Interior Therapy With Jeff Lewis

Jeff Lewis is known for his popular Bravo reality show Flipping Out, where he flips houses and enthusiastically puts on display the massive amount of drama that goes on in his workplace. Jeff is brash, nasty, hilarious, but besides that he is a talented interior designer, and the new show he is doing handily shows that off.

In each episode, Jeff is moving in with a new household for five days and renovating the home. This work is a lot more personalized than Jeff has done on prior television shows. Not only is he helping to re-design homes, but it’s unavoidable for him not to get sucked into the problems of the families he’s staying with. This is showing a more sensitive side of Jeff; it’s definitely not his normal environment, being around children and a family dynamic. By his side is his trusted assistant, Jenni. Thank god she’s still here, he’s almost fired her so many times. Even Jeff’s lazy yet lovable housekeeper Zoila makes an appearance!

In the premiere, Jeff moves in with Michael and Felice Steinbeck, who live in Brentwood, California. The biggest problem with their house is the layout. The couple has given their nine-year-old son the master bedroom, and they share a bathroom with their two young daughters. Which leaves us to wonder, was there any kind of thought process that occurred when picking these rooms?

Felice is the definition of control freak. Every time something goes wrong she looks like she’s about to malfunction (she may or may not be a robot). She has her husband by the balls and the poor guy always has this wide-eyed, terrified look to him. She identifies herself the one wearing the pants in the relationship, and it is depressing to watch them interact with one another.

When they go to a furniture store with Jeff, they get into a huge, unnecessary argument because Michael would like a low bed. He’s just trying to acquire some kind of control, and Felice will not let go of her iron-grip on all of their decisions. It’s unimaginable the things that Jeff wanted to say (More likely, scream) at these people. But, of course the funs comes from the fact that we can imagine.

Apparently, the family is so traumatized by a kitchen remodel that they did a couple of years prior, so every time a mishap happens Jeff has to cover it up as if he accidentally killed the goldfish and flushed it, replacing it later and hoping no one would notice. There are leaks, the fire alarm goes off at one point, and these don’t seem like huge tragedies to normal people, this family is very fragile.

Jeff sends the family to a hotel for the night before the revealing so that he might have less of an anxiety attack imagining Felice creeping around looking for mistakes. His crew has to literally work all night, and Jeff refuses to feed them (which is probably illegal…). The next morning, hours before the Steinbeck’s are to return home, the crew can’t get the new headboard up the stairs, so they start hammering holes in the walls to get it through. Thankfully, they patch up the holes and in the end the couple loves their new bedroom, bathroom, and their bed with just the right height (for Felice). In the face of such triumph, we cannot doubt the powers of Jeff Lewis, interior therapist.