Hoarders: The Complete Season One

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Average Customer Rating:	5.0
Release Date:	2010-05-25
Publisher:	A&E HOME VIDEO
Actors:	\|
Aspect ratio:	1.33:1
Audience rating:	NR (Not Rated)
Format:	Closed-captioned; Color; DVD; NTSC
Language:	Original Language: English;
Weight:	0.2 pounds

Product Categories

Miniseries; All A&E Titles; Movies & TV on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Trade-In; DVD; DVD Deals; Unrated; US & CA DVDs: Region 1; Decade (feature_three_browse-bin); English; DVD

Product description

Take a fascinating look inside the lives of people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis.

Whether they're facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, these hoarders are desperately in need of help. In each 60-minute episode of Hoarders, A&E follows two people struggling to overcome their compulsive behavior while experts work to put them on the road to recovery. For some, throwing away even the tiniest possession a sponge, a button, an empty box is so painful that they won t be able to complete the cleaning process...no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer's guidance give them the strength to recover. At the end of each episode find out who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay and who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.

BONUS FEATURES: Additional Footage

DISC 1 (4 episodes, approx 188 min): Jennifer & Ron/Jill; Linda/Steven; Tara/Betty; Jake/Shirley;

DISC 2 (3 episodes, approx 141 min + bonus): Kerrylea/Lauren; Patty/Bill; Paul/Missy & Alex; Bonus

Customer reviews

« horrifying and disgusting, but you can't stop watching »

Hoarding causes horror and sickening problems that are beyond the scope of most so-called horror movies, because this is real life. Hoarding is a type of OCD, and the people who have it live in conditions that even the poorest people of the world would find unbearable.

There are cat hoarders, food hoarders, scrap metal hoarders, trinket hoarders, magazine hoarders, and more. Some accept help and some refuse it. All have serious emotional issues and problems that extend into their families and workplaces. Even the city and county authorities get involved sometimes when the situation becomes so bad that lives and property values are endangered.

It's upsetting, and yet it is hard not to watch. And then you feel the urge to go and clean your house!

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-08-21

« The Hoarders DVD »

The DVD arrived within the time promised and the quality of the product was ever bit as good as promised as well. Thank you...

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-08-04

« A fascinating look at a dabilitating disease that ruins lives, you cannot look away! »

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).

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-05-28

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