Home Makeover: Very Extreme Edition

I'm wondering if anyone else is as horrified as I am, at the level of excess being thrown about on Extreme Makeover Home Edition these days.  I have nothing against helping a family out of their difficulties, but the conspicuous consumption gone wild is just too much.

In Sunday night's episode, a lovely family (aren't they all), was given a house 6 times the size of their previous home. Now, I certainly appreciate that perhaps the old home was too small for a family with 4 or 5 daughters.  I get that, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing being good for nothing.

My real problem with Extreme Makeover, is kind of the problem I have with a lot of things in this culture. There seems to be a need to bathe, drown even, people in largesse and then, if it turns out that they don't know what to do with all these gifts, the press (and the public) sit on the sidelines and malign people for their bad choices.  Is this a uniquely American phenomenon? I can't be sure, but it really does beg the question: when largesse is being handed out, for whose real benefit is it? It's the old question of the underlying motivation behind altruism.

To what extent, I wonder, do we give and then have expectations of the receiver?  I've been told that a number of Extreme Makeover participants have had much difficulty with property taxes subsequent to the show.  I don't know whether this is in fact the case, but if it is, are we really all that surprised?  Once you go from a broken down house worth nearly nothing, to a monstrosity worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, obviously there will be tax implications.  I guess no one wondered even briefly, how the home owner would manage to pay said taxes.  Hm.

I'm all for largesse.  I'm all for giving.  But clearly there is a need to give judiciously.  I guess that's my underlying problem with all this.  The idea of judicious giving seems to have no home here.  Kinda like the idea of judicious spending has few fans.  Maybe it's just judiciousness that's not a terribly American concept?