'Big Brian: The
Fortune Seller,' an earache
TruTV series has people shouting at one another
By Tom Conroy
Mar 21, 2011
Certain TV programs are hard to watch. Others are hard to listen to.
TruTV’s “Big Brian: The Fortune Seller” is one of those reality shows that feature as much loud, rude arguing as possible. The effect is repellent. The calmer stretches provide some relief, but the tired subject matter — this is yet another show about buying or selling used merchandise — yields few interesting moments.
In the premiere, airing this Tuesday, March 22, at 10 p.m., Brian Elenson, who runs an estate-sale company called 2 Much Stuff 4 Me, sells off the contents of a house on Long Island, N.Y., owned by what seem to be compulsive collectors. As on all of these shows, some fun comes from seeing hidden treasure pop up out of nowhere. But it’s hard to imagine that any viewers will actively seek this show out when television is littered with such moments.
Anna, Brian’s jewelry expert, provides comic relief. She insists on trying to purify the house of bad “auras” using what seems to be sage spray in an aerosol can. She also shares an interesting tidbit about the business: Some buyers will go without showering or deliberately pass gas in order to drive other buyers away from an object they want to acquire.
Brian tries to persuade her to wear a new “uniform,” a thong with “2MuchStuff4Me” written on the back of the waistband, so that it will show when she bends over. The discussion sounds like the kind of thing that occurs a lot more on reality shows than in real life.
Vinny, the team’s “picker,” who’s also Anna’s boyfriend, has a funny dumb-guy manner. And Joe, the muscle, seems like a good-hearted person even though he has to intimidate people who misbehave.
That’s where the show loses us. The day before the sale, as the team frantically sorts through thousands of possessions, a prospective buyer enters the house and refuses to leave. In a battle of grating voices, he and Brian argue back and forth.
Then Joe enters the fray. Anyone who’s ever heard someone trying to reason with a cocky idiot knows that a little of that goes a long way.
The next day, in a truly unpleasant sequence, two women fight over a fur coat that they both claim they found first. Again, the bickering is hard on the ears.
During both of these fights, viewers will not be asking themselves, “What’s going to happen next?” but rather “When is this going to end?”
But the show’s producers seem to think they’ve found reality gold. Two pre-commercial-break “teases” promise that the fights will continue. After the breaks, to recap, we see some of the fight footage a second time.
Both encounters end so depressingly that it’s hard to believe that real people would allow the program to show their faces.
Since we don’t see much of the selling couple, we don’t really care how the sale turns out. We do root for Brian, who is colorful and likable, but not as much as he seems to think. “I don’t put on sales,” he tells the camera. “I put on a show.”
We viewers have learned by now that all used merchandise isn’t junk. “Big Brian” could have taken its worn subject matter and made it worth watching. But this show is slightly damaged goods.
|
|
|
