That’s what they should call it. Forget the makeover. It’s all about the tears. My wife and I have made a habit of watching ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on Sunday nights. Tonight it trumped the season premiere of The Simpsons, despite my objections.

The show started last season as Trading Spaces on steroids, where they hyped the conflicts between designers and tried to showcase as much run away creativity as possible. But this year they’ve gotten the formula right and focused on heart-breaking stories of families that could really use a break. The editing focuses on how the home improvements make life easier on the family. Gone are the personal conflicts and creativity run amok. Now it’s all about these heart breaking stories. This week was a family of deaf parents with a blind and autistic son. Last week was a family of three in New York who had been cheated by a contractor who started work on their house and left it unfinished. A few weeks ago saw a family with a child who was allergic to the sun. A few weeks before that was an enormous family with something like nine kids where the mom had died.

The home improvements are cool, but what really sells the show are the thousands of people who come together and turn a family’s life around, not simply by raising their roof (literally) and packing their home to the rafters with material goods, but by giving them hope. It makes the commercial tie-ins (which in reality are the motivating factor behind the show) seem absolutely brilliant. Sears couldn’t get as much mileage from a Super Bowl commercial as they do from a total weepfest they made possible.

But what really throws the whole thing is the next show in ABC’s line-up: Desperate Housewives.