American Pickers has little to offer in the way of history

Cydnee9999

American Pickers, including History's stable of reality programming called vérité documentaries are predictable, contrived, and largely devoid of any history. If you like your history by the thimble-full, then History's American Pickers will satisfy your demands. If the viewer is content with the occasional pop-up that the producers want you to believe displays all the history you need to know about the item, then American Pickers will meet your needs.

If, on the other hand, you desire a program that would explain why the person featured in a segment started collecting, buying, or selling you won't find out that information on American Pickers. The viewer will be given such a superficial recounting of the seller's life; it will not register as being significant. Nor will their commentary enlighten the viewer as to how the item was used or why it is deemed a collectible or worthy of the pickers' attention. That is, unless you know that Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Fritz frequently sell items they find to decorators, prop houses, private collectors, or buy items for their own collections of motorcycles, bicycles, and oil cans or as set decorations for the television set that is Antiques Archaeology in LeClaire, Iowa.

Every airing of the program is the same with the same type of items featured on virtually every episode. How long American Pickers can go on highlighting motorcycles, bicycles, gas pumps, road signs, and the like is debatable. The shift from featuring hoarders on Season One to the established collectors/businesses on Season Two is very apparent. American Pickers has gone from the controversial to the repetitiously sublime in 26 episodes.

From Season One, Episode One, Big Bear, where the perception of many viewers was that Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Fritz had taken unfair advantage of Leland, caused History to issue a statement advising that Leland was in fact savvy negotiator with family present during the filming of the segment. It is hard to determine if the intent of that episode was to ignite viewer indignation or show just how chilling a cold call of an elderly person can be. The same can be said of Season Two's, Episode 5, Getting the Boot, where the sale of a grave marker with the name of a real person ignored completely the general disdain the general population and certain collectors have for the resale of grave markers, tombstones, or other funerary items. The grave marker was praised on episode as being a rare find and appraised as being worth a considerable amount of money. Again, it is hard to determine whether this episode was intentionally controversial to rile up viewers or a reaffirmation that Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Fritz will buy anything if they can make a profit on it. It is worth mentioning that History issued another statement regarding the vetting of this particular item which raised more questions instead of answering them.

What is very apparent from watching American Pickers is that this program is reality television to the core and not about history. It is about the interaction between the cast and the people they visit. It is about the deal; the negotiations that go on between buyer and seller. It is about the profit that can be realized from such negotiations. The cha-ching sound of the cash register when the Bought/Sold/Valued pop-up appears is testament to that aspect of the program. Any historical information that is featured during an episode is an afterthought and superficial. This is a program about buying and selling and little else.

In the end, what American Pickers and History gives the viewer is dramatization without illumination which in the end diminishes the reason for their existence.

score 2/10

Cydnee9999 27 September 2010

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2316624/