I’m not gonna be able to fix this; Hoarders

Reality TV isn’t normally my jam, but sometimes my partner likes to watch a show called Hoarders. I’ve only seen glimpses and clips from behind my partner’s shoulders, but one night they put on the show as they fell asleep. As I was doing my own thing, I could hear the show in the background and one line in particular caught my interest.

Season 14 episode 4 titled Jim, at around 50:52, the doctor says, “We need to stifle this conflict. Now, I’m not gonna be able to fix this (pause) in the amount of time that we have.”

For context, they’re having a group meeting to discuss how they felt about yesterdays clean of Jim’s place, the hoarder. A friend of Jims and their daughter, have beef towards Jim’s daughter. Jim’s friend’s daughter speaks up about how she believes Jim’s daughter is not helping or is at fault. Things start to get heated and the doctor, David Tolin clinical psychologist, chimes in to quell the kerfuffle. I copied the quote from the subtitles provided by Netflix, except for the pause. I added the pause because there really is a second of a pause before he continues his statement. Let’s talk about this quote.

So a fuss is going on and the doctor starts with, “We need to stifle this conflict.” Not much needs to be said here, good way to tell everyone to pause and take a step back. We’re all here for the same goal, to help a person we care about. Then he says, “Now, I’m not gonna be able to fix this” talking about the conflict with the two daughters. He says this because their conflict is not the main focus, helping Jim with his hoarding issue is, but the doctor realizes he can’t leave what he says as is. After a brief pause, the doctor continues with “in the amount of time that we have” stating that he fully believes he could fix their conflict if given an appropriate amount of time. He’s only there for a few days, less than a week, so it really is not a lot of time with this group of people.

This line gave me a chuckle because you can tell the psychologist in him came out after that quick pause. He can’t have a line recorded saying he couldn’t resolve conflict between two parties, that sounds bad for a doctor in his field; he knew he had to add that disclaimer. If he didn’t, people could start questioning his reliability in resolving conflict. You can tell he’s been a psychologist for a while because everything said before the pause was fine, but everything said after, was essential.