That was one thing in the show that I think was NOT staged.
Realty television is NOT reality.
I don’t watch that one. A little too much contrived conflict. Same reason I don’t watch American Chopper... ever.
I do watch Pickers, American Restoration and Pawn stars.
Every single one of those shows is staged, and situations are contrived. Does it matter? And anyone who doesn’t realize that the shows are phony is extremely dense.
Attorney: Mr. Hester. Is it your contention that "Storage Wars" is faked?
Dave Hester: YUUUUUUUUP!
Only “reality” show I watch is Duck Dynasty. And I don’t care if it’s staged, it’s still hilarious.
I’ve always assumed the show was rigged. I also thought I’d never want to have to get in a bidding contest when this was being taped.
Of course, I also think it hilarious how they show who won, half the time it seems based on what they say they will get for their own stuff, not what things actually sold for when they ended up in their stores.
I used to watch this show, mostly for Dave Hester, because he was hilarious. I didn’t really like the others, although Jarrod and Brandi are a pretty cool couple, working together on their business. I got to where I was always hoping they would do best, because I admired how they were trying to make a life for their family.
The rest were annoying, and I stopped watching when they brought the new guy on who had all the money and the sense of a snail.
I did like the excitement of finding cool stuff in lockers, of course in reality that almost never happens, which again made me think the show might have been rigged somehow.
If there really were that many great things in that many lockers, the locker owners would just hire a professional to come through the lockers and make the money for themselves, instead of the blind auction. Blind auction tells me that a vast majority are crap, so you are gambling on the occasional “win” and the house holds all the cards.
Oh well I still have pro wrasslin’
I think Dave’s ego took a big bruise, when Barry took him for $5000 on that sofa. Fake or not, I enjoyed it.
Always be leery when, in the beginnings of a lawsuit....the defendant starts “name calling” and makes “accusations”. They cannot refute any of the plaintiffs claims with facts.
A show source? Really? Hester had been asked from the beginning to salt the lockers with valuable stuff from his stores. He started asking about his, and others, legal liabilities. There were meetings between cast and management. Hester wanted to be indemnified against any legal actions. That’s when he got the boot.
All reality shows are staged and filmed for drama and effect to get the audience coming back. Otherwise, “real life” reality is BORING! Who would watch? Not I. I am interested in antiques and old, interesting stuff, so I gravitate towards American Pickers, Pawn Stars, American Restoration, etc. I know they are staged but what isn’t? Some shows I watch for the interaction of the characters; others for the subject matter.
I also like Holmes Inspections, a home remodel reality show. I saw a program where they showed the behind scenes of how they made the program. There was three times the work to set-up and film the work being being done than on the remodel itself. It took an enormous effort and was very time-consuming to film the demolition, and rebuild of the houses they were remodeling. It was very enlightening as to how much these reality shows have to be staged to bring the audience the final product. So only the most naive could think these reality shows are “real”.
Another show I watch is Duck Dynasty. Living in the south, I like to watch the funny antics of the Robertson family and the Duck Commander crew each episode. It’s good clean fun and they even include religion and church in some episodes. There’s always a prayer at the end by the family patriarch, Phil, as the family sits around a big table to enjoy dinner together. Willie always voice overs a moral to the episode and life. Is is staged? Absolutely. Does that make it fake. Not necessarily. Some of you that watch it may not know that the father, Phil, was a talented first string quarterback ahead of the famed second string Terry Bradshaw in college at Louisiana Tech. But he dropped out after three years and didn’t pursue a promising career in the NFL because he liked duck hunting too much. True story. Now that’s some “reality”!
I despise all reality shows with the power of a 1,000 suns.
I've seen that episode like a half dozen times so far, and I've seen the episodes before that with him in it.
My best guess, and this is just an educated GUESS, is that it has to do with money and what they werent paying him.
In the first season that guy, Mark, seemed pretty jovial. He seemed pretty happy to be on the show and happy to share Jarrod and Brandi's excitement when they found something really valuable. But as the seasons went on, his reactions seems to become a little more muted.
In one episode in the second season, I recall Jarrod digging through the contents of the unit they just bought, finding the hidden treasure, then ordering Mark to load up the truck and clean out the unit and then he and Brandi toddles off, leaving Mark to do all that work alone. Mark's reaction was that he didnt seem so happy. He sounded sort of defeated.
Despite the fact that Mark seemed to be Jarrod's friend and a very valued employee, I'll bet that Brandi and Jarrod really wasnt paying him much. Just an average hourly salary not much above minimum wage. Throughout the seasons of the show, it must've weighed on him to be loading and carting around all this secondhand junk. He has to have gotten tired of it. On top of that, the millions of dollars of free publicity for Brandi and Jarrod's store the show provided must've resulted in a large increase in customers, which resulted in more product flying off the shelves which in turn could have resulted in increasing Mark's workload as he and Jarrod had to hustle faster and work harder to get more product to fill their inventory.
According to Dave Hester's laswsuit, by the third season, the show was paying him close to a million a year. I imagine that Jarrod and Brandi were each getting paid about the same. Mark must've watched the two of them raking in all that money from the show and the store, and he probably wasnt seeing a dime of it except for his low, regular salary as an employee of the thrift store. What with his increased workload and his appearances on the show, he probably thought he ought to be properly compensated when he knew they could very much afford it. And chances are that Brandi and Jarrod and/or the shows producers were not kicking in anything to him, especially when he deserved it.
So on that episode where he had that breakdown, Jarrod was as usual ordering Mark to start carting junk around (while Jarrod and Brandi stood by and didnt pitch in to help), that probably was the final straw that broke the camels back.