‘Family Trade,’ new twist on an old story

They say a good salesman can sell anything. Sometimes he just has to stretch the truth a little.

GSN’s new reality series “Family Trade” has an intriguing premise that becomes less intriguing when we see what’s actually going on. Once we’ve figured that out, it turns out to be yet another show in which a supposedly colorful group of people buy and sell things. As far as that goes, the group is about average in colorfulness. Viewers who feel a strong need for more of the same should tune in.

Premiering this Tuesday, March 12, at 8 p.m., “Family Trade” distinguishes itself from the many other shows about buyers and sellers of used goods in two ways: First, the goods that the show’s subjects buy and sell aren’t all used, and, second, the stars, a family that runs a car dealership in Middlebury, Vt., supposedly will take any sort of merchandise in exchange for a new car. The question is how they can do this and stay in business.

The answer is a little disappointing. When in the opener we hear that the owner of the dealership, Gardner Stone, is going to sell a new truck for a lot of maple syrup, that’s interesting. But what he actually is going to do is accept half of the value of the down payment in syrup.

So for a $52,000 truck that has a $5,000 down payment, he’s taking only $2,500 worth of syrup. Even if he poured that on his own pancakes, he’d probably still make a profit on the deal.

Since no one is either getting rich or going bankrupt, the stakes are low. What matters is how much we enjoy watching Gardner interact with his employees, who number among them his son Todd and daughter Darcy.

In a comedy role reversal that goes back to long before the invention of the cathode-ray tube, the dad is irresponsible and free-spirited, and the kids are frugal and serious-minded. He’s always making deals they think they can’t recoup and buying things — like a ’70s sports car — that they think they can’t resell.

Although Todd and Darcy are a little drab, Gardner, who wears a cowboy hat and has an unplaceable rural accent, is charismatic, and his relentless optimism is cheering. When Todd questions the syrup deal, Gardner says, “If we can’t sell maple syrup in Vermont, we better get out business.” He might want to look into the lucrative field of delivering coal to Newcastle.

In a move that’s typical of workplace reality shows, Gardner says he’s going to incentivize Todd to help sell the maple syrup by setting up a competition to see which of them can sell half of it for the most cash, with the loser paying for dinner. If “cash” is taken at all literally, Gardner cheats by cutting some barter deals with local restaurants.

In the same episode, the family goes to a small farm to consider taking some pigs as a down payment on a used trailer. They have some purportedly comic difficulty herding the pigs into an enclosure; then Gardner makes some of his employees build a pen right in the dealership’s garage. And poor Todd has to shovel up the manure!

Not too long ago, this mix of commerce and comedy — still done best on History’s “Pawn Stars” — was fresh and fun. But these days TV needs “Family Trade” like Vermont needs more syrup.

Tags: Family Trade, maple syrup