Charlie’s Angels
Just when you thought you’d seen it all on the T, a new online show is sprucing up riders.
Pity those poor, bed-headed T riders who’ve sat across from Charlestown’s Lauren Genatossio over the years. Not because the makeup artist has been quietly judging them (she has, if benignly), but because they’ve missed out on the chance to get her help. Of course, ambushing a commuter with an unsolicited makeover may be unacceptable in polite society—but social norms change when TV cameras get involved, a point made by TLC’s just-debuted online show, The Makeover Train, which has Genatossio and hairstylist Tasha Forgash of the South End freshening up bedraggled strangers on the quick.
The rollicking 10-episode series is the network’s first foray into programming for its website, and for Genatossio and Forgash, an introduction to the perils of working on the rails (one particularly jerky ride had Genatossio taking an errant Forgash elbow to the head). Despite the hustle and the hassle—logistics and security limit the ladies to their most basic tools—the new looks are dramatic. “It’s crazy,” says Forgash. “It just shows that if people spent an extra five minutes in the morning, they could look so much better.”