PILOT REVIEW: School Pride

SCHOOL PRIDE

Starring: Susie Castillo, Jacob Soboroff, Kym Whitley, and Tom Stroup
Created by Cheryl Hines

School Pride is an inspirational reality show from actress Cheryl Hines that could be called Extreme Makeover: School Edition. The show follows a team of four led by Tom Stroup and including a comedian, a political correspondent, and a former Miss USA. They enter schools around the country that are in disastrous shape and promise to remake them in ten days. The pilot's project was Enterprise Middle School in Compton, California. After the remodeling and the big unveiling, they revisit the school later on to see how things are going.

Obviously the result of this show's work is a positive thing. It was inspiring to see the kids take such pride in their school and encouraging to read about the improvement the students have shown since the renovation. There's a lot to like about what they do and while obviously every school wouldn't have these kind of resources, it's inspiring to see a whole community rally around a project like this.

However, the show itself just gets too gimmicky and fake. The renovation isn't fake but much of the dialogue during it seemed forced and scripted. There were some odd twists (like the storage room downstairs) that just seemed way too scripted to be as real and in the moment. I haven't watched other shows like this so I'm not sure if they're all like this, but it just came off contrived. The producers would be better off capturing more genuine moments like they showed at the end than forcing canned dialogue. The work these people do is amazing, the tv show that documents it is not.