9th
The Remaining Pumpkin, the Reigning Pumpkin
In “Failures Pile Up,” an Entertainment Weekly review of the Hoarders “Update Episode,” which aired on Monday, May 31, Ken Tucker describes a series of failed rehabilitations:
In fact, the implicit promise of the series — that its subjects can be helped with the combination of public exposure (via the Hoarders camera crew filming) and private counseling — was shown to be a joke. Betty, Paul, Jill, and Bill all reverted to their pack-rat ways pretty much as soon as the Hoarders crew pulled out of their driveways, continuing to inflict misery upon their families.
He concludes by dismissing the show entirely:
I guess it’s admirable that Hoarders showed us just how difficult it is to overcome the habit. But when I think of all the psychobabble we had to listen to over the course of the season from the trained professionals brought in to help these subjects, I now think, what a waste of nearly everyone’s time.
Though I too am occasionally skeptical of the psychobabble that pours forth on the show—particularly when it seems like a concretized expression of the program’s conventions that actually obscures the idiosyncrasies of a given hoarder’s psyche—I found the “Update Episode” quite heartening, and it actually raised my estimation of of Hoarders.
Of the hoarders revisited in the “Update Episode,” the first two, Paul (left) and Betty (below), are undeniably unwell. If depression had a voice, I imagine it would sound something like Paul, as he threatens at least twice in the segment, to: “Buy me a gun and blow my head off and forget about it all.”
I’m too amateur a diagnostician to know what to make of Betty’s callous repudiation of her family: “I got along without you before I met you; I’m gonna get along without you now.” What is clear, however is that Betty has no interest in working on her problem—or even acknowledging it. At the outset of the segment, she states: “I don’t consider myself a hoarder. I’m more of a saver.”
Jake, the one hoarder whose progress Tucker acknowledges, seems to be as close to cured as one could ever be. His home, once covered with a thick layer of dog hair and empty bottles, now looks clean and livable—comfortable even! Jake’s father, who spent most of the season one episode sprawled on the lawn drinking, now drinks less, and Jake is enrolled in college classes and is working on a memoir about his struggles with OCD and hoarding.
Of course the most exciting part of the “Update Episode” for me was the segment featuring my favorite hoarder from season one, Jill, the Pumpkin Lady, who reminds me of the late, great, Grandma Fontaine.
Jill still keeps some expired food, and calmly comments on the clean-out process: “I can see that there are a number of issues, in particular, in the arguments we had over expiration dates, which are fairly meaningless.” I tend to agree with Jill—though because my sense of smell is diminished by severe allergic rhinitis, I tend to stick to dates on food packaging. But she probably is right that expiration dates are not definitive, and if she choses to put her powerful brain to work in this small rebellion against the tyranny food packaging, so be it.
The most glorious moment in the “Update Episode,” I think, was the tour of Jill’s still-clean house, which culminates in a close-up of one lovely pumpkin that survived the clean-out nearly two years earlier and now occupies a regal position on her coffee table: “The remaining pumpkin is still here—the reigning pumpkin,” she says as she gestures toward the proud faded squash. 
The organizer concedes, “You know, some people want two-year-old pumpkins in their houses, and some people don’t.” He’s absolutely right!
- “Update Episode” (Hoarders)
- “Failures Pile Up” (Entertainment Weekly)
- “The Death of a Pumpkin” (If I Were a Hoarder)
- “A Very Nice Pumpkin” (If I Were a Hoarder)
- Poetry by Fontaine Maverick Falkoff (If I Were a Hoarder)
- “Remember the Pumpkin Lady” gear (CafePress)
