‘Car Masters: Rust to Riches’ Review: Hot Rods in the Rough

Any adult exposed or subjected to the repartee of the very young may have noticed the evolution of “satisfying.” It no longer means “meeting expectations,” or quieting some primal urge. It refers to a sensory response—glee, comfort—in response to certain very tactile acts. The night before Thanksgiving, for instance, a TV news announcer’s child described the blowing up of the Macy’s parade balloons as “satisfying.” There are hundreds of videos on YouTube devoted to the “oddly satisfying,” short bits that involve slime, goo, paint, cake frosting and ball bearings. My personal thing would be the breaking of the sugary burnt surface on a bowl of crème brûlée, though one needn’t actually do anything, or eat anything, to be satisfied.

All of which might explain the romance viewers have had with “Car Masters: Rust to Riches,” a reality show now entering its fifth season—not usually the time a TV series gets reviewed, but not every reality TV series reaches a fifth season. No one on the show is abandoned at sea, or ventures into the wild, unless one counts the auto junkyards of Southern California. It isn’t even the only show that has the same theme: taking rusty old cars and transforming them into works of art. (“Rust Valley Restorers” is another; the ancestor of the genre is “Pimp My Ride.”) But the chemistry has been good, the alchemy even better.