A&E’s ‘Hoarders’ hurts the human spirit

A&E has some of the most exploitative -- and fascinating -- television on television.

It’s possible to trace the evolution of A&E from the 1990s to today, but it’s a little hard to comprehend.

I remember when they had Breakfast with the Arts on Sundays. I never watched it, but I was aware of it. They had biographies of celebrities, and cozy little mysteries like Agatha Christie and that “Lovejoy” thing where an art dealer solved crimes.

In the evenings from about 9 to 11 p.m. they explored David L. Wolper’s obsession with World War II and a more conservative view of history.

This network personality quirk expanded to true crime weekend programming with Bill Curtis and more recently, “Criminal Minds” reruns until A&E seemed synonymous with crime dramas.

More recently it’s become possible to identify a much more unnerving trend on this network. Tracing their roots from the exploits of “Dog the Bounty Hunter” comes “Billy the Exterminator,” where an ex-con takes on infestations of vermin with his family and their exciting personal lives, and “Storage Wars,” where gangs of buyers crack abandoned storage units and bid on items.

Creep factor

Then there is the dark fascination with celebrity, including “Gene Simmons Family Jewels,” “Growing Up Twisted” with Twisted Sister’s Dee Snyder, “Growing Up Gotti” -- where the cult of personality in that case was never technically a celebrity -- and “Criss Angel Mind Freak.” It’s not a perfect formula: “The Hasselhoffs,” for example, only managed two episodes.

This is all plenty depressing. But their even more disturbing programming is also some of the best. It’s fearless and one wonders how the subjects were convinced to share their unconventional stories and lives with the viewing public.

“Intervention,” for example, isn’t artistic, nor is it, strictly speaking, entertaining. It’s a sad and disturbing documentation of lives broken by addiction, sometimes with a positive outcome and sometimes not.

To this breakout hit has been added “Obsessed,” which tracks people with obsessive-compulsive disorders. I caught about five minutes of this once as the cameras presented an unnerving look at people trapped inside their own minds. The channel premieres “Heavy” in a couple weeks where cameras track morbidly obese people trying to lose weight.

These are bad enough. But for sheer unblinking terror, A&E presents “Hoarders.”

‘Hoarders’

The scary music and the blank, stylized white-on-black typeface frames some of the most disturbing images I have seen outside of war coverage. The horror film noir sensation builds as the cameras dive headlong into the detritus of years of aggressive neglect.

A&E’s “Hoarders” describes hoarding as a mental disorder affecting some 3 million people. They seek out objects and hold onto them beyond their capacity to care for them or themselves. It’s a secretive disorder, and the show’s producers seem to become aware of sufferers when outside forces are called in – usually a demolition notice from the city, a hoard that has spilled out into the front yard, or a notice of eviction is issued.

Episodes I’ve seen include:

+ A woman whose obsession with handbags has stuffed her living room to the ceiling and bankrupted her family. She dreams that she has collected designer treasures, but a consignment assessor determines only a small number of them have any resale value at all.

+ An elegant little man fills his home with silk dolls and flea market “finds” that threaten to bankrupt him. They’re all displayed beautifully, but in reality the pieces are of limited authenticity and disappointingly low cash value.

+ A man living in his family home has such an outrageous hoard they find a homeless man living in a crate in his front yard.

+ A woman’s obsession with collecting things has forced her elderly husband to sleep in the car.

A lot of the situations are compounded by health problems, largely through improper food storage, physical inactivity and a breakdown in personal hygiene. Trained mental health professionals are on hand along with a clean-up crew to address the situations, which are often sadly confrontational. Change is hard, and when someone comes in from the outside to force you to change the way you’ve lived your life for years -- in some cases, decades -- there are occasional breakdowns and tantrums.

Some of the most horrifying examples involve animals. Mummified pets are discovered, having been trapped under piles of junk. The worst seem to be catteries, where beloved pets have disappeared and resurface as the cleaning process moves forward.

In one recent episode, a man had bunnies the way some people have mice -- which it turns out he also had. They found 14 bunnies, and as the cleaning process continued, they found 12 more hiding in the walls. Herds of field mice fled before the cameras.

And as much compassion as you want to feel for people who are clearly suffering in unsustainable situations, some situations seem like almost criminal insanity.

One woman kept a single-wide trailer filled with caged chickens – chickens whose cages clearly had never been cleaned out. She couldn’t let them run free in the yard, she explained, because they’d run away and all her feeding them would be for nothing.

And that’s not the worst of it. Next Monday marks the show’s third season finale and they’ve been building up to this one. It’s a guy with hundreds of rats run amok in his home. From the previews alone, this one is not for the faint of heart.

Exploitative

It’s exploitative. It’s sick. It’s the most compelling argument I’ve seen against developing Smell-O-Vision. When one daughter approached the home of her mother, who’d basically let her cats take over the house, she turned around and fled the situation in tears.

You watch this show and you’re uneasily aware of any dishes you’ve got piling up. Or unopened mail. Or you might try to remember the last time you dusted.

I remember when A&E's programming mostly elevated humanity. Programs like "Hoarders" hurt the human spirit.

And no ... I just can’t look away.

“Hoarders” airs at 9 p.m. Mondays on A&E.