Other Put Your Heart In It This American Life Radio
The idea of a farming makeover for the “Put Your Heart In It” show immediately drew me in. I loved the idea of combining a Green Acres plot with a make-over program and thought the spin-off Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a clever angle.
I’ve always thought that Carson is everyone’s favorite “Queer Eye” character because he personifies the distance between the savvy gay cast and the über-straight-square-dude getting the makeover.
I thought this episode of This American Life might have been improved with a more dramatic setup introducing—and separating—George, the farming guru, from Hilary, his clueless subject.
There’s a brief introduction citing George’s credentials as an expert farmer, but this could have been played up a bit more to make interactions between the two characters more vivid and more ridiculous as the listener envisioned the two worlds colliding. For example, I would include a brief walk through George’s tiddy farming operation to show what “putting your heart in it” really looks like.