Week after week, my favorite public television program features shots of (mostly) elderly men and women crowded together in long, seemingly endless lines, dwarfed by vast and anonymous enclosures. Stoically cradling their most precious possessions in their arms, or hauling them on makeshift wagons, they tentatively shuffle forward. A few young children dart in and out of the lines, but teenagers and young adults are almost entirely absent from the scene. Other shots reveal that these lines have a terminal point: a series of collapsible metal tables at which officious men and women quickly inspect the proffered Cane Rack or Fruit Lamp, then direct the owners of these items elsewhere. Is this, you ask, a program about uprooted populations, the victims of war, famine, ethnic cleansing? Are these refugees, bribing border guards on their way to political asylum in some neutral country?

No, and no. The public television program I've just described is The Antiques Roadshow, currently PBS's top-rated show; it attracts 14 million viewers per episode. Once a week, the roadshow that gives this program its name sets up at a convention center somewhere in the United States: Cincinnati, say, or Durham, or Hartford. The locals are invited to come on down and bring along whatever old and attractive Parlour Pistols or Majolica Fountain they may own. Here, they are told, their Alaskan Hunting Helmet and Titanic Survivor Letters will be appraised by the assembled professional antiques appraisers from Sotheby's, or Christie's, or Skinner, free of charge and with no strings attached. Inevitably, in each city, a number of the roadshow's attendees will have brought with them an object worth featuring in a special appraisal close-up; each is filmed the same way. A bowtie-wearing expert sits at a table with the object and its owner. The owner explains what he or she knows about the 19th Century Dental Set. He inherited it from a relative; she bought it at a yard sale 30 years ago; he bought it from an antique store, but thinks it's worth more than he paid for it. Then we watch as the expert handles the Dental Set, rotates it, up-ends it, points out its inscriptions, flaws, and maker's marks. In a friendly, democratic tone, he tells us something educational about the craftsperson who built it, or the production method used to create it. This is, after all, public television.

Then comes the part for which we've all been anxiously waiting. If the object was of particular historical or aesthetic interest, or if the appraiser was in an especially didactic mood that day, the suspense has about half-killed us already. After asking the owner, ritualistically, if he or she has "any idea" how much it's worth, the appraiser tells us how much this item would probably "fetch" if it were sold at auction. The Web site for The Antiques Roadshow claims that the show's astonishing success is due to its having all the "drama, mystery, and excitement" of a show like ER. The drama, mystery, and excitement, however, comes not from the viewer's hope that dark family secrets will be revealed by the object's owner. We don't get excited until the appraiser asks the owner how much he or she thinks the Clay Scottish Piglet is worth. Although the owner always says, "No, I couldn't even guess!" it's clear that each and every person whose Piglet is featured on the ARS nurses a burning hope that theirs is worth somewhere north of ten thousand dollars. Why does everyone pretend that they care at all about the object's unique history? Why doesn't anyone just say, "Get to the point, will you? How much is my autographed photo of Buffalo Bill worth?"

Erik Davis argues, in an article for the Web site FEED, that objects arrive at the roadshow imbued with personal significance, but leave "fixed in the objective brine of expert reckoning." Despite its pleasures, Davis concludes, "Antiques Roadshow subtly erodes on of the most basic joys that possessions can provide: the way they slip outside the market and into your life." If Davis is right, what is this show doing on PBS? I thought PBS was supposed to be an antidote to the marketplace mentality of commercial television? Isn't PBS supposed to prize community, history, art for art's sake? Yet here it is, merrily playing the pricing game. The program's "historians" aren't professors, they're salespeople. Why not hire a cultural anthropologist, or an authentic historian? Because they probably wouldn't know how much a Ram Carousel Piece would fetch at auction these days. Instead, host Chris Jussel interviews the curator of some minor local museum, and then we're right back to business. The creators of the ARS seem comfortable promoting the idea that no matter what an object's history may be, unless that object can be priced, it's just not very interesting. How does PBS justify this in their fund-drive literature, I wonder?

Perhaps it is seen as the duty of a publicly-funded television show not to challenge America's values, but to uphold and defend them. Let's face it: most of us, upon realizing that a forgotten ancestor had collected an actual Folk Art Chicken at some point during his or her journey through life, will feel that our own mundane, weary existences have suddenly been made exciting and meaningful. Not because it turns out that we're descended from a fascinating person with excellent taste, but because it turns out that we're descended from a very ordinary person who managed to acquire a Folk Art Chicken that is now worth $40,000! What disturbs me about the ARS is not, apparently, what disturbs Erik Davis. He feels sorry for the objects on the program—I feel sorry for the people. I feel sorry for us.

We ARS fans like the friendly and knowledgeable experts, and sometimes can even allow ourselves to be convinced that they're the historians the show tries to make them out to be, and not professional traffickers in antiques. We like the drama, the mystery, and the excitement of trying to figure out whether or not the owner has already had his or her object appraised, and is just pretending to have no idea of its monetary value. We sit on the edge of our seats wondering if they're going to be made to look foolish, or if they'll be redeemed. Will they win or lose? We wonder how we'd react in that situation: would we hide our greed well? We even enjoy the credit sequence, during which the mechanics of the show are revealed, as the ARS roadies pack up the lights and the tables and the cameras. Oh, to be an ARS roadie! (Now the band is on the bus/and they're ready to go/gonna drive all night and do the show in Chicago, or Detroit, I don't know/we do so many shows in a row...) But mostly we are seduced by the thrill of watching people luck into fortune, which seems to be one of the only ways to get ahead these days.

Writing in the Baffler several years ago, Kim Phillips explained that so many poor people spend what little extra cash they have on lottery tickets because "at question here is not the lottery per se, but... the question of where you can get in life by saving money; the lottery should make sense to anyone for whom the answer is, 'nowhere.'" Our society doesn't hold much hope for anyone who lacks family money and/or venture capital. For those bound to wage-labor jobs in an era in which real wages keep falling and the cost of living keeps rising, the only hope for happiness and some measure of security seems to lie in accidents and luck.

The ARS doesn't ask whether this sort of thing is right or wrong; it just keeps asking—is the New Zealand Tiki Doll Necklace that Great Uncle Ronny left to his grand-nephews and -nieces such a fabulously rare and exotic example of the genre that it can fetch a lot of money now? Or not? Perhaps this show is about uprooted populations, after all—refugees from Self-Reliance. The promoters of the show talk about it with such warmth, such a folksy glimpse of "The Real America," and of "Making History Come Alive." But why do we need to have our history come alive by bringing our personal objects and antiques to be appraised? Why don't we keep meaning to ourselves, in our homes? Instead we unearth ourselves and our objects and bring them to the ARS. Once they're appraised, they're forever changed—but so are we. The market forever displaces us and our hidden meanings.