There's a new guy on reality TV and his name is Paul Fisher. He may have been around for a long time representing top fashion models, but he's stepped up his game - the CW Network is featuring him in "Remodeled" - a reality-drama about his current mission to improve and then network with obscure or small modeling agencies. His staff call him "the vampire" (he works so much it's as if he never sleeps). He is also abrupt, explosive, a live wire - he seems compulsively driven on this new show, and his passion makes for good storytelling.
On the most recent episode that aired at 9 p.m. in Fort Wayne on Wednesday, Paul and his model scouting staff and assistant are in Phoenix to evaluate a potential agency for his group: The Network. He says although the top modeling agencies in the country are housed in New York, the models themselves come from small towns or cities all around the country. He's got the financial backing of the TV show, the business and its sponsors to promote small agencies that he deems worthy: which means finding and representing local talent. It's an interesting hypothesis, and I thought of Chef Ramsey of "Kitchen Nightmares" yelling at small town cooks and restaurant owners. It is sort of the 'Reality' television drama formula. Remodeled is fun, trendy, offbeat, edgy - I'm sure just right for the demographic, the target audience for the CW.
The small agency in Phoenix is called Courtier, and is owned by three men. They are struggling to make it, and are moonlighting at other jobs. Paul convinces the men to transition to an all-male model agency, something that doesn't yet exist in Phoenix. In the show he asks them to narrow their focus and learn how to better scout for talent.
It seems as though the show plays up conflict and drama, and works off his assistants Olga (who helps teach the owners how to find talent) and Joseph, who glowers under his dark bangs in his token cranky-goth sidekick job. Courtier manages to find new talent, Hunter, in a mall "cattle call"- in the background it looked like I saw no more than a dozen or so candidates in a queue. Somewhere else, college student Luke rolls up on a skateboard to be sized up by the agents. Both boys are taken for haircuts and wardrobe changes, and in the end Paul decides Courtier is capable of picking talent after all.
A new agency to his Network is connected, and Paul surprises the staff with new office space and the outfittings and furniture for it. One of the Courtier founders is so excited to see they have been accepted, he uses his cell phone to quit his day job. I imagine the next episode will take Paul Fisher to another town or city, another small agency, to help them make a go of it. How about Charmaine's in Fort Wayne, Indiana? Or near Southpark, Colorado, not far from where this shot of a water tower was taken? The idea of the entrepreneurial spirit in the United States, the fact one can have a dream of owning an agency, of all things, or being approached about being a model, of all things, and then those dreams converging or those opportunities breaking and the whole thing is engineered and produced for national television - we've come a long way, and hope springs new eternally.
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