her to tears on several occasions) and a sometimes dark sense of humor. (She once told a male homeowner that a rather feminine craft project would "complete the emasculization process.") During the Strasser era the humorously "sneaky" aspect of the show was stressed, and many episodes began with Strasser and the designer literally hiding in a van or a neighbor's house early in the morning, observing the departure of the unsuspecting makover subject.

At the beginning of season 2 Evan Farmer came aboard as host. An actor, singer and former boyband member, Farmer was much more high-energy that Strasser and was a skilled carpenter in his own right. While Strasser's humor had been more verbal, Farmer tended toward more physical comedy. Farmer also enjoyed a more teasing relationship with the show's designers and carpenters; where Strasser tended to lead with a nervous, mother hen approach, Farmer was more likely to chide the crew for wasting time or for their personal quirks (such as Jason Cameron's sideline as a bodybuilder). New music and some new graphics were introduced, the quizzes were reduced to three and booby prizes were eliminated. The homeowner only had to answer two (one on each day of filming) and then the surprisee would answer the third quiz. The third quiz question was always the same: Why did the homeowner want to do the room makeover for their loved one. Only once did a suprisee get the answer wrong and lose the prize.

Both Strasser and Farmer had considerable difficultly with letting guests lose prizes; on more than one occasion, they would offer hints so obvious that they essentially gave the prize away.

In the beginning of season 3 the budget was raised to $2,000 and quizzes kept the same. Toward the end of season 3 the quizzes and secret shooter were eliminated and the budget became about $7,000. The homeowners are also now more involved in the designing of the room.

Season 4 will be the show's final season, with the concluding episode currently scheduled to air in July 2006.

Other variations

To try to keep the show interesting the producers have toyed with different format variations including:

having only one carpenter in the episode
having one day of filming instead of two
Bringing over desingers or carpenters from Trading Spaces (the carpenters from While You Were Out, meanwhile, have made several appearances on Trading Spaces)
having one of the carpenters, or the show's host, design the room
having "on the fly" designs in which the designer does not see the room until the day before the makeover begins, although the carpenters and host are sometimes allowed to see it early. Recently they have started filming the carpenters and designers shopping for supplies on what is called day 0 (the day before general filming).
Remaking a room with a celebrity guest: these guests included Penn Gillette and Shannon Elizabeth.

Cultural impact

Both While You Were Out and Trading Spaces were very popular when they were new, and for months TLC aired them in prime time constantly, often airing them back to back or in a marathon format. The shows arguably influenced dozens of clone home rennovation shows (HGTV's series Debbie Travis' Facelift, for example, uses almost exactly the same format as the early seasons of While You Were Out) and both were widely parodied, as in a series of Comedy Central commercials for phony reality shows that included one called While You Were Drunk, about couples hooking up while intoxicated. But, faced with so many home rennovation shows on so many channels (and the many, many Trading Spaces specials and spinoffs) audiences eventually burned out on the format. As TLC changed its format to focus on more sensationalistic fare (with shows about tattoo artists and little people and reality shows starring D-list celebrities like Tanya Tucker and Adam Carolla), the network's older shows (including the home rennovation series that put TLC on the map) were either cancelled or they underwent format changes and were moved to less hospitable timelsots. While You Were Out changed timeslots so many times that even hardcore fans lost track of the new episodes, and it is arguable whether these endless timeslot changes were the result of the show's fading popularity or the cause of it. At this writing, TLC is airing the show's final episodes on Saturday afternoons, randomly pre-empting them for other, newer series without advance notice. The reaction of longtime fans to TLC's treatment of the show has been extremely hostile, and on the show's official message board many fans have declared that once WYWO is over they'll never watch TLC again.