Home Town is an HGTV show that launched in 2016 featuring married couple Ben and Erin Napier, who remodel homes in and around Laurel, Mississippi, where they live. The show also features Ben, a woodworker, building furniture or other items for their clients, typically from wood salvaged from the house during the demolition or from other sources.
The show has generated a few spinoffs:
- Home Town Takeover: Ben and Erin go to other small towns to remodel homes and businesses there to help revitalize the town. The first season premiered on May 2nd, 2021 and featured Wetumpka, Alabama. A second season set in Fort Morgan, Colorado, began airing in April 2023.
- Home Town Kickstart: Premiered on April 24, 2022. A condensed version of Home Town Takeover with each episode focusing on projects in a different town.
- Ben's Workshop: Ben shares his expertise in craftsmanship and carpentry in his own workshop. Celebrity guests stop by to help Ben. It premiered on Discovery+ on January 4th, 2021, with a second season released on December 19, 2021
This show provides examples of:
- Author Appeal: One reason Erin was excited to go to Wetumpka for Home Town Takeover is because they got to remodel the house featured in Big Fish, one of her favorite movies.
- Babies Ever After: Erin has had two kids during the run of the show, when the child is born Erin will show video or pictures of her kids. Some of the home owners also show off their newborn kids at the end of the episode or Memory Lane episodes.
- Bookends: While showing houses at the beginning of the episode, Erin shows the clients a watercolor sketch she made of her concept for remodeling the house's exterior. At the end of the episode, she presents a framed version of the sketch to the clients.
- The end-of-episode presentation was de-emphasized starting in season 5; instead, the framed sketch is shown hanging on the wall or being placed during staging.
- Call-Back: An early season 4 episode featured the remodeling of a house on behalf of actor Richard T. Jones for lease to a low-income resident. The final episode of that season featured the repair of that house after it was damaged by a tornado. The two episodes have since been re-edited into a single episode for future airings.
- A season 5 episode, The Cafe House was featured near the end of Season 5 as a restaurant called Bird Dog. Since Season 6, Ben and Erin have talked with new home owners at the Bird Dog.
- The Cameo: Home Town Takeover included appearances from other HGTV hosts, as well as Randy Fenoli of Say Yes to the Dress and singer Sheryl Crow.
- Commercial Break Cliffhanger: Like many other home-renovation shows, the initial unveiling of the remodeling shows the clients' initial delighted reaction — then cuts to commercial, leaving the full reveal until after the commercial break.
- Family Business: The Napiers and their "framily" — which includes Those Two Guys Josh and Jim and Erin's best friend Mallorie — own the Laurel Mercantile Co. in Laurel, which sells household goods. They also own the Scotsman Manufacturing Co., which makes butcher-block countertops and cutting boards, and a "scent library" (basically a candle shop), the buildout of which was featured in one episode.
- Happily Married: Ben and Erin.
- Home and Garden: A husband-and-wife duo renovates homes in a small Mississippi town.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Erin is not especially tiny, but Ben is a burly 6-foot-6.
- Mascot: One episode showed Ben dressed as a lumberjack to serve as a mascot for Laurel's Loblolly Festival, which honors the town's lumber-mill heritage.
- Mundane Object Amazement: Bead board is to Home Town what shiplap is to Fixer Upper.
- Also, shutter dogs.note
- Oh, Crap!: Happens a few times in the series when something unexpected happens. Typically they have to inform the owners and do some additional cost cutting measures.
- In A Musician's Retreat, Ben and Erin discover that one of the outer support walls was more damaged than originally thought and also discovered that the ceiling was incorrectly installed. To bring it up to code, the cost was an additional $9,000 and had to inform the owner.
- In Termite Terror, the house was unexpectedly infested with termites. When doing a much more detailed inspection, it turned out the termites came in from a water build up and damaged the foundation. It cost an additional $12,000 note
- Played for Laughs in The Café House, where Erin and Ben are informed that their work had to completely stop when they were near completion and go back to square one due to the Health Department shutting them down, it was a prank by one of their friends.
- The Family Tree, when Erin and Ben finally got the house stripped, they found foundation and termite damage. It was so bad that they brought the owner, something they almost never do, to the house as the damage was in multiple places. It cost an additional $30,000 to fix the house, they even said that one option was to build a new house as the damage was so bad.
- A Solid Foundation, after Ben removed the basement floor down to the concrete, they noticed that not only was the original concrete floor was put down incorrectly but the walls were built before the concrete floor was put down, causing the walls to hold the house and not the other way around. It cost over $8,000 to repair the foundation. They also brought one of the owners over to explain what happened and show why the foundation floor was so bad.
- The Heart of Laurel, the house had major damage from a tornado and a large tree that fell on it. The house was abandoned for years until the town came together to donate their time and money to rebuild it. After they finally got the house striped, they found out it was in way worst shape than any of them knew. It was in such a bad state that after everything was pulled up, Ben said it would have been cheaper to build a new house. Erin later on said, on her personal accounts, it was most likely the worst house they ever encountered.
- Pop-Up Trivia: Episodes of Memory Lane shows pop up information about the style of houses or behind the scenes information.
- Pungeon Master: Ben, who just loves to drop dad-joke-level puns. Erin gets a few in as well.
- Recap Episode: Memory Lane revisits an episode from the previous season. While most of the episode is presented, a few scenes are removed to add extra scenes from Ben and Erin commenting on the current episode with behind the scenes information and also trivia about the two personal lives.
- Spin-Off: Besides Home Town Takeover, there is also Ben's Workshop, which streams on Discovery+ and features celebrities joining Ben to build items in his woodshop.
- Sweet Home Alabama: The show is positively dripping with Southern charm.
- Tall Tale: Ben purchased a cast-iron bathtub for a remodeling project that he was told had been removed from a building located next door to a portable jail where Hank Williams once spent the night. During The Reveal, Ben told the homeowner that Hank Williams Jr. was born in the tub.
- Tears of Joy: In The Heart of Laurel, John Hollingsworth's service medals were stolen out of his house when it was abandoned due to the storm. Ben, with the help of the veterans office, was able to track down his service records and get all of his medals reissued, including a few he didn't know about. The Veterans office also presented to him an American flag for his service. Everyone broke down on set when John got his medals back.
- Those Two Guys: Josh and Jim, Ben's friends who help him out on field trips or in his woodshop.
- Time Capsule: In a downtown loft they were renovating, Ben and Erin encounter a small TV built into a bedroom wall. Rather than remove it, they added a VCR and put drywall over the hole, sealing them both inside.
- Trash the Set: Demo day, of course. The show, however, does feature less overall destruction than most home-renovation shows because of an emphasis on "delicate demo" and because they mostly remodel older homes with historic features they are trying to preserve.
- They do have their moments, however, such as tossing a huge jetted tub off the third floor of a downtown building.
- Two-Person Pool Party: Discussing a massive jetted tub in the bathroom of a downtown loft they were renovating, Ben quipped, "Let's be honest, nobody's bathing in that thing."
