Billy the Exterminator

This is a television show that I'm binge watching on Amazon Prime.

The show is about a goth-rocker insect/pest exterminator, and his family, who service the Bossier City/Shreveport area. That has my interest because I used to live at the Barksdale AFB in Bossier City and my first job was at the far side of Shreveport, Quality Inn, where I did pretty much everything. But that's a whole 'nuther story.

Billy appears to be a small and thinly built man compared with other men who appear next to him on the show, and his brother as well appears to be very thin with extremely lithe posture and poses. Then there will be a story in which the principal is a few inches shorter and that blows the whole theory. Both brothers are athletic and agile. I'd say around forty years of age.

"Everyone knows I don't like heights," and, "I can't stand tight spaces," and "I'm deathly allergic to bee stings." Oh, get over yourself and get busy.

A few of the first episodes include lengthy segments about the brother's failed love life and I'm all skip, skip, skippidy doo dah through all that extra female-audience crap. This show is about vermin and pests and extermination techniques. Not about women. So the production's need to include that is annoying.

You'll notice as it goes, the editing shows quite a lot of extra shots that would interfere greatly with the straightforward task at hand. For example Bill uses a clamp on the end of a pole to handle dangerous snakes at a distance. The scene is shot showing Bill poking and grabbing at a snake inside a cabinet. Then a 1/2 second shot from the snake's point of view of the grabby-pole snapping from inside the cabinet looking back at Bill holding the pole. That shot would take putting a camera inside the cabinet and having Bill snap at the camera, most likely after the snake was captured and then edited into the spot. There are several of these types of shots throughout each episode, so that means quite a lot of extra shooting and editing.

The show exposes the lives of the people in the area. Some people who call the exterminators are wealthy with beautiful homes and landscaped lawns. Several people who call for help are extremely poor and their houses mere shacks barely standing up. Tin roofs, fallen in porches, trashy back yards, peeling paint and broken down side walling, crumbling eaves. Holes in floors where snakes come into the house. Some places are real dumps. Several people living in dumps. Bill cuts into the outside of walls to expose gigantic bee hives and wasp nests that take over entire areas. And left un-shown is how all the damage Bill does to brickwork and wood siding and plasterboard interiors and suspended ceilings, broken windows and vermin-chewed wiring are patched up. It's not always clear if another company comes in to do that, or if they are left as they are.

Here's the thing that is most obvious. Cost is never explained. His mother works in the office, she's shown with the phone all time, and her sole duty appears to be directing Bill's and his brother's activities. Along with complaining about his father doing anything at all. They never discuss cost.

So I add that.

No matter the task, no matter how long it takes, no matter the obvious cost in terms of time and materials or distance traveled, at the end of the segment, two per episode, at the point of resolution as Bill explains the success to the person who called them, I put on my unselfconscious country voice and say aloud, "That'll be one hundred dollars."

I make everything cost $100.00 no matter how quick or how long and tiresome and expensive the task. Clearing out a beehive from a New Orleans porch column thirty feet up that takes all day in 110℉ summer heat, "That'll be one hundred dollars." Five minutes to catch an armadillo in Bossier City and return it to the wild, "That'll be one hundred dollars." Two days to catch and dispose of 100 rats in Chicago that takes 100 rat traps, "That'll be one hundred dollars."

That's another thing. They never reuse a rat trap. They're all one-use.

I crack myself up by adding the cost twice each episode but having no discrimination at all about actual estimated cost. Because the show makes it look they do this for fun. Bill is helping someone he knows in Chicago. He also helps another exterminator who calls him frequently, and another man who captures and resettles alligators. He helps veterinarians that he knows, and he helps a women in New Orleans who runs free lunches for homeless, and if Bill did all that for free then he'd be out of business in one week. But the show never discusses cost or payment for anything. No matter how much spray they use. While they show the home base and two new large trucks and the boat and the flashy motorcycle the family buys presumably from business cash flow and from payment from the show's production. None of the actual transactions are ever shown.

"Thank you for taking care of that fox."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for taking care of those pine beetles."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

'Thank you for removing that snapping turtle."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for removing those killer bees, I can finally use my lawn mower."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for catching those fifteen raccoons."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for removing that swarm of red wasps. Now my boy can play in the back yard."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for removing those ten thousand Mexican bats that pooped all over my ceiling."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for killing those hundreds of rats."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank God you got rid of that alligator. Now I don't have to worry about it eating my baby."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

"Thank you for removing those two peacocks. Now the children can play outside."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

Over and over and over, twice each episode, and more when they give away some exotic snake, turtle, alligator, or poisonous gila monster. *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."

You see the sweat pouring off their faces from long hard work in unbearable heat for an entire day. You feel the pain of the bee stings in series, the bites from raccoons, squirrels, rats, and the barbs of porcupines. You learn the diseases carried by vermin, the filth and the piles of crap built up inside walls and in attics by vermin. They describe the intense smells of the areas they enter. They can smell bees, bats, rats and racoons.

They never show any family member stopping to eat anything or stopping to go the bathroom themselves. They never show them washing their trucks while always showing them shined up and then rolling through mud and spinning their wheels in red mud. They show the family arguing and discussing the brother's pathetic love life but they never mention Bill's wife (who quit the show midseason), or anything about Bill's wife. They show Bill's interaction with elderly, his grace with various races and the respect with all women. They show his interaction with families and with young children. They show Bill talking to children and having children explain what they saw. They show the intense interest that boys have with what Bill does and the animals that he catches.

Sometimes they include the children. For example one time a boy was stopped from being outside because an alligator took up on their property. When they caught the giant alligator they asked the boy if wanted to tape up its mouth and without hesitation the boy ran straight to the front of the alligator and whipped the tape around the alligator's mouth expertly. Quite an impressive scene. They show Bill teaching the children who watch him from safety inside how to approach the adversity presented by vermin that stopped their home activities.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. You restored my girl's bedroom."

     *loud unselfconscious country voice added at home* "That'll be one hundred dollars."