It’s hard to believe that we’ve already reached The Deed: Chicago season 2 finale, but the CNBC series is indeed wrapping its season on Wednesday. And with the episode, called “The Comeback Queen,” the show is tackling the most familiar story in the house-flipping TV genre.
In Wednesday’s episode, real estate mogul Sean Conlon meets Latitia, whose other job is selling houses wholesale to flippers. Wanting a bigger piece of the profit, she decided to become a flipper herself, but that consisted of paying a contractor and trusting that he would do the work. Early in the episode, Latitia admits that she saw issues with the man two weeks into the project. While she did eventually fire the contractor, the house has been sitting unfinished for months.
Sean has to walk Latitia through almost every step of the process, from getting the right permits to figuring out the design. Another scene has her genuinely surprised that she has to pick out the finishes for the house. The Deed: Chicago is really starting from zero in this episode, which makes it a good entry point for people who are not as familiar with the real estate business. While other episodes this season have featured rookie flippers, those people have come armed with slightly more information and/or experience.
Read More: Sean Conlon was never interested in TV before ‘The Deed: Chicago’
In some ways, “The Comeback Queen” is the least surprising episode of The Deed: Chicago, because this tale of woe has been heard so many times before. If you’re a savvy viewer of the genre, it’s baffling whenever you hear someone thinking they can just pay someone else to do all the work and they’ll walk away with all the money. That’s just not how house flipping, let alone any business, actually works, and as a viewer watching from the outside you can’t help but get a little frustrated.
But that doesn’t mean the episode is without merit. Latitia has a bigger learning curve than other developers featured on the show, but she’s present and willing to learn (as we’ve discussed before, there’s a refreshing lack of ego with everyone that’s been in this season, and that’s a major reason why season 2 works). When you get to the end of the episode, you really see the elbow grease and effort she’s put into mastering what she didn’t know, and the finished house is one of the best of the season.
This is one of those stories where it would be great to do a follow-up at some point, and see where Latitia ends up. Much like The Profit has The Profit: An Inside Look, it’d be great to do something for The Deed: Chicago and/or The Deed to check up on developers and get some extra commentary from Sean and/or Sidney Torres. Maybe that’s the next step for this show that’s gotten even better the second time around.
The Deed: Chicago airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CNBC.
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