It is said that the hunger for reality programming will eventually see every job available on Earth having its own show. I don't know who said it. If no one has, I just did.
I may have come up with it while watching Billy the Exterminator (previously named The Exterminators, before A&E realized that it's better to have one protagonist and run with him). As the title suggests, this reality show follows the business of an exterminator doing his job. Specifically, Billy Bretherton of Vexcon Animal and Pest Control in Benton, Louisiana, whose job it is to... pull beehives out of walls, or get rid of dead cats. And stuff.
Vexcon is a business started and owned by Billy, run by his own family. His brother Ricky and occasionally his dad Big Bill go out in the field with him, though Billy is the resident expert on how Vexcon controls pests. Billy's mother Donnie is the office manager, running the invoices of the business. There are other Vexcon exterminators/employees, of course, it being a real business and all, but they appear only sporadically on the show. People in the Shreveport area probably call up Vexcon hoping to have Billy to work their case, only to be disappointed when a non-famous exterminator show up.
During the first half of the first season, A&E (being A&E) tried to inject some Intervention-style family drama into the mix. The pilot specifically focuses on Ricky getting back together with his ex-wife Pam and hiring her to be a Vexcon employee, which pissed off the rest of the family, especially Billy. There's a slightly humorous part in there where, in the middle of an argument about Pam, Billy mentions on camera that this is the first time he's ever criticized anything about her to Ricky in all the years of them being together. I wonder what's different this time...
Though it appears as if this is going to set up the rest of the series, this aspect phases out of the show pretty quickly. Both Pam and Billy's wife Mary resigned from Vexcon during the course of Season 1, and the show then clicks onto the formulaic, pest-of-the-week problems, with his family providing comic relief with their witty/sassy attitudes.
One of Vexcon's unique draws is that Billy claims to be a huge animal lover, so he will always look for alternative, non-lethal ways to capture animals using organic, non-chemical, environmentally conscious methods. He would then relocate these captured animals in the wild or reserves, usually in the closing of the episodes, and the viewers would go "dawwww" at the sight of Billy freeing these raccoons and such from human civilization. If you're going to make a show about a business that disturbs and gets rid of animals, I suppose it helps to make sure that the guys doing it appear nice and humane.
It's hard to pinpoint what exactly attracted A&E first: Billy's job or Billy himself. He's not exactly your average exterminator (which is why he has a TV show, I guess). A metalhead/goth dressed exclusively in black, mostly leather and studs, he goes so far as to, in one episode dealing with bees, refuse to wear the traditional beekeeper's outfit. Instead, he just zips up a black leather jacket and put on black, skeleton-patterned motocross mask and gloves. He ends up getting stung seven times, but whatever, dude.
Ultimately, there are only so many different pests that can plague homes, even in Louisiana swampland, so episodes get repetitive sometimes and after a while it becomes dull, but Billy being who he is, the draw of the show is partly to hear him talk and talk and talk.
Billy is well-versed in biology and entomology, so on each job he goes to, he'll always take the time to explain to the camera what kind of animal or insect he just encountered, what their Latin name is, what diseases they carry, and basically just their entire encyclopedia entry. I'm skeptical that Billy actually has all of these memorized, no matter how much of an expert he is, but at least it's educational. Honestly, this show belongs on the Discovery Channel way more than half the crap that's actually on there.
DVD Bonus Features
The first season set has a ton of features that focus deeper on Billy's personal life more so than the show. One is an MTV Cribs style look at his home, which, not surprisingly, is decorated almost entirely in black iron. Then there's one discussing his philosophy in life and how he's obsessed with Secret Societies. The most interesting is one where he tells his life story while navigating a small boat through a gator swamp, talking about how he joined the Air Force envisioning a career in law enforcement, and was hoping to get recruited as a secret agent for the CIA, but was instead assigned to clean bugs out of military vehicles.
Second season features are more or less the same, but less in-depth about Billy and has more behind-the-scenes stuff on the making of the season's episodes.
"Billy the Exterminator: Season 1 & 2" is on sale December 28, 2010 and is rated PG. Reality. Starring Billy Bretherton.
