Jeff Lewis

It’s kind of hard not to hate Jeff Lewis, the star of Flipping Out, when you see him in action on his hit Bravo reality show about rich people who buy expensive California homes, fix them up, and sell them for more money to even richer people. He’s smug. Obnoxious. Often rude to his staff. Neurotic in the sort of way that actually makes neurotic people cringe. Which is why we now sort of hate ourselves for thinking that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Lewis isn’t such a terrible guy after all.

On a recent Bravo special that recapped season two of Flipping Out, the 38-year-old real estate investor joked about the hideous portrait of his devoted housekeeper, Zoila Chavez, that he’d commissioned for her as a birthday present.  read more »

Monday

Is the impulse that drives viewers to A&E’s reality series Intervention charity? Or what the newspapers used to call "human interest"? Or is it just Schadenfreude? Either way, the show, which chronicles those confrontations between self-destructive people and their families and friends brokered by "intervention" specialists, certainly doesn't play for laughs. What you’re seeing is usually pretty horrific, and the train wrecks it picks through can actually become pretty touching stories. Methamphetamine and OxyContin addictions are common fare here; and the success stories, which are not guaranteed, are definitely the more edifying programs. So maybe it is charity after all? Tonight we meet Chad who, like most of the show's subjects, had a pretty troubled childhood—he ended up in juvie for felony arson. At age 15, Chad’s father introduced him to cycling, and he went pro and even cycled on the same team as Lance Armstrong. When he got kicked off the team for “personality conflicts,” however, he turned to drugs. He's homeless and spends his days drinking, panhandling and smoking crack. Can an intervention save his life? The show airs at 9 p.m. Of course before reality programs there were nonfictional programs about science and nature and history. The History Channel takes a break from reconstructing Hitler's last hours in the bunker to trot out an hour-long program about the origins of life on earth at 9 p.m. At any rate switch to Bravo at 10 and watch Clueless if you haven't seen it a few too many times already, or fire up the fourth season premiere of Weeds at 10 p.m. on Showtime.  read more »

Now that HBO has hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich for consulting gigs, Felix Gillette wonders, "So what’s next?" He also notes, "the truly free-range journalist-consultant—one with a broad editorial mandate to roam here and there gnawing lustfully on some projects while trampling others willy-nilly—remains a rare and exotic beast."

Speaking of television, Doree Shafrir meets Bravo's Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, "a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage."

John Koblin looks at this past week's New York Times Magazine and writes, "Sex sells, of course—but this was not Maxim. And women writers in Manhattan could be forgiven for a slightly sickly feeling as they regarded the images. This again?" Plus: Slicing the SATC Pie.  read more »

LOS ANGELES—Jeff Lewis is a 38-year-old real estate investor who, last year, agreed to have his life filmed by Bravo for a television show about flipping houses. The first season of his show, Flipping Out, showed audiences six episodes of a deeply neurotic man who treats his staff like a dysfunctional family and has managed to turn his obsessive-compulsive disorder to his advantage. “I’m very fortunate, because I found a business that validates and celebrates my disorders,” he told the cameras.  read more »