• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 7, 2023

Beauty and ugliness are both in the eye of the beholder.

That’s the takeaway from the premiere episode of “The Ugliest House In America: Summer Road Trip,” a show in which comedienne Retta (pictured above) goes in search of the ugliest house in the U.S.

In the half-hour premiere of this HGTV series Monday night (August 7), Retta visits three California homes that are all vying to be named the Ugliest House in the West -- and eventually, the title of Ugliest House in America.

If the homeowners earn that title, they will win a $150,000 home makeover by Alison Victoria, the tireless renovation star of HGTV’s “Windy City Rehab.”

The reno will be seen in the show’s one-hour, sixth and final episode. But before that, Retta will have five episodes (including the premiere in California) to visit five regions of the country to assess three homes in each of them.

In Episode One, which the TV Blog previewed last week, she visits homes in Grass Valley, Chico and Placerville -- all in California. “These houses are funkin’ ugly!” declares Retta.

They all have various problems, with some worse than others. But at the same time, I saw things these homeowners could have done on their own right off the bat to improve these spaces.

For example, as seen in previous episodes of “The Ugliest House In America,” a common “defect” of these interiors is the prevalence of busy, sometimes garish, old wallpaper that may have been popular in decades past but now is considered unacceptable by Retta and these homeowners.

While the owners wring their hands, however, I’m silently shouting at the TV for them to just expend a little elbow grease to remove it.

The same thing goes for the house Retta tours in Grass Valley owned by a well-meaning, affianced gay couple. 

Like the other homeowners, the two bought their 1970, 1,134 square-foot ranch home with the expectation that they could somehow cope with the quirky house’s many idiosyncrasies.

But for some reason, they didn’t do anything about them except live with them. One of the issues is the use of hand-carved oak moldings and door frames throughout the home. 

The owners think the woodwork is ugly, and want to remove all of it. 

Meanwhile, I’m thinking: They’re hand-carved and totally unique! Just paint the damn things another color and/or decorate and renovate around them to make them work. But for heaven’s sake, try and preserve them.  

In addition, the spacious front yard is festooned with wood-carved, two-dimensional silhouettes of animals such as bears and ducks, and at least one human gold prospector (the area was first settled during the California Gold Rush of 1849).

Retta accurately describes this menagerie as a cross between a kids’ amusement park and a miniature golf course.

Apparently, the former owners of this house were whimsical and creative, and there are a lot of these figures.

When the couple complains about them, I could not believe my ears because they could have yanked up all of them and taken them to the town dump in a single afternoon.

Other decorative features of the home could have been disposed of just as easily. But the TV Blog understands that the TV show has to position these problems as worse than they look.

Plus, not everybody wants to do all that work or they just do not know how to go about it.

It is also true that, in the case of the other two houses in the premiere of this “Summer Road Trip” edition of “The Ugliest House In America,” various structural and layout issues are substantial.

One of them is a rambling 6,000 square-foot ranch house in Chico that was once inhabited by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Today the house sits just yards away from a freeway that wasn’t built when Dick and Liz lived there. This is a problem that even Alison Victoria can’t fix.

“The Ugliest House In America: Summer Road Trip” premieres Monday (August 7) at 8 p.m. Eastern on HGTV.