Oddities

Oddities is a strange yet captivating series that aired on Discovery Channel in 2010. The show takes place in New York City’s East Village at a fascinating shop named Obscura Antiques & Oddities. This quirky and rather unique boutique specializes in peculiar and rare artifacts, all having tales as intriguing as their appearances. This program documents the daily operations, customer interactions, and behind-the-scenes explorations surrounding the store and its paraphernalia.

The series provides viewers a peek into a world where the weird, the outlandish, and the bizarre are commonplace. The central figures of the show are the co-proprietors, Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson. They, alongside their buyer Ryan Matthew, have led us through six seasons of unforgettable discoveries and interactions.

Evan's trademark personality blends eccentricity with a hint of old-world charm, and Ryan's fascination with the macabre and morbid provides an invaluable asset for finding curios of a more unsettling variety. Mike, with his colossal, encyclopedic knowledge and passion for the extraordinary and peculiar, completes this trinity.

Oddities offers an often jaw-dropping look into the store's inventory. Included are medical instruments from the Victorian era, homeopathic curiosities, natural history items, and odd animals. The shop boasts a wildly diverse catalog of items, from shrunken heads and mummified body parts to antique mourning jewelry and photographs of death. Every object originates from a bygone era, holding strange tales that blur the lines between science, history, and dark art.

The show isn’t just about artifacts and eccentricities of the shop; it’s about people. Viewers get to delve into the eccentric world of the store's diverse customers, buyers, and sellers. The series showcases individuals from all walks of life, united by their shared love for the strange and unusual. Seasoned collectors seeking unusual trinkets, artists gaining inspiration from the grotesques, prop masters hunting for perfect period pieces, and average folks looking for a unique gift — all find their way to Obscura and contribute in unraveling stories hidden inside these artifacts.

Oddities goes beyond the store, often venturing into the homes and workplaces of the sellers. The cameras venture out to show how some people turn their fascination for the peculiar into full-blown occupations. Viewers meet fascinating individuals, like an artist who uses body parts to craft furniture, taxidermists who elaborate artistic creativity, collectors with vast oddities, and scientists holding on to the past through antique tools of their trade.

As a backdrop to all this, the show features the dynamics between Mike, Evan, and Ryan. Their chemistry brings a quirkily warm tone to the series, adding plenty of humor as they haggle over prices, test out bizarre objects, or venture out on buying excursions. They help bring structure, providing a through-line in each episode and narrating the uniqness of each item and its backstory. They are more than just shop owners; they are historians, anthropologists, and detectives of the odd, decoding the history, value, and cultural significance of the peculiar items that come their way.

For anyone with a fascination for the bizarre and a love for history, Oddities is a rewarding viewing experience. It merges the allure of a mystery novel with the thrill of a treasure hunt, exploring the relationships between objects, their previous owners, and their new proprietors. It has intrigue and entertainment, set against a backdrop of intriguing curios and relics from a world that seems far removed from our own.

Oddities is one of those shows where the line between reality and the boisterous world of reality TV blurs. It doesn't have the polished veneer of traditional antique-dealing shows, nor the feuding melodrama of regular pawn shop series. It lives in its unique middle ground — a celebration of individuality, history, humor, art, and eccentricity. It is a love letter to the forgotten, the strange, and the fascinatingly obscure. The show offers a mesmerizing glimpse into the fantastic, odd world that exists within our own.