American Pickers might refer to guitar players, or it might just refer to players in search of vintage guitars.
The latest reality offering from The History Channel (DISH 120, Mondays and Wednesdays, 9 PM EST) is now in its second season, and awash in the same controversy as when it first began:
Are these guys just ripping everybody off?
The two stars, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of Antique Archeology, take Antique Road Show to the antiques. Stationed in Iowa, the two bounce around the American Midwest and South in search of rusty treasure– oil cans, bicycles, vintage movie posters and carnival games. They come calling to what is, for a better term, collectors of junk, and then paw through in search of something eBay worthy.
Sometimes the items sell well. Sometimes they don’t. But the fights in online chatrooms continue: Are they preying on unsuspecting elderly dupes, or are they doing no harm in seeing that the owners of the musty prizes are at least given some cash for an item which they aren’t using? How could this show last past the first season- wouldn’t you hold down on your 1957 Radio Flyer when you saw these guys coming up the front walk? Or are the rip off victims, in fact, the audience, victims of yet another History Channel program which has only the most tenuous link to actual history?
In any case, American Pickers has gotten at least one goal accomplished: Nobody is calling the WWII- happy network “The Hitler Channel” anymore. By taking an ironic leap into the twenty-first century world of the candid reality program, The History Channel now finds itself under fire for the same practices as Fox and ABC– aren’t these people being exploited? What are these guys doing to deserve their own series? Isn’t this beneath us all?
But the catch is that American Pickers is entertaining; its two stars enjoy a friendly, if profanity-laden banter, and it speaks to the new economy which has sprung up around Craigslist and eBay. I once saw a housemate grab a pair of shoes for $2.00 at a thrift store, then turn around and make a $30.00 profit online.
“Sometimes I feel guilty about it,” she said, shrugging, “but then I realize that now somebody’s enjoying and appreciating the shoes, and I’m $30 closer to paying off my student loans.”
She might not have a sidekick or a camera crew, but she does have a point about free enterprise.
