It's not much, but it's home.

Well of course they live there; that's one of Frank Lloyd Wright's worst designs. They're not going to live in one of his masterpieces, are they?
- 70's architecture and water damage, name a more iconic duo.
  
  But does it come with asbestos fireproofing?
  
  It was completed in 1937, not the 70s.
- Is that really a Frank Lloyd?
  
  Yes, that's Falling Water.
  
  To be honest, i don't know specifically, but that's very much in his prairie school of architecture.
  If you ever get a chance, try walking around in Oak Park (a nice suburb of Chicago on the far west side); a lot of Wright's earlier architectural work is there. One of his earliest buildings is there, from before he developed his prairie school, and it's... A real change of pace.

I'm not sure about elsewhere in the world, but daytime TV in the UK is full of programmes where people want to move house to somewhere a little nicer or chilled - whether it's to escape the rat race, bring up kids outside of a city, to retire, whatever. They have the strangest "contestants" though, like (and I'm pulling these from my arse but I doubt they're far from the truth) meeting Tarquin, 44, a part time artist; and Helena, 49, who volunteers at the local farmers market.
"Their budget is 1.2 million pounds"
what the actual fuck
- My (half serious) conclusion is the contestants like you describe are either the no-I'm-not-wealthy class of idiots that have simply come from money and don't realise that's not the norm, or they're drug dealers that found a skilled accountant.
  
  I'm under the impression that these shows are designed to make regular people think one or more of the follwiing:
  if you stay in the race long enough and work hard enough, you can attain the same thing
  if you can't, you're a failure = go drown your sorrows by being a good consumer.
  be unhappy with their situation and persuaded to blame minorities or the government.
- Yeap, same thing with "find my dream house" shows in America. I think the major difference is that instead of the people being in their 40s, it's usually people in their 20's. The source of the funding is ultimately the same, rich parents. The likely difference is between trust fund kids in the US and just people whose parents have finally taken their much awaited dirt naps in the UK.
  I think rich parents are basically a prerequisite to owning a home for anyone under 40 nowadays. I'm one of the only people in my friend group of people in their late 30s who owns a home, and that was due to what I consider a minor miracle.
  I was lucky and bought an abandoned house from the bank for 30k after the last recession, and that was only possible because I got a loan I probably shouldn't have qualified for through USAA. So, still a bit of nepotism, but because my dad was in the service, not because he was wealthy.
  
  My first house appraised for less than what we were paying for it. Not a lot, but more than we really had access to. My grandfather spotted the difference. So whole it's true I worked hard, it's little moments of privilege like that that really helped put me where I am today. I think folks in my position tend to over look it often. I'm 33 now. I think I'd still own a house, but all of this stuff compounds into each other. I would've had to pay exorbitant rent longer at an apartment complex. When I ended up selling that house I wouldn't have gotten that extra year's worth (or however long) back. It would've been less money to invest. It would probably mean we couldn't have bought as nice of a new house when we moved. All these little extra things from a family member being able to help spot the difference between the first appraisal and loan.
- Yeah that's the House Hunters trope. It's in the US too on HGTV.
  Lisa is a 25 year old retired yoga instructor and Drew is a 28 year old brick layer who does crack in the alley behind his apartment. They are looking to upgrade into a home in the suburbs because Lisa is expecting any day now! Their budget is 3.5 million. Can they find a home?
  
  oh no, they have a bunch of requirements and accidentally spent double their budget on the house but are still just fine somehow
- The fake jobs are euphemisms for having a trust fund.
  
  That, or having bought their first property long enough ago, and in the right place, that it's appreciated massively more than the place in the country that they've got their eye on. The property ladder is, possibly was, a thing.
- Yeah, same thing with House Hunters in the US. Those made really good memes. "Stacy, 23, who is a professional whistler, and her husband, Joe, 25, a part time stick weigher, are looking for a more relaxed pace and a smaller, cozier home. Their budget is 7 million, and they're looking for no less than 3,000 sq meters"
  
  Those are good shows to hate watch in a hotel when you don't have anything else to do.
  Except for this one time. It was an African American family where a single working mom had to use the dinner table to get work done after hours, her mom lived with them and had to sleep in the same bed as the younger daughter, and the teenage boy had outgrown the length of his bed.
  I can't make fun of that. This family needs a new house.
  Next episode had a white family. Their biggest problems were that the kids didn't each have their own bathroom, and they didn't live close enough to the golf course. Now that's more like it.
- You picked quite suitable names
- It’s absurd, but then again; The post above this one in my feed was how the “starter home” price in 200 different us cities is now $1 million.

This is one of the reasons nobody likes movies anymore. Hollywood is so disconnected from the struggle of the working class it’s just sad. The Oscar’s have become a joke
- You got me thinking over here.
  Perhaps it's a two way street, and both sides have changed.
  It used to be that people wanted to suspend their beliefs for an hour and a half and live in a fantasy. I feel like most people look more for reality and relatability in cinema these days, but Hollywood is still trying to provide the escape.
  It's just not lining up.
  
  My theory is Instagram and “insta-type-influencers” stole that market. It’s glamour fantasy, distilled. Less attention required, no complicated movie stuff in the way. And it gets a lot of eyeballs.
  Glamour movie celebs are relics coasting on inertia, hence the constant stories of a $10 million paycheck for one movie being, uh, unsustainable.
  Hence, I’m hoping Hollywood has a “medium sized” indie renaissance kinda like gaming is having now. Animation and filming is still pretty expensive, but it feels like tech has to be eroding the mega studio cost advantage.

This is winding me right up. You see people in movies and you think straight away - there is no way you would be able to afford this house/car.
The same goes with them living without any noticeable employment for months. Or having a job but spending their working hours doing something else.
- Hollywood has done irreparable damage to society’s expectation of reality.
  
  And it doesn't even stop at the financial stuff where someone has an incentive to screw with society's expectations. All kinds of other aspects like friendships, relationships, parenting,... are strange in movies too.
- It's the system working exactly as designed. "you, too, could have all this if you only worked hard enough. Now that you've spent 2-3 hours of your weekend off at the movies, get back to work, slave"
  
  Exactly, and everything is product placement. WTF would Ford want a beater from the 80s being the car in the film? They’ll lobby for the coolest, brandnewest model even when it doesn’t make sense. Or their product placement models will be every other car on the road. I see you Transformers.
  
  Nah, it's nothing so subtly evil. People go to movies to get taken out of their day-to-day lives. No one wants to see the protagonists struggle with the same issues they struggle with. Struggle is fine, just don't want to see my struggle.
  
  That may as well be the case as I found it mostly in US movies.
- People in movies and tv rarely have messy houses, they’re always spotless, and everyone pops in on each other and everyone is at home wearing pants.
  
  Do you not usually wear pants at home?
- See: FRIENDS
  
  They did this in The Rookie as well. Big LA house with views.
  Explained it away as him taking care of the place for his wealthy friend.
  
  Manifest was even worse. At least Friends was a sitcom, not serious and was mostly about their interactions.
- Same in fiction about modern people. Used to always wonder, "How the fuck does this guy just not work while all this shit is going down?!" People flying all over the country, dropping out of work, paying anything that needs paid, all on a middle-class job.

When I was a kid growing up in the Middle East in the 80s and 90s I idolized the hollywood/US TV western lifestyle. They all seemed so effortlessly lavish and nice. All sitcom/domcom families had large homes and all the kids had their own rooms and those kids didn't need an allowance. They could get jobs like waitresses or paperboys that earned a half decent pay that allowed them to afford whatever the hell they wanted. I lived in Dubai they forbade all child labor. Even if those laws were ignored in some circumstances, they were generally quite strictly enforced. So unless you were a debt-slave camel jockey kid, you were not going to work at any job.
I legit thought that that was the reality of many people. Even young adult slackers with chronic unemployment issues still somehow had small houses bigger than any apartment I knew. Of course this was myth, and ever since the 2000s rolled along with nearly 40+ years of stagnant wages AND rising costs of everything else meant that that idea is dead.
- Grew up in the ghetto of the US.
  Would watch Fresh Prince and Family Matters and like "WOW look at that. Their house is so pristine. Everything looks new. Everyone has their own room. People sit at a dining table."
  My house was dark, smelled funny, full of random junk and we'd have mattresses on the floor to fit a large family.
  All my hood friends had the same experience. I had friends whose bedroom also their living rooms.
  Now I have friends who have a lot of money. 6 figure incomes and everything. Their house is slightly better looking, but that's about it. Still full of stuff. Messy if you surprise them on a off day.
  Average American is no longer the standard for quality living.
  
  Yeah. Movies and TV really painted a highly unrealistic view of American life. Also Hollywood positively sucks at depicting poverty accurately. The home you lived in is something even many poor people in the middle east don't live in.

This is one of the reasons I hate and ignore all advertising. Commercials have NO IDEA who they are marketing to anymore. All I can think about when any commercial or advert plays is how fucking out of touch the company is to be showing the product getting used in a 26000 sq foot house EVERY TIME. I don't have a garage, I don't have a lawn, I don't have a basement, I dont have a house, I don't have a dog, I don't have kids because none of this shit is sustainable or affordable. What world are you marketing to you board rooms upon board rooms of assholes?
If a vacuum cleaner company wants to correctly advertise a vacuum to the masses, they would now have to have the commercial show a lonely man getting off of the night shift of his 3rd job, taking a bus back to his squalor closet of an apartment, and then passing out gazing at the vacuum which has been sitting unused in the corner of the bedroom for 8 months, because the only world where he has the time and energy to use it is in his fucking dreams.
- I don’t think Hollywood and advertising are out of touch, they know what they’re doing. They’re not just selling products, they’re selling an ideal. It’s about shaping how people see the world. For working-class viewers, it feels fake because it’s their reality being distorted. But for middle and upper-class audiences, it subtly shifts their perception, makes working-class life look manageable, maybe even confortable. They know it’s not 100% accurate, but they don’t realize how far off it is. That’s the real effect: it makes things look better than they are, and pushes people further out of touch without them realizing it.
- And funnily enough ads are way way more targeted now than any other time in history.
  Apart from the obvious privacy concerns i actually prefer non targeted ads, because they are less effective.
  
  But of course, you're auto-opted into personalized ads and the majority of users couldn't be bothered to figure out how to opt out
- How many Mercedes and Audis are actually sold vs the ridiculous amount of commercials they run? It really feels like people in this country are living in two different realities
  
  They're not for people looking to bought a car but for people that already bought one. To reinforce that they took the correct decision and that the next one they bought should be another of the same brand
  
  To be fair, the important part about buying a Mercedes isn't that you know what a Mercedes is, it's that others know what a Mercedes is before you drive past them.
  
  You're talking about them right now
- And then he starts masturbating...

Malcom in the middle had a realistic home.
- Which they only had because multiple people were murdered in the house, and Lois didn't tell the family.
  
  Lol didn't know that plot twist but it tracks
  
  Lois didn't tell the family ~~that she did it during the negotiation~~.
- Having a home in general isn't exactly realistic anymore
  
  Things really have changed.
  Rosanne was about a poor, blue-collar family struggling to get by that had a house with a detached garage and 4 bedrooms.

Pretty wild that this house was built in the 1930's.
- Definitely looks a lot newer than that.

Is that a Frank Lloyd Wright?
- Yup, thats Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Its a museum now and you can take tours of it
  
  Despite subsequent repairs to the parapet, the cracks there periodically reappeared. Fallingwater's problems were so numerous that Edgar Sr. referred to it as "Rising Mildew".
  This part never fails to amuse me.
  
  Kentuck Knob is nearby, which is another FLW house you can get a tour of. Less busy, very pretty, and the owners have an obsession with cast-iron French public urinals. I'd recommend checking it out too if you are in the area.
- Yup, I believe it's Fallingwater

Sean William Scott in Role Models - his job is to dress up as an energy drink mascot, but he lives on the canals at Venice Beach and has ordinary neighbours who he sees and talks to.

I'm not even sure who can afford just the Lego Set of Fallingwater.
- What about the Atom Brick set? (3/4-Lego-scale bricks).

Can you imagine taking a dump there

seriously. or they'll have some 25yo running the CIA or something.

I'm always sort of happy when I see realistic apartment situations. Like how Ruby Sunday on Dr. Who lives with her foster family as an adult.
- Sopranos have a tidy house but they have a maid, when tony lives on his own, his house is littered with dirty laundry, cereal bowls, pizza boxes and tony isn’t wearing pants. I appreciated the realism of that show

LPT from a local: Skip this tourist trap and just go to Ohiopyle down the road for natural rock slides. It is, perhaps, my favourite park.

I don't mind unrealistic housing as long as it's not directly referenced. Nothing worse than a character inviting someone into their home saying something like "sorry it's so cramped" and then the shot reveals a living room large enough to fit my entire apartment.

It's all that tip money.

I find most video games and other media far more unrealistic in that nobody ever needs to go to the bathroom.
- Sounds like you don't play Ark: Survival Evolved.
  
  Imagine my surprise when I didn't know stimberries did that too. So much!!

Or grandma, the widowed, retired elementary school teacher, whose deceased husband owned a neighborhood flower shop.
- That grandma probably bought the house in 1975 for $50,000.
  
  My house was £52k in 1997. Increased 350% when I bought it in 2023 and we got quite a lot taken off as it needs quite a bit of work. Heating didn't work properly, didn't have cooking facilities, a lot of the plaster isn't actually attached to the walls very well - that one I only fixed the worst patches myself but think I did a reasonable job of it.
- That's not unreasonable. Starting a small business is manageable with business loans which you can get from a bank with nothing more than a well written business plan. If the flower shop makes more than the business spends on rent, labor and supplies any normal schmoe can have a neighborhood flower shop.

80s had a different definition of being a part time mum to 20 kids
- The trope continues though.

Is this Rose Lalonde's house..? :P

Looks like "new age" office building