TV Watch: Please, please, don't watch "Million Dollar Listing" on account of anything I'm about to say

MDL's Boys of NY: "I Feel Pretty" Ryan, "I Hate
Schnitzel" Fredrik, and "My Hair! My Hair!" Luis

by Ken

I let slip last week that I have been known to watch Bravo's Million Dollar Listing. I'm not proud of this. Still, maybe it's something we ought to talk about.

It started with the original version of MDL, which is to say the version that's now called Million Dollar Listing L.A. or something like that, now that there's a Million Dollar Listing New York. But, significantly, my habit didn't start at the start of MDL. From the Wikipedia entry, I see it took the producers a season or so to settle on the eventual format, where each episode intersperses the week's exploits by three high-price-listing real-estate agents who are in fact the stars of the show.

At any rate, they're the reason for watching it, and I'm not sure I can explain why. Maybe it's because they're all so whacked out, and so variously whacked out, that it's possible to feel superior to them even while watching them living their lives of madcap luxury and excess.

From the Los Angeles show we get some information about the demographics of high-end real-estate pushers: Two-thirds are Jewish (Josh Flagg and Josh Altman), and two-thirds are gay (Josh Flagg and Madison). Alert readers will have noticed that a full one-third is Jewish and gay. I draw no conclusions from any of this. I'm just reporting here.

Malibu Madison [right] is a cutie pie living a high life and trying to find himself, or perhaps wondering why he doesn't have a special someone in his life, though no viewer will be deeply mystified. Still, there's something sweetly childlike about him.

That's not a problem for Josh Flagg, who already had a partner by the time we found out he was gay. What Josh F also has is a rich upbringing and a charming ancient Grandma whose business history includes inventing North America, or perhaps just buying and selling it. When he's not selling real estate, Josh is mostly concerned with finding more than merely two ends of a candle to burn, and yet there's something endearing about his heap of neuroses.

I don't find burly straight Josh Altman terribly endearing, but as with the others there's some interest in seeing him in the context of his family, including a brother who seems to be somewhere between his best friend and keenest rival. Meanwhile, Josh A seems to have found love in a way that gave the show a juicy plotline: He hooked up with Madison's assistant, Heather, whom Madison believes to have committed an act of personal betrayal.

(I haven't even mentioned the twerp Josh A replaced, the preposterous Chad, who looked about 15, though in fact he was quite a bit older, and seemed to believe that he had discovered the secrets of the universe en route to building a real-estate empire that would make him master of the world, more or less. He took himself so seriously that I don't think he understood he served mostly as comic relief -- I suspect it was his discovery that people were laughing at him that made him quit the show.)

MDL L.A. has notched five seasons, and I gather a sixth is in the works. It's goofy, and hilarious, and . . . something else I can't put my finger on. I've got this terrible feeling that when Season 6 rolls around, I'll be recording it for watching it when nothing else seems quite to suit my mood.

Strangely, the New York version, while following the same basic format, seems to me very different. For one thing, although multimillion-dollar dwellings aren't my turf, in New York they're in neighborhoods that are familiar to most locals, and indeed many of the actual locales where homes are being bought and sold are familiar. By contrast, L.A. for me is mostly a fantasyland, and so it seems for a lot of the strange people we see walking through the one or two transactions each of the heroes is pushing in a given episode.

I should make clear, by the way, that I have next to no connection to the real-estate market. I've never bought as much as a square foot, and the closest I've come to selling any is when my mother was selling her apartment in Florida, her only asset, and the price she got was going to determine how long we would be able to pay the tab at the senior residence she was moving into. At first I made the erroneous assumption that the real-estate schmo she was working with was on our side, was looking out for our interest. In time I discovered that no, he was only on his own side, looking out for his interest -- which was "deal" as opposed to "no deal." By contrast, a difference in sale price that would have been significant to us was of no consequence to him, once it was translated into commission terms, not to mention the downside of having to find and deal with other potential buyers for the same measly commission.

One thing that's fascinating, though not terribly surprising, is that these guys all think the business about them, not quite grasping that they have jobs only because people actually do need to buy and sell real estate. Some of the pushers are better at making deals happen than others, and even at making their clients feel "happy," but just like my mother's guy, they're rarely honest with them about money. On the whole, these guys make one wonder if car salesmen have been given a bum rap; at least they may not be at the bottom of the selling heap.

A point: It's one thing to introduce a note of realism to prospective sellers, who we see often (always?) have deeply delusional beliefs about the value of their property. But they then negotiate listing prices they have no intention of bringing in, or fighting for. But just recently we saw a buyer, presented by Fredrik (wasn't it?) with an offer almost $1 million below the listing price, tell him in anguish that financially he couldn't come out of it with less than $4 million (and you'll have to trust me that this seemed to be a dead-serious statement of his financial reality, not an emotional outburst) -- only to be persuaded that he was "happy" with the offer he accepted for something like $3.675.

Fredrik, from Sweden, is the canny veteran of the New York trio. For the record, he had never heard of schnitzel when some was thrust upon him, and he dismissed it as some awful fried stuff. Ryan, a former soap actor, is almost as in love with selling real estate as he is with himself. Someday perhaps he'll discover that he's not either as great-looking or as charming as he thinks he is. Then there's the cast newcomer, little Luis, the battling newcomer to the cast. (For the record, the New York cast is only one-third gay: no-schnitzel Fredrik.)

The New York pushers, while perhaps less likable than their Los Angeles counterparts, are somehow actually more interesting. The show has also been shrewd in running story lines involving particular apartments across episodes; lately I've actually found myself looking forward to seeing what happens next. (The current season has also included a heavy dose of reality in the form of Superstorm Sandy, an especially potent force since the MDL NY guys tend to be focused on Lower Manhattan.)

But please, don't think I'm trying to encourage you to watch the thing. Isn't it bad enough that one of us is?

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