Search - Hoarders: The Complete Season One on DVD

A fascinating look at a dabilitating disease that ruins live

Haunted Flower | Indianapolis | 05/28/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Hoarders: The Complete Season One
7 Episodes on 2 Discs (2010)

"Hoarders" on A&E is probably the most compelling show you haven't seen. It is an absolutely fascinating in-depth look at people whose entire lives have been utterly consumed by clutter and possessions, most of which are absolute junk. The inability to part with any of these items as small as a soda can to as large as a broken-down School Bus means many of them are facing threats of eviction, divorce, having their children removed from them, or even going to jail for criminal littering. There are over three million people suffering from obsessive compulsive hoarding in the United States and each episode tells two of their stories.

Hoarding is a psychological, painful disease where people are lost inside their own world with their stuff. Their stuff most of the time is more valuable to them than human relationships. In this show it can affect anyone as young as a seven year-old to as old as a woman in her seventies. These people are being asked to change by their landlords at threat of eviction, by their spouse or significant other on threat of leaving them, and for their own health and well-being as well as their families.

These stories are amazing! A woman whose children had already been taken away from her was trying to clean up so they could be returned and she put her foot down at throwing out an old 7/11 Mountain Dew slurpee cup. One young man is suicidal and suffering panic attacks and is under the impression that if he removes the dog hair all over his apartment, that somehow that will make his dog die faster. The saddest story that brought tears to my eyes was that of a woman in her seventies who was blind in one eye who could not stop taking in stray cats. She wanted to badly to save them but as her house was cleaned, the amount of cat skeletons in her attic, garage, etc. was heartbreaking. They found around 70 cats total, 40 something of them alive. The most disgusting story was in the first episode of a woman who hoarded food and could not even recognize properly when it was rotten and assumed all food frozen was still good from several years earlier even when green and accused everyone around her of having poor stomachs. One older woman is addicted to yard sales and has so much junk in her house and yard that she has had to move into a hotel with her husband and can no longer afford that and is more devoted to her possessions than caring about having a relationship with her children.

While all of their behaviors have gone into a downward spiral to the extreme, some have rational reasons for hoarding. One man believes collecting scrap metal in his yard is a valid way to save for his grandchildren's college funds some day. Many cannot bear to part with things that evoke certain memories, a gift someone gave them that they aren't using or their grown kids' baby clothes. Others are collectors of happy meal toys and stuffed animals believing some day they will sell them on Ebay -- but they won't. Depression-Era behaviors are passed down through generations making people prone to stocking up on items when they are on sale as if they'll never have that opportunity to purchase again and then they will forget they already have a bunch of it and continue to buy more until they are further into debt.

Each person/couple is offered a crew that is able to clean-up their house in two days as well as the help of a professional organizer and/or therapist....if the hoarder is willing to let them. Each episode demonstrates who can rise above their disease and finish the clean-up and who allows their problems to swallow them up. It is so sad with all the help being offered when a person still can't let go.

These pack-rats can get so absorbed that when put to the test to clean an area, they can spend the entire day or two in one bathroom or one corner of one room. The clean-up crew cannot act without the hoarders permission because just clean it up for them would allow the problem to begin all over again. The hoarder has to be involved in the process or the behavior will not change. The problem is that a hoarder's decision-making process is complex, slow, and emotional and it is very difficult to make progress. It is embarrassing and humiliating for them when the crew has to literally shovel up the debris and can find anything from animal droppings to human feces to mold or critter skeletons.

There are two complaints about the series: the use of black screens with white text to give exposition between scenes to pick up the drama and let new people tuning it catch up feels like it slows down the story immensely and would be much more beneficial to have a narrator/voice over giving the information. Also the DVD Menu does not have a "Play All" option on the main menu, that option is on the Scene Menu. Why wouldn't you play all the scenes in an episode? That button seems misplaced and is annoying because every time you select a new episode you have to remember to hit "Play All".

The series itself is interesting and absorbing from a psychological standpoint. I dare you to watch this and see if you end up cleaning your own house afterward.

Bonus Features:

There is additional unused footage of each of the stories that could not fit in the episode's time frame. There is more exploration into individual items they can't throw away and why. The series showed many successful decisions as well as failures for the hoarders and this shows more failures and lack of progress. A skunk was found in a dryer in one man's yard. One woman's children have a degenerative nerve disease unmentioned before that made it more difficult for them to walk around the house. Another woman's coupon collection could not be discarded because she said some places still accept expired coupons (from 2007)."

A metaphor for much of what is wrong in American society

Joseph G Wheeler | Seattle, WA United States | 07/21/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've been fascinated with hoarding for a long time. I grew up with a sibling hoarder. As an adult, the sibling bred five children. One child left home because he was so embarrassed of the filth he was growing up in. That didn't stop the hoarding.

This show is about co-dependency and the extreme illness that occurs when the relationship with oneself is confused, compromised and ignored because of a pre-occupation with external "relationships" - which can be with people places or THINGS.

It's metaphorical for the problem we face as Americans. That is to say, we spend way too much time pointing the finger at other countries, getting involved in other distractions, all while our own nation, under God, indivisible, is going to hell. Consumption and debt are the threads by which this country is sadly woven.

Who's going to save us? And who saves these very misguided, "ill" people? It certainly isn't the producers of Hoarders. It's going to take a lot more than 3 or 4 days of "cleanup" to fix these pathetic souls. Their external surroundings are only a reflection of the complete disaster that I imagine resides in their cranium.

The individual must be responsible for that. No cleanup team can do it. Like the alcoholic, they are responsible for getting help. I don't feel sorry for them or the alcoholic. I don't want to be their neighbor, either. They affect the people around them, whether they know it or not.

I hope people can see beyond the oftentimes hilarious entertainment value of the show. And it is entertaining. And the hoarders are initially sympathetic people.

There is something very interesting about how destructive nice people can be, however. People with good intentions. Intentions that lag far behind the real victor, destruction. Good intentions are no good unless they're carried out.

We live in a material world. Hopefully we're aiming for more than that, for a spiritual realm also. But while we're here, in the material world, let's not make it hell for everyone around us. These hoarders do just that.

They exemplify so much of what's wrong with our nation and our people: huge appetites and teeny, tiny attention spans. But super, by golly, nice. So we should probably ignore the problem or blame it on an illness, right?

I think not!

This sibling of mine grew up, bought two and a half acres, and filled the land up with trailers, Winnebago-style rvs, cars, and debris. Then there's the house.....near ruin. The people in Hoarders are just like this sibling. Nice and destructive.

But are these hoarders really that nice?

They refuse to cooperate with their housemates. They live with rats (that also come to their neighbor's homes). They endanger their children's lives. They live with dead pets and wild animals. And they consume more than they could ever use. It's extremely ugly and, I would daresay, evil.

Evil is often mistaken as being one-dimensional. In fact, it's multi-faceted and not always as obvious as one would expect. This isn't Disneyland, where all the evil characters are drawn so broadly that you can't help but spot them instantly.

All any of us has to do is OWN our own life, that we were given, thank God. To pay attention and take care of what is directly in front of us. Take control of what you do have some control over.

I don't feel sorry for these people. In fact, they are sleepwalking through life and making my own navigation increasingly difficult. So essentially, I resent these sorts.

Plato said it best, in his parable of the cave, in The Republic: "Imprisonment of the mind is ingeniously affected by the prisoner's own active desire....thereby making him first accessory to his own confinement."

Again, the show is entertaining as hell. Literally, the series makes hell on earth entertaining. It's a lot to digest, if you really think about things. It's also funnier than hell and a hugely entertaining digression. I plan to watch mine over and over again. And yes, you will probably clean your house up, after watching an episode or two."