The Wrong Stuff

A terrifying show about compulsive hoarders.

By Troy Patterson
Honey, I swear to start cleaning the den this weekend, the bulging bibliomaniacal den where a cotton-blend rabbit burrows in the James Baldwin section, where a backup alarm clock has wedged itself between Balzac and Zola, where I cannot even find Gogol's Dead Souls to quote a relevant passage about the old miser Plyushkin and his troves of trash. I swear to clean the den. Up by the ceiling, between the spare printer and the complete run of Men's Vogue, the señorita on the cover of the Alfredito Plays Mambo LP will end her obstinate cha-cha-cha with Vanessa Lorenzo, the cover girl of the March 2003 issue of Glamour. No longer will a stack of summer hats shade a precariously stationary tower of stationery boxes. Hoarders (A&E, Mondays at 10 p.m. ET) has scared me straight.
Compulsive hoarding is the excessive collection of items, objects, things, stuff, and, quite literally, sentimental junk. On each installment of Hoarders, A&E profiles two people suffering from the disorder, and the channel does so in a way consistent with its gravelly voice. Throughout A&E's transformation from a network airing footage of the cellist Pablo Casals to one scheduling performances by the bounty hunter Dog, it has kept up its interest in noir tales and investigative narratives. Hoarders announces its link to that tradition with a bit of text appearing on-screen near the top of each episode. Rendered in a central-booking typeface, it reads, "More than 3 million people are compulsive hoarders. These are two of their stories." The hoarders stand accused of violating standards of personal hygiene and public health, the laws of the fire marshal and the feng shui master. Having hit bottom, they may be faced with eviction or losing custody of their children. Their homes are crime scenes, and the evidence is everywhere..." More