'Hardcore Pawn,'
second-hand goods
TruTV series lifts much from History's 'Pawn Stars'
By Tom Conroy
Aug 23, 2010
People in TV routinely steal ideas, but they usually try to cover their tracks.
TruTV’s new reality show “Hardcore Pawn” not only has the same subject as the History Channel’s hit “Pawn Stars”; it also makes the same pun on “porn” in its title and runs at the same time, Mondays at 10 p.m.
Surprisingly, “Hardcore Pawn” itself is not a rip-off of “Pawn Stars.” But in the ways that it differs, it suffers by comparison.
In the new show’s defense, it probably presents a truer picture of the real day-to-day life of pawnbrokers. “Pawn Stars,” set in Las Vegas, tends to feature customers walking in with valuable collectibles that have a historical significance that the show explains to us, providing some redeeming social value.
“Hardcore Pawn,” by contrast, is a proud member of the slice-of-lowlife school of reality TV, like “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” “Scrappers” and “Repossessed.” Set in Detroit’s “biggest, baddest pawn shop,” American Jewelry and Loan, it tends to feature down-on-their-luck customers trying to get cash for the usual jewelry or random oddities.
Most of these series teach us that beneath the surface, even people in dodgy professions are usually decent, hard-working folks who, while colorful, are more like us than we would imagine. The proprietors of American Jewelry and Loan, the Gold family, are perhaps a little more drab than the average viewer. The paterfamilias, Les, would be well advised to lose the gold chains and the greasy, stringy balding-guy mullet.
Much of the premiere episode, which aired last week, is taken up by an irate female customer who can’t produce a pawn ticket but insists that the Golds have her jewelry. Her argument with the shop’s staff is about as interesting and pleasant as it would be in real life.
Returning to the store, still without a ticket, she starts another argument, which ends with her saying to Les, “You’re not making it home to your wife tonight.” In an obscenity-filled tirade, Les berates his security staff for letting her go without getting her license number.
In the second episode that aired last week, Les takes his family to a gun shop to buy protection. When he tries to bargain over the price of holsters, the gun dealer throws him out of the store, occasioning more bleeps.
In lighter moments, customers come in with unusual items: a stripper pole, a homemade cannon, two horses and a donkey. Where “Pawn Stars” might give us a little lesson on the history of stripping, “Hardcore Pawn” settles for shots of customers — and one of the horses — getting up on the platform.
Les and his two adult children that work in the shop, Ashley and Seth, tend to bet on whether they can make a profit selling these odd items. Since the guys have a low opinion of Ashley’s business skills, viewers should be rooting for her as the underdog, but it’s hard to care.
Les explains at one point that the shop has to check to make sure the goods aren’t stolen. He neglects to make an obvious point that holds true for TV: Many things that aren’t stolen still aren’t worth very much.
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