A new reality series that effectively finds a sweet spot between “Hoarders” and “Storage Wars,” Syfy’s “Collection Intervention” is about obsessive geeks whose aggregations of “Star Wars” and “Batman” memorabilia are crowding them out of their own homes.
It’s a series that speaks to the geek hoader in me and, I suspect, will speak to quite a number of Ain’t It Cool readers.
(Before Harry Knowles founded this site, he and his father enjoyed long careers dealing in collectables, and just the parts of their staggering stash I’ve seen in person still easily dwarf -- in value and cubic footage -- anything you’ll see on the show tonight.)
One big difference between “CI” and “Hoarders” is there are no massive garbage trucks backing up to the geek hoarder homes; the geek hoarders have actually accumulated stuff that’s worth something.
Indeed (spoiler alert), both the female “Star Wars” collector and the male “Catwoman” obsessive end tonight’s episode several thousand dollars richer than they were in the episode’s opening scenes.
The values of these hoards barely mitigate our perception of these people as unhealthy. When the “Star Wars” lady starts bawling over parting with her tiniest plastic $10 ewok figurine (which dwells inches from her 90-inch actual-size Han-in-Carbonite monstrocity -- a piece she’ll not be selling), she seems only slightly saner than the lady who sleeps on the floor next to a mountain of car batteries and toilet paper.
It’s fun digging through the collections, and the series offers a potentially valuable education. A&E’s “Storage Wars” usually just tallies up a lot of suspect guesswork – Gollum-like locker-bidder Dave “Yuuup” Hester can point to a wobbly dinette set and claim it’s worth a million dollars, but we rarely see any money entering that man-purse cleaving to Hester’s epic beltline. With “CI,” we actually get to see how much buyers will pay for nerdbait.
If you’re like me and have been gathering nerd bric-a-brac for decades, you’re naturally curious about where you might be able to unload your beloved accumulations and for how much. Series host Elyse Luray, an art historian, expert appraiser and licensed auctioneer, has a lot of good ideas about turning tchotchkes into cash. I’d love to turn her loose on my stuff.
And I’m ready to start collecting this series on my DVR.
10 p.m. Tuesday. Syfy.
