'Intervention' & 'Hoarders' Premieres: Crazy? Or Crazy Good?

New seasons of 'Intervention' and 'Hoarders' premiered last night on A&E, and while both feature uncomfortable portraits of people hitting rock bottom, 'Hoarders' is ultimately way less of a bummer than 'Intervention.'

For seven seasons, 'Intervention' has gripped audiences with intense true stories of how addiction ruins real lives, and the eighth season premiere, 'Linda,' was no exception. Profiling a failed actress with an addiction to painkillers, the episode gave audiences equal parts sideshow spectacle and family drama, a recipe the series has long-since perfected since it began airing in 2005.
New seasons of 'Intervention' and 'Hoarders' premiered last night on A&E, and while both feature uncomfortable portraits of people hitting rock bottom, 'Hoarders' is ultimately way less of a bummer than 'Intervention.'

For seven seasons, 'Intervention' has gripped audiences with intense true stories of how addiction ruins real lives, and the eighth season premiere, 'Linda,' was no exception. Profiling a failed actress with an addiction to painkillers, the episode gave audiences equal parts sideshow spectacle and family drama, a recipe the series has long-since perfected since it began airing in 2005.

Having won Emmys and earned consistently high ratings, 'Intervention' works primarily as a formula show, with every episode following the same format, tell the story of an addict through talking-head interviews and footage of the individual incoherently high, belligerently drunk or painfully enduring the ugly stages of withdrawal. Eventually, family, friends and a trained counselor gather to confront the subject to get proper treatment (hence, the title: 'Intervention'). And largely, if not begrudgingly, the addicts agree to go.


What's extraordinary about 'Intervention' (other than it brings me to tears, without fail, every episode), is that it demonstrates how addiction affects all classes, races and genders. But the flipside is that it also has made entertainment out of watching others suffer through and deal with their own crippling problems.

While it's true that the show's documentary style relieves it of a certain level of moral responsibility, especially when the end result is getting the subjects into treatment, there's still something undignified and voyeuristic about watching someone reveal their deep-seeded issues on national TV -- and under false pretenses no less (subjects are told that they are in a documentary about addiction, but not one that leads to the always-climactic intervention).

'Intervention' is often criticized for focusing too much on the high-drama substance abuse and emotional confrontations, with the treatment process presented as no more than an afterthought during the closing credits. That said, A&E reports that the series has a 77 percent sobriety rate, far above the national recovery rate for addicts, so they must be doing something right.

If 'intervention' is a cautionary tale about substance abuse, then 'Hoarders' is a cautionary tale about clutter. Profiling individuals with an uncontrollable tendency to hoard, or compulsively collect useless items, the show plunges the depths and extremes of what the human psyche and the human stomach can withstand.


Like its sister show, the subjects in 'Hoarders' are in dire straits, with their home and family at risk in some way, and so after some brief back story, hoarding experts and a clean-up crew arrive to clear out the mess in two days. Unlike "Intervention,' however, the show favors the stomach-churning moments to the heart-wrenching ones, and it encourages workers to describe what they smell behind the masks they wear.

This second season premiere featured Augustine, a 68-year-old mother-of-two, whose New Orleans home was in such a state of squalor that the remains of two decomposed cats -- ones that she'd last seen 10 years ago -- were discovered amid the homes' shoulder-high piles of rotting garbage.

According to the series, hoarding is a disorder that affects three million people, and requires intense therapeutic treatment like any other mental illness. But without question, hoarders are treated less sympathetically than the addicts on 'Intervention.' After enduring the shame of their abject filth broadcast on television and their treasured possessions thrown away, hoarders aren't offered that redemptive moment that 'Intervention' gives its participants when they can finally accept the help they need. No, hoarders have already agreed that there's a problem, and so the focus is less on the hoarder and more on the disgusting horrors lurking inside their home.

And yet, for all its flaws, 'Hoarders' is insanely watchable. If nothing else, the series works as a sure-fire way to confirm your own sanity. After witnessing homes like Augustine's you might just let that load of laundry that's overflowing from the basket go another day. Just as long as you still know where the cat is.