Written by Amanda Clark
Hopping on the Barbie train to go with this summer’s era of Barbenheimer, HGTV produced a new competition to bring the Barbie Dreamhouse to life with Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge.
Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge is a four-part series hosted by supermodel Ashley Graham. It has eight teams, including 15 HGTV superstars and one Food Network chef, to renovate a Southern California home into a real-life Barbie Dreamhouse that has each transformed space inspired by a different decade in the 60-year Dreamhouse history. In each episode, two pairs of renovators compete to see who best represents Barbie from their assigned decade and room, along with incorporating a “toyetic” feature that would be seen in a Barbie Dreamhouse, to then compete for the overall winning area of the house.
The winning team not only gets their area to be labeled “the dreamiest of them all,” but they are also competing to win a chance for a Barbie fan to stay in the Dreamhouse once completed.
The first episode, “Barbie’s First Floor Face-Off,” has Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson renovating the entrance, living room, and dining room with a 1990s-decade theme while Jasmine Roth and Antonia Lofaso transform the kitchen and family room with a 1960s theme.
As talented of a chef as Lofaso is, it feels out of place to have her in this limited series seeing how it’s a house renovation competition, not a house cooking contest. It seems like playing toward her comfort zone, giving her team the kitchen to makeover, and it felt extremely staged — of course, how much of these types of shows aren’t staged could be a whole other discussion. In the middle of the seven-day period the contestants have, Lofaso decides she isn’t able to dedicate all of her time to the Dreamhouse. She left her partner for a while to complete something food-related, another reason this show might’ve wanted to leave it open to just renovators and designers. If every other contestant can manage to clear their schedule with all the other projects and shows they have, then Lofaso should be able to do the same thing when accepting this part.
Throughout this episode, we get to see the process of the very first Barbie Dreamhouse rooms coming together, and it seemed like there is a clear winner as the rooms are getting closer to being finalized, but apparently, the other team impressed the judges more — something that isn’t rigged but feels like it, seeing as two of the judges previously worked with one of the winning team’s renovators.
“The Suite Life of Barbie and Ken,” episode two, has Jonathan Knight and Kristina Crestin recreating Barbie’s bedroom and bathroom suite with a 1980s theme while Alison Victoria and Ty Pennington are designing the first-ever den for Ken with a 1970s theme. The two battled it out to come to a very tight win — both these rooms are extremely impressive and scream Barbie.
Episode 3, “Dream in the Front, Party in the Back,” have Keith Bynum and Evan Thomas transform the front exterior into a 1990s Barbie lawn battling with Brian and Mika Kleinschmidt’s Y2K-themed backyard. As soon as the two areas were announced for the episode, it was clear that whoever had the backyard, which includes a pool, would be winning this challenge to make it to the finale. With a backyard, the renovators can make it more personal and add more decoration to turn it into anything they can dream of, while the front lawn feels like it has limitations in comparison.
Although, Bynum and Thomas do give the Kleinschmidts a run for their money by following their genius intuitions and adding a gigantic Dreamhouse handle on the roof, just like all the Barbie Dreamhouse models have. But this handle can’t compare to the pink backyard beach theme.
The last two groups to compete in the last episode, “Barbie’s Big Pink Carpet Finale,” aren’t limited to a specific decade. Instead, they both get to choose to work with the past, present, and future. Christina Hall and James Bender get to makeover Barbie’s closet while Michel Smith Boyd and Anthony Elle redesign Barbie’s office. This competition was another close race, with both spaces coming out incredible — rooms anyone would be lucky to have designed for them.
In the same episode, the viewer gets to see the four finalists on the Pink Carpet event to unveil the completed house and have guests vote for the best of the four. If someone doesn’t have time to watch all four episodes, then just watch the last 15 minutes of the fourth episode for an overview of the completed house and see who the winner is.
The winner is announced by Barbie herself, Margot Robbie, alongside co-stars Issa Rae, Simu Liu, and America Ferrera, who look like they are on the set of Barbie. This is an incredible way to link the film Barbie with Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, beyond the theme, but the four actors sitting next to each other seem to only be there as part of their contracts. They are so awkward in the few seconds of TV Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge fame that it might’ve been better just to have Graham announce it or special guest Lisa McKnight, the Executive Vice President and Global Head of Barbie and Dolls of Mattel, who was there in person.
Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge is the show to watch for any Barbie fan, no matter how small or big of a fan. Seeing the final product truly is amazing and a house anyone would want to live in. Unlike Barbie Dreamhouse toys, this is a fully functional place to stay that is full of pink. For anyone who had Barbies and wanted to live in Barbie’s Dreamhouse, this show makes their dreams come true.
Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge is now streaming on Discovery+.
