This year, the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre is located in a public housing complex building in the Regent Park neighborhood of Toronto that has since been demolished to make way for a FreshCo supermarket and new apartments.
The five contestants for the first season are as follows: Each of the first five episodes contains four or five individual challenges taken from two days of shooting, where a nominee and their nominator work together to complete a task in a given amount of time.
There is also a yardwork challenge in each episode, where the nominees have to work together (but without their nominators) to decorate a shed at the front of the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre.
After the nominees are greeted outside by series host Andrew Younghusband, each is given a dilapidated one-bedroom apartment at the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre, where their 19 individual challenges will take place.
The apartments are color-coded: Darryl in purple, Merle in green, Keith in blue, Jeannie in yellow and Barry in pink.
At the start of the first day, they are introduced to the experts-- general contractor Greg House and interior designer Robin Lockhart, who will teach the contestants the skills needed to tackle the challenges.
Prior to entering the Handyman Rehabilitation Centre, each nominee was asked to build a toolbox based on a very simple diagram to replace their existing tool storage.
His extra lesson was one where Andrew convinces him to stop making fun of the experts—Robin in particular, who he called a witch and something that rhymed with a witch—and voice his concerns with them personally.
It takes Jeannie 46 tries just to put a single nail to the side of the shed and her extra lesson was more practice in the use of a power drill.
As the most improved handyman in the previous episode, Merle is tasked to lead the nominees into painting the shed with a design of his own choosing.
The nominees were to assemble a pre-fabricated bed and end table combination from IKEA, after which a quick evaluation of each contestant's bedroom was performed.
This time around, Merle does the drywall patching correctly, complete with a shim for support, all without duct tape, which he vowed to avoid for the remainder of the day.
In this episode's yardwork challenge, led by David, the remaining nominees build an arbour for the shed, as well as assemble a barbecue.
The yardwork challenge (save Keith's barbecue) is somehow a resounding success, although the nominees are somewhat disappointed that Merle (still at St. Michael's Hospital) did not participate.
The nominees are to install a ceiling fan in two hours, which disturbs Barry, having been involved in a near-fatal electrical accident back at home while fixing his dryer.
The nominees are also told that the circuit breakers controlling the fluorescent tube lighting that they will be replacing with the fan has been turned off, unaware that Andrew lied to them.
The nominees begin on their separate tasks: Merle going to do the bathroom sink, Darryl to the kitchen cabinets, Barry and Jeannie to the hardwood flooring and Keith to the TV unit—a disastrous start, as Andrew notes, as all of them had failed challenges relating to the tasks they would have to do (Merle with the kitchen sink, Darryl with his bed assembly and hanging doors, Barry and Jeannie with three floors and Keith with the shelves and his initial failure with his chair).
Jeannie's advice to lower the sink elicits a round of applause from the nominators' room ("the voice of reason," as David notes).
Barry suggests that the calls to Greg and Robin not be made until the final hours when more manpower is needed instead of earlier when a plan on completion can be devised.
As the rest return to work, Barry has taken on the role of leader, laying out their plan to call Robin and Greg in with very little time remaining.
For a brief moment, everyone seemed to be working at the same time... that is, until Keith uses his eighth break of the day to explain Merle's progress to the others and Jeannie manages to get a splinter in her finger while installing the floor (somewhat vindicating Merle as the deep gash he suffered when he cut himself during the previous episode's Upholstery Challenge, which led to Shelly taking him to St. Michael's Hospital to get five stitches and him being named the worst, no longer constituted the rehab centre's only injury).
He screws a pine board into the wall in an attempt to fix this and gets the help of Keith to handle securing the pedestal and hooking up the pipes while Merle gets the sink in position.
As Keith takes his 15th break of the day, Merle begins to work on the glass block by first constructing a window frame for the port, while Barry and Jeannie continue to lay down hardwood with slothlike intensity.
Andrew also accepts the bet (surprising Merle, who had also taken a break and was in on the conversation), believing that he's in for an easy $10 (he's later proven right when Keith ultimately gives up with a half-hour remaining).
With only three hours remaining and seven tasks still not completed, the nominees finally cash in on their opportunity to seek expert help, as Robin is given the call by Jeannie.
Andrew is forced to coax Merle (and Keith, who had taken yet another break) back into work after telling him that quitting early may make them earn the title of Canada's Worst Handyman.
When the final exam is evaluated, of the 11 tasks assigned, the nominees completed eight of them, but only Merle's bathroom sink installation is given a passing grade.
In their final deliberations, the experts agree that, although his two floors were both awful, Barry is not Canada's Worst Handyman, as he has admitted to learning by failure.
As for Merle, knowing how to do things right and getting the skills needed to kick his duct tape addiction, his aversion to measuring and, above all else, get his daughter Cassie's bedroom finished after nine wasted years definitely makes him not Canada's Worst Handyman.
In the end, though, Keith is named Canada's Worst Handyman for his overall lack of focus, having taken 34 breaks during the final exam and switching projects 14 times, with none of them earning a passing grade.