Welcome to Season 3 of Flipping Out, Gasmii! For those of you who managed to avoid seasons one and two, join the club! Let's learn about these madcap characters and laugh as they try to make a living in real estate in the worst economy we've seen in decades! By the way, I'm just coming off a six week virus called "Miami Social" (the lame reason this recap is so late) so please be kind.
For those new to this rodeo, our hero, Jeff Lewis, is a real estate flipper. He buys houses on the cheap, fixes them up and sells them for a profit. A couple of years ago, people could actually earn a living this way. Today, it's just tragic, so Jeff is complaining about how rough it's been. He lost a third of his net worth in 2008 and banking restrictions make it difficult for him to buy houses now. It used to be you could buy something with only 5% down but banks now require at least 30%. Poor baby has to start small which means buying a $700,000 house for $450,000, putting in $50,000 worth of improvements and selling it for $650,000. Cry me a river.
Jeff pulls up at Valley Oak - a four bedroom, three and a half bath, 3024 square foot home that appears to be the bane of his existence. He's walking around with his assistant Jenni pointing out minutiae that only he and his bat vision can see and telling her to fix all of it pronto. Did we mention that Jeff is completely anal-retentive and OCD? Yeah, that's important.
So what happened to Valley Oak? They had a buyer at $2.8M but they had the property surveyed and found out that part of the garage was located a foot onto the neighbor's property. Thanks but no thanks. They had to pull the house off the market and negotiate with the neighbor, who is a "well-paid actress". She wanted a large amount of money or would sue to remove the portion of garage on her land. Can you believe? She screwed up Jeff's whole plan! He had to put his beach house on hold! He had to sell his principal residence at a loss! (River. Crying.) Except the Well-Paid Actress wasn't the one who built Valley Oak over the property line.
The neighbor ended up settling and after two years of complete chaos (Dr. Tony, the olive trees and the exorcism -- I assume someone who watched last season knows what this means because to me, it sounds just like a date I had last week), Jeff bought out his business partner, Ryan, and decided to live there.
Jeff continues to lumber around the house pointing out tragic flaws like a scratch and a dry wall nail until he comes upon Zoila, his cleaning lady, hiding in the laundry room on her cell phone. In clear violation of one of Jeff's many rules that thou shall not have any life other than working for me, he tells her it better not be a personal call.
Jeff is trying to see the silver lining in all of this and thinks maybe "this" is where he's supposed to be right now. Even though it's the most difficult house he's ever dealt with, it's the house he's most connected to. Which makes sense since I don't think Jeff connects with people. His assistant, Jenni, chimes in that it's an amazing house and the animals are happy and, besides the neighbors who hate them all, things are really great.
Jeff asks Zoila to make pollo loco for lunch (which I believe is the big seller at Taco Bell) while he makes some sort of inventory list with Jenni. He needs to know how many hangers Zoila needs. He concludes she only needs four because she has four uniforms. Oh good, he's cheap too. Zoila says she needs a dozen hangers but, because of her accent, Jeff hears her say a thousand. "Do you understand what a thousand means in English? Like that's a lot."
Jeff then tells Jose that he has a painting he needs to hang. When he asks Jose what he thinks of it, Jose laughs. Jeff doesn't understand why.
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Comments (10)
Jenni is an actual actress (LMAO!). I caught her on an episode of "Girlfriends" on WE, where Darnell and Maya are thinking of adopting a child. She is the adoption counselor who tries to get them to finalize that decision. She's actually a decent actress and seems to have comedic timing and looks vaguely like Julia Lewis-Dreyfus, so let's hope her career does take off!
1 of 10 | Posted by slutty_whore | Posted on August 24, 2009 9:37 AM
Funny re-cap!
Just to clarify, Jeff and Zoila talk about having El Pollo Loco for lunch. El Pollo Loco is an awesome fast food restuarant in Southern Cali and other western states that serves flame-grilled chicken . . . It is so good!
2 of 10 | Posted by krock21 | Posted on August 24, 2009 9:55 AM
Great job, Tiny. You really get the exciting shows,don't you?
I'm beginning to wish that Jeff would hire Lina. That crazy bitch would liven things up.
3 of 10 | Posted by pixielated | Posted on August 24, 2009 8:59 PM
I found it took me half a season to realize Jeff is not the huge douchebag he comes across as. He should be a recappers dream topic as his dry scathing wit and snark does the job for you. He's actually very funny once you realize most of what he says is just dead pan sarcasm. The painting of him is hilarious -- he hired that same (untalented) artist last season to do a portrait of Zoila. Her painting was awful and she had no qualms about telling him so. His portrait is a narcissistic gesture of solidarity toward Zoila's previous embarrassment, but it's hard to catch the subtlety if you haven't seen the past seasons.
Also, Jenni used to be so cute! I think she hit the Botox too hard after the awful outing of her loser husband's work ethic last season. Jeff has been a good friend to her throughout that whole situation.
I think the whole crew is a riot and hope you get to enjoy the witty sarcasm too. It's a nice break from the utter stupidity that reigns reality tv these days, but it takes a bit to see it.
4 of 10 | Posted by FancyPants | Posted on August 25, 2009 2:49 AM
I'm with you in that I didn't watch last season and don't know all of the character's backgrounds.
So far, I'm loving these guys. It's always nice to find people nuttier than your own circle of friends.
Love the recap Tiny.
5 of 10 | Posted by shantigal | Posted on August 25, 2009 6:38 AM
SW: I'm not surprised that she has good comedic timing - you would have to after spending so much time with Jeff.
Krock: Thanks for the info. I thought Jeff was just throwing out the only two Spanish words he knew and calling it some sort of dish.
Pixie: Lina would never make it past the screening process if she had to send a photo. I think her diseasedness (a new word!) is quite visible and Jeff couldn't have that anywhere near him. But it would be Awe. Some.
Fancy/Shanti: I actually do like Jeff. I think he's funny as hell and his delivery is great. I do think he can be kind of a bastard though - making fun of Zoila's PJs to the contractor is must mean.
Thanks for the love!
6 of 10 | Posted by TinyElvis | Posted on August 25, 2009 6:50 AM
Jenni's face is so botoxed I'm surprised she can still see. Good Grief. And her hours were cut in half due to her "audition schedule." LOL
The Portrait. I know the Zoila story, but I prefer to think of Jeff watching Y&R and dreaming of being Victor Newman. YEWWWW! I WILL CRUSH YEWWWWW!
And why does he keep his "financial records" in his address book? Seems like putting phone numbers in a rolodex which anyone could access without him having a conniption would be more productive. But that's just me.
Great recap, looking forward to this season!
7 of 10 | Posted by memememe | Posted on August 25, 2009 9:44 AM
Jenni reminds me a little of Bethenny on RHONY. Bethenny, in turn, reminds me a bit of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. However, if Ms. Louis-Dreyfuss has been botoxed, it was a much better job than the other two.
I'll bet Jeff keeps his bank account numbers and PINs in his address book. Or maybe his internet user names and passwords. Dimwit. (I do the latter, but I have no money. If someone stole my identity, they could only IMPROVE my credit.)
8 of 10 | Posted by pixielated | Posted on August 25, 2009 8:02 PM
I was watching this episode again earlier today and man does Jenny look ugly!! I'm with you people, what the hell happened?!?!? I used to find her really cute and lover her hair now she's plain fugly. In one of her pictures it looked like she had a mole on her neck, I had to look at the screen closely to figure out its a little necklace. Bleck! And she's too eager with the dating thing.
9 of 10 | Posted by Nimabu | Posted on August 25, 2009 9:00 PM
"loved her hair" not "lover her hair" that would be weird, ha!
10 of 10 | Posted by Nimabu | Posted on August 25, 2009 9:02 PM