'Hoarders' new update edition: Failures pile up. The show helps almost no one.

The Monday Hoarders marathon culminated in a new, first-season update episode. It followed up on the progress of five of the show's grottiest hoarders. The results were not heartening: Four out of five were still jamming their houses with useless knickknacks, food, old newspapers, and heaven only knows what else.

In fact, the implicit promise of the series — that its subjects can be helped with the combination of public exposure (via the Hoarders camera crew filming) and private counseling — was shown to be a joke. Betty, Paul, Jill, and Bill all reverted to their pack-rat ways pretty much as soon as the Hoarders crew pulled out of their driveways, continuing to inflict misery upon their families.

Only the youngest subject, Jake, in his 20s, could be deemed a success. Visited "one year later," as were all the hoarders, his house was tidy. You might recall that Jake had another problem hanging around his house — his father, who drank so much that, a year earlier, he had chatted with the camera crew while sitting outside on the ground, a glass of booze in his hand. Now, Hoarders told us this evening, Dad has "stopped drinking, for the most part." "One or two beers a day," he assured us. Was this a back-door pilot for a new A&E series, Alcoholics?

I guess it's admirable that Hoarders showed us just how difficult it is to overcome the habit. But when I think of all the psychobabble we had to listen to over the course of the season from the trained professionals brought in to help these subjects, I now think, what a waste of nearly everyone's time.

And I can't think of any reason why I (or you) would keep watching for a second season, can you?