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Entertainment

The Revolutionary Niceness of Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman's 'Making It'

If you've ever dreamed of Leslie Knope and Ron Swanson hosting a reality competition show, you're in luck.
Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Making It is a DIY fantasy come to life. NBC’s new crafting show, which premiers Tuesday, features contestants who compete in challenges to make things like themed sculptures, holiday displays, and costumes—but despite the $100,000 prize at stake, hosts Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman don’t pressure them so much as act as encouraging surrogate parents. A sample of their commentary: Upon encountering a pile of colorful felt, Poehler excitedly asks the contestant what they’re making while Offerman tells them, with Ron Swanson–esque certainty, that “felt is made from beavers,” and that beavers come in “many colors.”

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Competition shows used to be much crueler. In the 2000s, it felt like audiences' greatest desire was to watch people sweat, toil, and fail dramatically under stressful conditions and the aggressive scrutiny of world-class judges—think America’s Next Top Model or Hell’s Kitchen, where hosts Tyra Banks and Gordon Ramsay turned abuse into entertainment. You may have rooted for the contestants on Project Runway, American Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance, but you would also spend significant portions of each season laughing at their expense.



In 2018, we're apparently over that. Maybe it’s a sign of the times: Millennials have come of age in a era so economically tumultuous that having your television shows tell you you suck too no longer feels like a funny spectacle, but a reminder of the slog of late-stage capitalism—the relentless side-hustle gig economy, the long workweek, the impossibilities of retirement. Today’s reality show royalty is arguably represented by Queer Eye, a show where there is no competition, just an hour of unabashed self-care.

Making It knows all of this, of course. The same way Queer Eye leans into its culture of positivity by sporting “I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying” billboards and giving us updates on the marital status of even the earliest makeover subjects, Making It leans aggressively into the goofy culture of supportive crafting. Contestants are given wholesome backstories—one of them pretty accurately self-describes as the meeting point between Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers—and are often shown helping one another complete a crafting challenge in a time crunch.

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This goodness is also maintained by the hosts and judges, creating the type of atmosphere that would come from handing Project Runway entirely to Tim Gunn. Poehler, often dressed in overalls, introduces each episode with the words “life is hard enough.” There is more gingham than you could possibly imagine, and plentiful puns like “I macramade you and I can macrabreak you.” There's also a lot of cheerleading. As judge Simon Doonan, explains, “In the world of Making It, there are no mistakes, you just go at it with your glue gun blazing,” over B-roll of his legendary Barneys window dressings. Offerman is quick to remind contestants that, the $100,000 aside, “the real prize is a job well done.” During a holiday-porch themed challenge, he gives a teary-eyed contestant a hug. I also cried.

Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC

It’s obviously a descendent of similar competition shows like the Great British Bake-Off, but with a Chip and Joanna Gaines–looking modern barn house instead of an outdoor tent. Tonally, it also sits alongside Nailed It!, in which contestants are selected based off of how bad they are at baking and given tasks that are genuinely impossible, even for a master baker. The key in that show is that everyone is in on it—the failure is good-natured, a reminder that art requires incredible practice and skill, but can be fun even if you fail. And, as in Making It, you walk away with bite-sized learnings to apply to your own projects at home—like the difference between chocolate chips and candy melt. (In the case of Making It, we learn from Offerman that everyone loves chocolate-dipped… meat.)

If that kind of positivity grates on you—or if Parks and Recreation never charmed you—Making It won’t be your jam. But it's bingeable, feel-good programming that can distract you from the weighty world for 60 or so minutes, a.k.a. the perfect reality television for 2018. And what’s the problem with that? With the reality competition format being re-skinned so many times, mostly to subject people to intense pressure until they crack or to prove that talent only matters if you win, why not have more shows like Making It? This is the TV equivalent of dogs being reunited with their owners or cute wedding proposals. By itself, it isn’t groundbreaking. But the notion that reality television can encourage us to enjoy a hobby for the sake of itself is an undeniable kind of progress.

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