 |
Judy and I enjoy watching STORAGE WARS: TEXAS on A&E. A spin off of the popular STORAGE WARS series, SW:T focuses on a group of colorful characters who bid on storage lockers that are put up for auction. High bidder gets the locker and all of the contents within. Sometimes there's trash. Sometimes there's treasure. No, there's always treasure of some kind.
No matter which bidder wins which locker in each episode, there's always some unique, odd, one-of-a-kind, valuable item within the locker. Always. Of course if there wasn't, there wouldn't be much of a show. The bidders have to win something of interest which they then take to an expert appraiser to find out just what the item is and how much it's worth. That's the format and structure of the show. The appeal to the home viewer is that you too could attend one of these storage unit auctions near you, bid on and win a locker and discover some rare and valuable treasure within. Good luck with that.
I've read unsubstantiated reports that the contents of the lockers are known to the show's producers in advance and that sometimes certain items are salted away within said lockers in order to insure a big pay day for the winning bidder. I don't know if this is true or not. I hope not as I'd like to believe that this show is on the up and up and these bidders (who are all fun, crazy characters) are just skilled and/or lucky in winning the lockers.
But still, it does make you wonder. How do they always, always, always end up with something of value? As the Joker (Jack Nicholson) said in BATMAN (1989), "Where does he get those fabulous toys?"
Nice review. Alas, I believe that reality shows are anything but real TV being what it is. Recall the tedium from time to time in the PBS show that simply followed the Loud family. Now producers have to insure that there's a payoff for the viewers and if they have to concoct said payoff, well, that's show biz. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Jim. We've both worked in television, so we know how the sausage is made and it ain't pretty. There's got to be a pay off, otherwise there's no show and the producers aren't about to leave anything to chance. I still enjoy the show. I just use the old willing suspension of disbelief when watching it.
ReplyDelete