Review: 'Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane'

Back in the days when broadcast television shows had 23-episode seasons, it wasn't uncommon for long-running scripted programs to do a "clip" episode. Usually, the episode would open with one of the characters reflecting back on their friendship with another character or mentioning everything that the family had been through. And the rest of the episode would primarily be clips from earlier episodes, assembled into some sort of semi-coherent theme.

But once the unscripted boom began, clip shows just became a cheap way to extend the season. Shows such as American Pickers would do themed clip shows around topics such like "Amazing Pop Culture Finds" as a way to re-air old footage in a new way. At least when Antiques Roadshow does clip shows, they usually include updated valuations, which makes for a fun comparison for viewers.

Even now, it's less common to have entire new shows built entirely out of previously-aired clips. But the fine folks at the sorta-zombie network fyi have managed to accomplish that with the new "fyi original" series Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane, which is comprised entirely of clips from the series Tiny House Nation.

If you don't recall that series, hosts and renovation professionals John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin traveled around the country, designing and building tiny homes for their clients. The show caught the beginnings of the tiny house boom and its five-season run inspired a number of semi-copycat shows, such as Tiny House Big Living, Container Homes, Tiny House Hunters, Tiny House Hunting, Tiny House World, Tiny Luxury, Tiny Paradise, Tiny House Expedition, Tiny House Life and Living Big In A Tiny House.

But none of those shows are producing new episodes and Tiny House Nation hasn't released an original episode since 2019. So why launch the clip-show "new" series Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane in 2025?

Despite the fact that there haven't been new episodes of Tiny House Nation in nearly six years, the Tiny House Nation FAST channel consistently draws an audience - many of whom didn't watch the show when it first aired. But perhaps even more importantly, Netflix has been streaming seasons of the show outside of the United States and as is the case with many old shows, it's now found a new audience.

The challenge for fyi (which is owned by A+E Networks) is that while there is a financial incentive to produce something new that might interest that Tiny House Nation audience, there's likely not a ton of money to be made. But it can be a profitable series, if it is done as cheaply as possible.

Having watched a couple of episodes of Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane, all I can say is "mission accomplished." This series appears to have been produced in the absolute cheapest way possible, at least until that day when AI unscripted hosts are an accepted part of the television world.

Each episode of Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane is built around a theme, such as "food." And in the episode, a mysterious narrator counts down the "top 10" episodes that loosely fit that theme - for instance, tricky kitchen designs. Even though it's billed as a countdown, there doesn't seem to be any reason why one build would be #10 and another is #4. Even worse, because ten episodes are being edited into one big clip show, each episode is represented the same way. A clip introducing the problem - "We'd really like to have a big kitchen table" - a second scene that shows John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin solving the problem, and a final clip quickly showing the reveal.

Honestly, Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane isn't terrible. Well, not super terrible. But other than creating a bunch of episodes fyi can sell to viewers and Netflix as "new," there's no real point to it. Especially when there are so many full-length old episodes to watch instead.

I'm all in favor of fyi investing some money in original programming. But I don't think I'll be watching this show again.

Tiny House Nation: Memory Lane premieres Tuesday, February 18th on fyi.