“I’ve actually seen homeless people live a cleaner lifestyle than her.” – Clean-Up Specialist
Hoarders, an A&E docuseries/reality series, began its fourth season last night with “Phyllis/Janet.” The show depicts unfortunate souls afflicted with a disorder known as “compulsive hoarding” which is defined as “excessive acquisition of possessions (and failure to use or discard them), even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. Compulsive hoarding impairs mobility and interferes with basic activities, including cooking, cleaning, hygiene, sanitation, and sleeping.”
While the poor folks on Hoarders clearly have issues and are in need of serious help, I feel that it is important to note that “there is no clear definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria (such as the current DSM)… It is not clear whether compulsive hoarding is an isolated disorder, or rather a symptom of another condition, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.” (I can hear the Chris Rock bit in my head now: “Back in my day there was no such thing as “hoarders”! These people were just called ‘crazy slobs.’ They were all put in the class next to the boiler-room and they got out of school at 2:30, not three o’clock! Just in case they wanted to hoard something!” Ok, I guess the Rock joke wasn’t really about hoarders, but any excuse to reminisce on Bigger and Blacker…).
In a nut shell, the set-up for Hoarders is this: we meet the hoarder and take a tour of their hoard…err house. Then we meet a concerned friend or family member who threatens to contact protective services if something doesn’t change. A psychiatrist/psychologist arrives on the scene to help guide the hoarder in the direction of a clean-up, followed by an “extreme cleaning specialist” (who knew that job even exists?!) and his or her crew. The shrink and then attempts to treats the hoarder, but really what they are doing is distracting the hoarder while the clean-up crew swarms the hoard, throwing away precious memories — like a copy of the Newark Star-Ledger from 1991 or a Juicy Juice bottle filled to the brim with human urine. Oh memories, so fleeting… After the clean-up is done, A&E plunks down a chunk of change from what is known as the “after care fund” to help pay for repairs to the house and everyone crosses their fingers that there isn’t a relapse.
First on the docket this week is Janet. Janet is a retired nurse who appears to be in her late seventies. She lives alone in a house without working heat or plumbing and spends most days attending church services. When she isn’t at church, she is at home sitting in an arm chair, buried in a neck-high pile of trash. “The main component that is filling the house is trash, feces covered diapers and urine bottles,” says Dr. Zasio, the psychologist assigned to Janet’s case. It must smell lovely in there. “I’ve actually seen homeless people live a cleaner lifestyle than her,” chimes in the clean-up specialist. BUUUURRRRNN!!
Compared to Janet, Phyllis’ (the other hoarder on this week’s episode) compulsion seems relatively benign. Her house isn’t filled with pee bottles or dirty diapers, but rather baby dolls she collected from local thrift stores. Phyllis is also a former nurse (I wonder if hoarding is a common malady amongst healthcare professionals?) who lives at home with her adult son Bobby. Bobby is…well let’s just say Bobby’s a little bit slow. (When Bobby cashes his disability checks he requests to be paid in one dollar bills because he can only “count in ones”). Phyllis’ compulsion seems to stem from a lack of self-esteem. “When I’m around real smart people I get really intimidated,” she says. By the time the clean-up crew is finished in her house, the front lawn is covered in a mountain of dolls that is least six feet fight and 20 feet around.
Now, Hoarders is very similar to its A&E running-mate, Intervention (which also premiered a new season last night), in that it deals with the symptoms and consequences of a difficult-to-understand, culturally stigmatized disorder. In the case of Hoarders, that disorder is compulsive hoarding and in the case of Intervention, it’s addiction. But despite their similarities, Intervention is a far more entertaining show. (Not that Hoarders isn’t entertaining. It is — just to a lesser degree.) Here’s why: An episode of Intervention is formatted into three distinct segments. First you have what I like to call the “party segment”. During the party segment, the camera crew follows the addict around as they go to bars, frequent shooting galleries, chug Listerine and generally just get f—ed up beyond belief. The two segments that follow are the “intervention segment” and the “treatment segment”, both of which are pretty self-explanatory.
Clearly, the best segment is almost always the party segment. Sure, it can be sad to watch people literally throw their lives away because of drugs or alcohol. But, boy, is it fun to watch them get hammered. Some of the funniest sh*t ever happens on intervention. Remember the chick Allison who was addicted to aerosol computer duster? Classic. Or what about the teenager that was “addicted” to weed who would stomp through the house screaming “WHERE’S MY BONG?!” and beat up his dad?
Awesome. Oh, oh, remember the guy John who was addicted to mushrooms and ecstasy and he would blast techno music at deafening volumes all night and then try to fight his neighbors when the complained? Hilarious. What about Tim, the drama queen crackhead, whom the camera crew found flailing around in a drainage ditch? He was great. What about Christy the meth-mouthed stripper who fist fights her sister buck-naked? Kick-ass. And who could forget this gem? If only Hoarders had more drugs and naked fist fights…
Hoarders doesn’t really have this three-segment formula. There is no party segment which is understandable given how difficult it would be to film the accumulation of thousands of pounds of junk over the course of decades. Instead, Hoarders jumps in right at the “intervention segment” and then moves into the “treatment segment”, unfortunately jettisoning Intervention’s most entertaining (and, generally, least depressing) portion.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.