The Antique Roadshow was never a show
that I particularly looked forward to watching. Really, the only
satisfaction I think anyone ever gleaned from it was watching people
bring in their most treasured item, only to be told it was worthless
and have their dreams of wealth shattered before the camera.
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| Or is that just me? |
However, being the absurdly busy man
that I am, I rarely have time to watch television before, say,
10-11pm, and at that point, there is really only one show on that I
consistently enjoy:
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I can't really say what it is about
this program that fascinates me. For all I know, it could just be
because I never want to look for the remote to find something else.
The essential premise is that when
storage lockers in the US are abandon, they are sold to the highest
bidder, who must take a gamble on what he thinks may be inside (they
are not allowed to enter the locker before purchasing.) There are
apparently some people who stock shops with things found in these
lockers, and people who just want to collect rare and unusual things,
and they are the focus of the show. They go in, bid on lockers, and
see who came out with the highest profit, usually having to consult
some kind of expert on an unusual item they found.
There are two things that I really
think the show has going for it. The first is the colorful cast of
characters (and yes, anyone on a reality show, even A&E, is a
character the producers edited together for you) who all leave their
own impression. Brandi's frustration with her husband Jarred's
purchases, Dave's confidence to the point of arrogance and constant
“YUUUUUUUP”s and of course Barry.
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| 0% expert. 50% of the entertainment value |
Barry is the second thing that makes
this show tick, simply because he usually fails. He's not in it to
earn money, but to collect interesting items, so it's not like he's
going to make himself broke and stop appearing after the first
episode. Barry is always that guy on the Antique Roadshow who brings
his items to an expert, and generally either gets told that it's
worthless, or not even close to what he paid for it.
So is there a downside to this show?
Well, Brandi can be grating at times, to the point that it becomes
distracting. There's also the fact that some of the estimates they
give on the value of certain pieces (for example: absolutely anything
Dave estimates) is unbelievably high, so I have trouble believing the
final numbers.
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| I bet I could get like...a bijillion dollars for this. |
I can easily see how someone wouldn't
like this show on the grounds that it's kind of a silly premise, and
maybe it's just not their thing. If you have some time to waste,
however, I think you could do far worse than Storage Wars.
