Hoarders - Season Finale

This may be the first time ever, that I have felt compelled to watch a show and blog at the same 

I am watching the season finale of Hoarders. The focus of this show are two animal hoarders. One hoards cats and the other hoards rats.

I can understand the cat hoarder. While I no longer love cats the way I used to, I still like them. They are somewhat lovable. But the cat hoarder doesn't just hoard cats. She compulsively hoards everything. She picks through trash. She holds on to things. In the past, she's promised her family that she would sort and recycle all of her belongings, but we fans of the show know that hoarders have a problem with organization. And they have unnatural attachments to their belongings. In the case of the cat hoarder, she is rebelling against a controlling father.

In the case of the rat hoarder, he suffered a great loss which triggered his problem.

Commercial break now - skin care, creepy clown, a new FX original series, Toyota Corolla.

We're back. The rat hoarder just explained how much work he has to do to maintain his rats. Dr. Zasio just introduced herself and she is entering the rat hoard. She is appropriately horrified at the number of rats crawling all over his house. But she is holding  it together and not freaking out. She respects him and the fact that he is using the rats as a substitute for his family. Interestingly, he doesn't hoard anything else but rats. And now Dr. Zasio is tapping into his pain and making him cry. She is going to help him process his grief for his wife who passed away years ago which will hopefully help him deal with his loneliness. But I have a feeling it's going to be a tough clean up. He is really attached to those rats.

Meanwhile back at the cat house, Lisa our cat hoarder is meeting Dr. Scott Hanin who specializes in obsessive/compulsive behavior and anxiety disorders. He is going to help her get control of her life. She is taking him on a tour of her home and while she is able to identify every room they all look the same. Every room is stuffed with crap both literally and figuratively. There is cat shit everywhere.

Commercial. Another exploitative show that pretends to care about its subjects. Will I watch it? Maybe. It might have a friendlier tone than The Biggest Loser. Claymation for hotel.com. I wonder if that was done by that guy I knew in high school who also did Celebrity Deathmatch. Toothpaste commercial. Two people on  a date with fresh breath. I guess that's what you need to date these days - fresh breath. And Lyrica for those citizens with fibromyalgia. Dannon - yum. There's a commercial I can actually relate to. A fashion model using a washing machine - Kenmore. Okay. I guess I need to lose weight to do my laundry now.

Ohp. We're back. This is the segment where the cleanup experts come in and break the hoarders hearts. Matt Paxton is the guy assigned to the rat hoarder. He's a good guy. I like when he does cleanups. The rats are getting exceptional treatment from animal control. Animal control is humanely removing the rats from his home. It is unbelievable the amount of damage the rats have done to this house. They are scurrying every which way. Matt Paxton, the cleanup expert just explained how truly difficult the rat cleanup is.

Uh oh. Glen was just called to the veterinary tent to make decisions about some critically injured rats. He has to put them down. And finally, he's reached his breaking point. Up until this point, he was coping very well, allowing people to help him by not resisting the rat roundup.

Cut to the cat hoarder. I have a feeling her cat cleanup isn't going to go as smoothly. The rat hoarder recognized that his rats had to be taken away in order to save them.

The cat hoarder, in the meantime, hid 40 of her cats from animal control so they wouldn't be taken away. The cat hoarder's father has come to investigate the property where his daughter is living. He has to decide whether or not to evict his daughter from this house.  Her hoarding is definitely about control. Her father is being very understand and she is very defensive which means to me that while he is being nice to her now, he was probably very hard on her when she was growing up. 

Lisa has just walked away from the meeting where everyone gathers to discuss the cleanup. Getting rid of her cats is too much for her to handle. She'll never be able to handle getting rid of junk as well.

We're back from the commercial break. And now we're looking at the animals who have died as a result of the hoarding. A crew is breaking apart the walls of Glen's home to get to the rats. His house has been completely destroyed by his pets. The rats have built pathways in the walls, in the floors. The rat hoarder was able to find the one rat Dr. Zasio told him he could keep. Commander Whitehead was just given a clean bill of healthby the vet. But sadly more dead and dying rats are being brought forth and now Dr. Zasio is helping him deal with the loss of his wife, who died suddenly of a heart attack so many odd years ago.

Cut to the cats in California. Lisa is resisting the cleanup at all costs. She refuses to participate in the cleanup. She feels judged and wants to stop everything before it gets too hard. The cleanup expert is working with Lisa one on one because she couldn't handle the whole cleanup crew going through her things. I am always amazed at how caring these professionals appear to be and often wonder if they are indeed as caring as they appear. Lisa completely checked out of the cleanup. I wonder what her outcome will be.

Commercial. A and E's new show about heavy people looks compelling and upsetting. A and E's Beyond Scared Straight looks ridiculous. Why are they rewarding prisoners with airtime, even if they are scaring kids straight? And why exploit these kids who may or may not commit crimes? Just show them the first season of OZ. That's enough to keep anyone out of jail. Besides, truly sociopathic or psychopathic people wouldn't respond to the scare tactics used in the Scared Straight program to deter them from committing crimes. . . . Whenever I see a commercial for a product with a spokesperson, I always wonder how much the spokesperson is earning everytime the commercial is show.

Sun rise in California over the cat hoarder's home. Good news. Lisa wants to throw everything away. Oh wait. Five minutes later, she's changed her mind. She's done. She's not going to clean up anything. It's so sad when they don't except the help. They're done. She's finished. Another failure. The experts just told her father that Lisa regused the help. He's disappointed and he's probably going to evict her.

Let's see how the rat guy is doing.Glen is luring the rats out of his walls with some food. The rats didn't fall for it and the crews are destroying more walls. They just removed a bathtub to get to the remaining rats. Glen, the rat hoarder, is in amazingly good spirts considering his home has been completely demolished. The rat count is 2000. And before his 2000 plus rats get taken away, Glen says an emotional goodbye. He's definitely one of the more likeable hoarders that have been featured on this program. Dr. Zasio is my favorite expert on the show. She did a good job with Glen.

Final notes of the show. Glen is at peace with the fact that his rats are getting adopted. 500 have already found homes. He is getting grief counseling.

Lisa on the otherhand is hopeless. She refused all offers of aftercare and her father will most likely evict her. Animal control will most likely remove her cats.

The end.