'Big Brian: The Fortune Seller' premiere
BIG BRIAN: THE FORTUNE SELLER is a series on Tru TV from Atlas Media Corp that follows estate sale supervisor Brian Elenson and his hard-working crew as they try to turn a house full of junk into a goldmine. Here, Brian Elenson inspects an old object. (2011) Credit: Mark Hil / Tru TV/
Among the thousands of items in the average house hopefully lurk "hidden treasure and hidden danger." So says the voluble Elenson, whose Long Beach company 2muchstuff4me claims 200 estate sales a year.
One can only hope they're all as action-packed as tonight's premiere hour, in a Holbrook house jammed with 700 cookie jars, Elvis and Beatles records, century-old rifles and bayonets, a Houdini cane, an Urkel doll and other thrills.
Those would include the "auras" spotted by Anna Dray, the hot blond employee in the company-logo cami. She freaks out in the basement: "Who thinks there's gonna be a cat down there that looks like an Ewok?" Her long-haired boyfriend, Vinny Kiretchijian, is "like a little mole," says Elenson. "He knows how to dig."
Add the muscle of Joe Evans, primed to kick butt when some big Brooklyn dude tries to crash himself a preview. Then, in the second half of the show, let the public in.
MY SAY It's the characters. They're great on "Deadliest Catch," they're great on "Pawn Stars" -- some would say they're great on "Jersey Shore" -- and they're smartly showcased on "Big Brian."
Elenson's perpetually amped up, Anna's doing voodoo, Vinny's using frontloaders to hoist pianos (you know how that's gonna turn out). And they all tawktawktawk like characters from some Scorsese flick.
While some of the action develops before the cameras in a fashion that seems quite, uh, convenient, the feel of the folks is real. And that's what counts.
BOTTOM LINE People you wanna watch, doing stuff you can relate to -- c'mon over and turn my clutter into cash! -- with item-identifying edification along the way.
GRADE A-
