If you’ve seen one hoarder, you’ve got the idea.
As the A&E series makes clear, there’s a deep-seated inability to let go that typifies those out-of-control collectors of junk and daily ephemera. It’s a real pathology, but it’s not ideally suited to television. “Hoarders,” in its second season, tends to be repetitious.
The camera wallows in the accumulation and records the interpersonal angst the mess causes; an intervention by a therapist helps reveal the illness and remove some of the clutter. The letting go is considered a breakthrough, a professional organizer sometimes helps with logistics, and the crew moves on.
That’s not how “The OCD Project” on VH1 works. This new series bears all the hallmarks of obscenely voyeuristic “reality TV” — including a house temporarily shared by eccentric characters caught at their worst — but then it takes a turn. You think it’s going to mark a new low in titillating TV, and it ends up being surprisingly (perish the thought) educational.
“The OCD Project” airs in a three-hour prime-time block on Thursdays, with repeats including today at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 10 p.m. An array of symptoms is dealt with one by one, as six patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders endure what the host/therapist David Tolin promises will be “the toughest three weeks of their lives.”
Tolin is a board-certified clinical psychologist, founder of the Anxiety Disorders Center at The Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital. He teaches psychiatry at Yale’s School of Medicine and has a recurring gig on “Hoarders.”
As a cable TV host, he’s direct, forceful and telegenic in a tough-love way.
As a therapist, he’s committed to “exposure therapy,” which holds that OCD can be conquered through repeated and prolonged exposure to feared situations, activities or thoughts. If you’re afraid of germs, touch the dirtiest thing you can imagine, such as a toilet bowl. Touch it enough times and the fear loses its power.
The patients obviously were chosen for their outspokenness and willingness to appear before a national TV audience as slaves to their compulsions. Kristen, 28, washes, decontaminates and sanitizes her hands, sometimes for six hours a day. Her compulsion has jeopardized her job. “I can’t stop washing my hands,” she says. “It’s so frustrating.”
Cody, 18, rolls back and forth, in three sets of 18 rolls, just to get out of bed. He feels compelled to touch his nose and chest, too, and acknowledges he has “lost normal teenager life to OCD.”
Traci, a single mom, has the need to turn the kitchen sink faucet on and off many times. “I hate this so much,” she says as she demonstrates her routine. “If I perform the rituals, I can stop bad things from happening.” Specifically, she is consumed with dread regarding the death of her (happy, healthy) 9-year-old son.
Tolin promises to help these and other patients to “regain control” of their lives. It’s about “facing your deepest fears,” he says, and “it’s going to be unpleasant.”
Unpleasant translates to riveting, if difficult, visuals. The audience knows, based on the promos, that the most dramatic, heartbreaking moments are to come.
Is this simply the latest exploitative intrusion of “reality TV” as a means of gathering eyeballs, as if to a carnival freak show? Or is there more going on here?
Gail Martz Nelson, a Denver cognitive-behavioral psychologist specializing in anxiety disorders, watched the first two episodes of “The OCD Project” and found it “respectful.” So far, she said, she is encouraged by the series.
“They’re not making them seem like freaks. You can see the humanity of these people,” she said.
She’s optimistic about what the series could do for public awareness: It might actually prove helpful if more people could recognize what OCD actually entails, she said, “the difference between saying, “I clean a lot, and how it takes up your day.”
From there, who knows what pathologies TV might explore?
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
