Storage Wars: Urban Vultures Bid on Mystery Lockers

By now, most of you probably know I prefer either high or low culture — middlebrow fare is too safe, too predictable. So give me Shakespeare or give me infomercials, quirky reality shows or wacky religious programming. I don't want to get invested an hour at a time in the lives of fictional doctors or cops or lawyers: life is way too short and my disbelief is harder and harder to suspend.

For me, television serves mostly as a kind of post-supper tranquilizer. I have just enough energy left to speed-Tivo my way through a sporting event or catch up on the political bickering on Fox News or MSNBC. Of course, a microscopic amount of that goes a very long way…..

Thus, my current fascination with scavenger shows, a sign of these strained economic times if ever there was one. From American Pickers to Antiques Roadshow to Storage Wars, there is no shortage of shows that deal in finding castaway diamonds in a dustbin. And the competition is downright fierce.

Storage Wars (A&E, Tues — 10/9C) is my current favorite. A hardy (and hard-bitten) cadre of thrift shop owners, turnover artists and out and out hustlers bid on the mystery contents of abandoned storage lockers, some of which contain some surprisingly valuable stuff. Auction bidders get a brief, perimeter gaze at the goods before the bidding starts. Then the fur starts to fly…

Resorting to the tried-and-true cutaway shots of bidders commenting on the day's fare or harshly dissing their hated competitors, one gets an intimate glance at these determined bric-a-brac vultures hovering over the detritus of others' economic failure. The former owners of the locker contents failed to pay their rent on time — you snooze, you lose. Brute, Darwinian reality at its best!

Of course, once the bidding stops and someone has spent $1500 or so on a wing and a prayer, the producers cannily cut to a commercial, prolonging the suspense. Did they invest in a cache of vintage baseball cards, or a non-working humidifier and some asthma inhalers? You'll have to wait two minutes to find out. Genius, pure genius.

I admit to speaking of these trivial matters with a measure of irony, but must also confess that watching such venal proceedings beats the heck out of hearing Newt and Mitt go at it again. I might just hie down to one of those storage joints and see what kind of high-end junk I can hornswoggle! Do I hear $1200? SOLD! to the gullible blogger from LA!