Will David, Dorothy, And (Across The Country) Doris Let Hoarders Keep Their Houses From Killing Them?

Severity Of Hoard

David and Dorothy, of Prineville, Oregon, have, apparently, never lived together in a clean home. Dorothy's daughter Kristy says they hoard everything, including food, for which they have a system: they load up a freezer with food, and when it (inevitably) gets full, they just buy another one. There seems to be an area outside that's been turned into a graveyard for freezers full of unimaginably old, disgusting food.

When Dorothy's daughter Kristy refers to the "critters" that infest it, you expect she means ants, mice, or rats, and you'd be right, except for the "or," because all are present. But that's not all: this now-deceased fellow is shown chilling in the bathroom!

I would really love the back story on how a frog even got into the house to die there in the first place, since from what we can tell David and Dorothy don't live on a swamp.

In Philadelphia, Doris seems, at first, like she's just the relatively clean kind of hoarder, as she tells us that a woman can't ever have enough shoes, and that she has an outfit and a wig to go with each pair.

But then she turns out to be the disgusting kind after all.

Guys? That's a toilet.

Severity Score: 16

Relevant Hoarder Backstory

We don't really find out what started either David or Dorothy on the path to hoarding -- just that they both already were hoarders when they met each other: "I knew then I'd met my match," she says. Evidently, things just devolved when they got together and there was no one to check their hoarding impulses.

Doris's daughters describe how clean the house was when they were younger, and that Doris welcomed lots of people to the home and entertained there often. But just after the girls moved out, Doris's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and the house became more and more of a wreck after she passed away.

Backstory Score: 15

Native Likability Of Hoarder

David is a very sweet, kind gentleman with somewhat eccentric taste in headgear.

Dorothy's frailty (which we'll get to) has made him so concerned for her safety that he's apparently abandoned all thought of continuing to hoard himself, and is far more committed to the cleanup than she is. Dorothy herself is not the most fun hang I've ever had on this show: while I am not a doctor, I suspect her wild mood swings are the result of dementia, but knowing their cause doesn't make them any more pleasant to sit through.

Doris is even more obstreperous, lashing out at all her loved ones in turn for having contributed to her hoard by being insufficiently attentive to her, as if those kinds of recriminations are likely to endear her to them more.

Likability Score: 11

Anxiety Of Family/Other Enablers

Considering that Dorothy has scoliosis and disintegrating joint disease and very well could end up paralyzed if she were to fall -- like, say, after tripping on a jar of peanuts or something -- I feel like Kristy could behave a little more urgency. However, when cleanup starts and Dorothy starts crying again about mistakes she made in Kristy's childhood (something that also happened at the pre-cleanup walk-through), it seems like stuff may have gone on that isn't being spelled out for us -- and what IS being spelled out is...not spelled correctly.

Anyway, Kristy keeps saying (with increasing weariness) that she's forgiven Dorothy for whatever happened, but maybe lingering resentment is what's dampening her determination to secure Dorothy's environment.

Taquesha, one of Doris's daughters, has Doris's safety so much on her mind that she's been having nightmares about Doris being killed in her hoard -- as has Doris herself. But that's not all....

Anxiety Score: 13

Inciting Incident

Not long after she and Taquesha compared notes on their bad dreams, Doris did get sick (exactly how is not specified). After crawling down the stairs, she made it to the front door and called out to a neighbour, who extricated her from the house and brought her to the hospital. When she got out, her daughters refused to let her move back into the house, so Doris's ex-boyfriend Julius has taken her in, temporarily.

In David and Dorothy's case, the factor that has led everyone to undertake a cleanup after years of accumulation is Dorothy's deteriorating health. It's now advisable for her to use a walker or scooter, and that's not possible in the house in its current state.

Incitement Score: 13

Assigned Experts

David and Dorothy's house must really be in A STATE, because they get the dream team of therapist Robin Zasio and extreme cleaning expert Matt Paxton. This is Dr. Zasio's first appearance on the show this season, and I am happy to be reunited with her exasperated interventions and blonde, blonde hair. Doris works with Dr. Melva Green and cleaning expert Cory Chalmers, so...kind of a mixed bag over there.

Expert Score: 15

Success Of Cleanup

David basically says they can bring a bulldozer into the house and he'll be fine with it, but Dorothy yaws between tearful gratitude for the help she's going to get, bitter stubbornness (she actually talks Paxton into letting her keep a squashed rat he finds near the one cleared chair she can actually sit in on the grounds that she intends to use it in an art project), and maudlin expressions of how unworthy she is of this attention and assistance. But then Dr. Zasio gets Dorothy to open up, and she admits that her stepfather tried to molest her when she was ten, and that she blames herself, after having had that experience, from not safeguarding Kristy better when she was a child. After that, she starts participating, and the mission is so thoroughly accomplished that Paxton even brings in experts to make the home disability-compliant for her. Dorothy is giddy. And the house actually looks great.

I might not live there, knowing what I know, but I would happily come for a brief visit in non-favourite clothes.

Doris's goes less well. She's so mean to all her daughters, and to Julius, and has let the house get into a much worse state of structural disrepair: there are holes in the walls and floors and the toilet you saw above is so badly broken that there's nothing to do but remove it (and, I assume, pray). But since none of her daughters is trying to have her move in with them, and Julius was only supposed to be a stopgap solution, Chalmers gets the house to a state of marginal livability. I guess they just put that table back over the floor hole Doris had it covering when the cleanup began.

Cleanup Score: 13

Epilogue

Epilogue Score: 16