RIP Roger Cook, This Old House

The longtime landscape contractor has died.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh-cast-crew/111435/remembering-roger-cook

 

Basically the inventor of reality TV ... in 1979. So many series have been created in this mold that we live with today, and this one was quality.

Rest.

 

I knew he was sick but that’s sad. Thank you for posting this; I am a huge fan of the show.

 

The Pluto TV TOH channel is dangerous. You’ve got plans for your Saturday and then — BAM! — you’ve spent eight hours watching every episode of this California Spanish Revival from 2011 and speaking in a cartoonish Boston accent to your significant other.

 

That sucks. I could see he wasn't getting around well on the show. I thought it was a back/spine issue. Then he announced he was pulling back and a few years later he was off the show. He was in his 60's and he had to stop doing what he clearly loved.

 

I've done this when MotorWeek does their retro marathon on YouTube. "What? We're previewing the 1988 Chevrolet Caprice Classic and looking at this new trend of car leases? I'm in."

 

Same with Jamie Oliver cooking shows on the random Taste Made channel that I didn't even know we had on YouTube TV.

A couple of weekends ago, my wife and I went down a rabbit hole of "Jamie Oliver Cooks Mediterranean" and didn't regret a single second of it.

 

Being a native New Englander, I felt like a right of passage was watching "This Old House" and "Ask This Old House" on PBS. I did religiously for a while, but the former lost me because they would take these old houses and McMansionify them. By that I mean they'd rip out a room -- say, a Victorian kitchen -- down to the studs and the new kitchen would have marble countertops, a Viking range, recessed lighting and the like. In other words, the complete antithesis of a Victorian home. I am a purist, and I would get pretty disgusted with the amount of money that would be spent on these renovations and how the interior would have zero facets of the age of the home.

Six years ago, we put an addition on our Cape, which my wife's grandparents built in 1946. We made sure that the new kitchen looked like it came straight from 1946. Maybe not formica countertops like in our original kitchen, but the lighting, colors and sink (white porcelain) matched the age of the home. I don't know. Maybe I'm in the minority.

"Ask This Old House," however, was and is enjoyable throughout. Roger, in his thick Massachusetts accent, sure knew his landscaping. Saw him a few years ago and you could tell that something was amiss, because he couldn't even do any lifting and just looked sickly.

 

Ha! We just found that network on YTV that weekend too!

 

This past season of TOH was completely just “this new house” and it was super disappointing. The first episode they talked about everything they were going to save but the second episode the house was completely gutted, all four stories, because mold. SMH.

 

White porcelain is ageless. Lime green porcelain screams disco era.