The audacity of people6/17/2023 ![]() The network was supposed to debut in the fall of 2020, but the pandemic put those plans on pause. Magnolia Network is replacing the DIY Network when it officially premieres in July. After a prolonged break, Chip and Joanna are back in business, having spent two years expanding their brand into an audacious offering: Magnolia Network, an entire cable channel dedicated to their brand of folksy authenticity and humble roots, with the couple at the helm as both stars and patron saints of home renovation. When the show ended in 2018, going out in a blaze of shiplap and glory, Chip and Jo were bonafide stars, with a line of home goods at Target, a retail complex in Waco called The Silos, and a loose plan to take a minute to figure out what they really wanted to do. ![]() When Fixer Upper premiered on HGTV in 2014, Chip and Joanna Gaines were just a couple from Waco with a small home-renovation business, plucked from semi-obscurity by wily producers who knew that there was just something about the couple that could be a hit. Joanna’s lips fix themselves into a thin line as their car takes a sharp right down an empty Texas street, onward to make a new couple’s fantasy a reality. “You will.” Chip takes a beat and mutters inaudibly. ![]() “We won’t,” she responds with confidence. “What if we screw somethin’ up,” he says to Joanna. ![]() As the Gaineses drive to meet a new family who needs help renovating their forever home, Chip shows an uncharacteristic bit of humanity- a hint of insecurity at the thought that maybe the audience who loved him so fervently in the past will have changed their mind now. “We’re BACK,” she replies, issuing her own half-hearted smack to the window, to match his. “We’re back!” She smiles inscrutably as her husband smacks the window of the passenger side for emphasis. At the start of Fixer Upper: Welcome Home, Chip Gaines is sitting shotgun in his wife’s SUV, and he’s happy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |