Like all very popular and extremely cool kids, I grew up watching a lot of HGTV. I still enjoy the occasional episode of House Hunters, typically over the holidays or when I’m feeling like yelling at my television. So I cannot describe to you the delight I felt when I found out that, for the first time, House Hunters featured a throuple in search of their dream home.
In an episode on Wednesday that was brilliantly titled “Three’s Not a Crowd in Colorado Springs,” the show introduced viewers to Brian, Lori, and Geli, a throuple looking for a home together in, well, Colorado Springs. E! reports:
Brian and Lori married in 2002 and have two kids, ages 10 and 12. “I understood from day one, even when we were dating, that Lori was bisexual, and interested in women and men. And so, we evolved to a point where we were comfortable having another woman in our lives,” Brian told the cameras.
Okay, bisexuality also encapsulates attractions to people with gender identities that don’t adhere to the binary, but we’ll press on.
“The past four years, I’ve been living in Lori and Brian’s house, so buying a house together, as a throuple, will signify, like, our next big step as a family of five rather than all four of them plus me,” Geli said in the episode.
As someone who has watched what some might classify as a disgusting amount of House Hunters (both domestic and international), approximately 75 percent of the heterosexual couples you see on the show make it clear within the first five minutes of their episode that they should not be together. In fact, many of these so-called couples often have so little in common that I’m left questioning whether they’ve ever spoken before, or if these were just two random people that the show’s producers pulled off the street.
Lori, Brian, and Geli had already been living together for four years, with two children in the mix. They seem more prepared to buy a home together than most of the two-person couples on House Hunters. For HGTV, it’s a smart choice in terms of inclusivity—and also good television. It’s messy enough for two people to decide on the characteristics of their ideal home; adding another person into the mix will exponentially increase the drama. In a statement provided to USA Today, an HGTV spokesperson said, “We feature all homebuyers and living choices.”