Storage Wars: Texas is a spinoff of Storage Wars that follows five professional buyers, Bubba and Ricky Smith, Morris "Moe" Prigoff, Victor Rjesnjansky, and Lesa Lewis and her assistant Jerry Simpson, in Texas as they scour repossessed storage units in search of hidden treasure. A sixth buyer, retired NFL player Roy Williams, is added for several episodes in season 2. Season 3 adds two new buyers: artist and business owner Jenny Grumbles, and Moe's artist friend Mary Padian (who partners with Moe or Jenny when she's not buying solo), though Lesa and Jerry are no longer regulars.
This series provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Jenny treats Victor like one, though he is clearly just doing it to mess with her.
- A Simple Plan:
- In one episode, Lesa has Jerry bid for her in the hopes that if she's not the one bidding, the others won't bid her up. But instead of doing the logical thing and having Jerry bid far away from her so it doesn't look like she wants the unit, a tactic that Jarrod and Brandi from the original Storage Wars have pulled off in the past, he bids standing right next to her. To make matters worse, he bids out loud and not through hand signals, making the plan essentially pointless since everyone knows it's Jerry bidding and that he's bidding in her place.
- Having been shut out of a locker by Lesa their last meeting, Jenny and Mary decide to get Lesa off her game by using her Catchphrase to push Lesa's Berserk Button.
- Angrish: Lesa once did this after losing a locker.
- Appeal to Authority:
- Moe knows a lot about wood. These include whether an item is real wood or not, as well as what kind of wood it is.
- After Jerry gets Moe to a locker he and Lesa won, Lesa asks Moe to look at a piece in her locker. After looking and sniffing it, Moe tells her it's genuine teak. He also offers to buy it right there for $500 cash. She accepts, but an appraiser Moe brings to his gallery gives the piece, a teak bar cabinet, a value of $3400. Lesa's not happy when she finds this out after stopping by his gallery.
- Victor took a wooden cigar mold to Moe and his gallery manager, Robert. Moe tells him it's pine with hints of tobacco smell—and worth $150. Robert gives Victor better news about his art deco lighter, which is over $4000.
- When Jenny shows off her Jamaican wooden necklace, Moe tries to identify the wood involved. (Turns out to be several woods.)
- Ricky's mother, Puffy, is an expert in diamonds and a fanatic about jewelry. She appraises 14 karat gold and diamond *with a "VS1" rating—near-perfect diamond* rings for about $49,000.
- Moe knows a lot about wood. These include whether an item is real wood or not, as well as what kind of wood it is.
- Auction: More specifically, Storage auctions. The auctioning off of storage lockers whose owners have failed to make due on their rent, leaving the contents up for grabs to the highest bidder. The suspense comes from the fact that only a cursory examination of each locker is allowed before bidding begins.
- The bidders can't enter the locker until they win it and they're not allowed to touch anything, even if it's within reach. This leads to a lot of speculation on what that partially-hidden item in the back might be.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The pool table Mary made with acrylic looked good, but no fabric on this surface meant no traction—and the balls rolled toward one end instead of scattering all over. The college kids who purchased it ended up using it as a regular table.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Jerry shows signs of this sometimes. It's not due to any incompetence on Lesa's part, though. He gets exasperated whenever they don't win anything in the auctions because his paychecks depend on selling stuff from the lockers.
- Berserk Button: Lesa does not like it when other people steal her catchphrase.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Moe! In "Piñatas and Ta-tas", he gets fed up with Victor harassing him to the point where they nearly get into a fistfight, then takes it up a couple more notches later in the episode when he pulls a knife on Victor after more harassment when he and Mary are selling their piñatas.
- Brainless Beauty: Mary has been pinned as this for her "artwork." (see Awesome, but Impractical above for an example).
- Boring, but Practical: Furniture, tools and other assorted household objects that are mundane but can and will bring in decent money and keep the shelves full.
- Butter Face: A type of locker, Victor explains, that doesn't look good to most, but still can be profitable. The locker Victor gets in "Mary's New Hoopty Ride" is descibed as this, filled to the brim with items that can be sold at a "dollar store"—and sold back to one such store for resale. It's enough to win that episode.
- Catchphrase:
- Lesa's "Bring it!" seems to be this show's version of Dave's "YUP!" However, it doesn't seem to have the same reputation that Dave's does.
- Lesa also uses "JER-RY!" a lot to call her assistant.
- Jerry has borrowed "Bring it!" at least once to bid on Lesa's behalf.
- In "I'd Do Anything For Lesa (But I Won't Do That)" both Jenny and Mary use "Bring it!" to deliberately piss off Lesa. (The previous time Jenny and Mary faced Lesa, she beat out the younger women. So they thought this would get Lesa off her game enough to get a locker.)
- Likewise, Victor uses "Right Here!" quite a bit to bid.
- Moe loves using "Fabulous!" to describe stuff he finds in his lockers.
- Ricky describes a lot of finds as being "the gravy train".
- Lesa's "Bring it!" seems to be this show's version of Dave's "YUP!" However, it doesn't seem to have the same reputation that Dave's does.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Moe is this just a bit.
- It's rubbed off on Mary. Now she's possibly nuttier than he is.
- Confession Cam: Sort of; the bidders are all interviewed separately after each auction.
- Cool Car: Moe has many. He's described as showing up to every auction in a different car.
- Deadpan Snarker: Everyone at a time. Jenny liked picking on Victor in "Flight of the Grumblebee."
- Designated Girl Fight: "I'd Do Anything For Lesa (But I Won't Do That)" has a bidding war between Lesa, Jenny, and Mary. On top of it, Jenny and Mary are both using Lesa's "Bring it!" Catchphrase, which sends Lesa's blood boiling. Ricky and Bubba, meanwhile, just watch, although they seem to be less interested in three women bidding and more in Lesa going berserk.
- Destined Bystander: Roy Williams, first appearing in "If I Were a Tibettin' Man" to authenticate his signature for Ricky and Bubba, accepts their invitation to attend a storage auction in "Dallas Cowboys and Indians"note . He's bitten by the auction bug, and is added to the opening titles in the same episode.
- Happens again in Season 3, this time with Moe's artist friend Mary Padian.
- Dirty Old Man: The stingers teasingly have Moe assumed as one.
- "Puffy in the Sky with Diamonds" had Moe check the back muscles of a bent-over Mary (who asked "Is it tight?") Victor and Jerry make comments which makes Mary wonder "Why is everyone so perverted?"
- "Bubbapocalypse Now" has Jenny with a Jamaican wooden necklace, and Moe smells the wood pieces to tell what wood it's made from (turns out several woods).
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: In one episode, an auction was cancelled due to an approaching storm that had a tornado warning issued for it.
- Downer Ending: Victor has one in "Snake, Rattle, and Roll." He spends $1,600 on a locker based on a scooter in the locker. However, when he gets it appraised, it turns out that not only is the scooter just a cheap Chinese mass-manufactured scooter, but it doesn't even start and he didn't get the key. He ends up with a loss of $1,400.
- Dumb Blonde: Jenny.
- Epic Fail: Victor feels like he might have done it in "Bubbapocalypse Now":"Look, I'm not going to say I've blown it...but I think I may have just blown it.""Bubba really screwed the pooch on this one...and I'm the pooch."
- Everything is Big in Texas: Oh yes.
- Inverted, however, in terms of locker prices, at least relative to the original California version.
- Expy: The show's cast share some parallels with the Storage Wars cast:
- Dan has a fellow auctioneer in Walt.
- Brandi and Jarrod have Lesa and Jerry, though in a flip of gender roles, Jerry is the one more cautious about Lesa's bidding (he's not sure she won't spend his next paycheck buying a money-losing locker). In Season 3, they are succeeded by Moe and Mary, with Moe as a cross between Barry and Jarrod.
Most of the other original principals are a cross between two bidding teams: - Ricky and Bubba are like Darrell and Brandon, in that they're portrayed as a laid-back "family pair," (though they're uncle-nephew instead of father-son). However, they're not above being ruthless, like breaking out the Whammy Bid from time to time. In essence, this makes them The Federation to Dave Hester's Empire.
- Victor combines the self-smugness of Dave with Barry Weiss' inexperience and urban style (relatively speaking) and contacts.
- Face–Heel Turn: Lesa in Season 2 when she's a "guest star" instead of a "starring buyer." When Lesa scoops a locker, Jerry knows he'll get paid (so when she laughs at Jenny's misfortune, so does Jerry).
- So far, the score is Lesa 2, Jenny and Mary 1.
- Family Business: Ricky and Bubba.
- Fanfare: One with a Mexican/mariachi-tone to it when an item is appraised at several thousand dollars.
- Fifth Buyers: Though Texas used to make much less use of these than its parent show, they've started showing up a little more often.
- "The Cock Fighter from Mexico" had Rudy Castro, who discovered a harmonica autographed by Willie Nelson in the locker he bought.
- "The Ninja and the Pitmaster" had the very talky John "J.D" Thorne.
- Lesa and Jerry went from the main cast to this, last appearing in "Take a Deep Breath, It's Lesa!".
- Joe P.'s British Doppelgänger David Kay joins in for a few episodes in season 3.
- Bubba and Ricky's rival Kenny Stowe shows up to annoy them in a few episodes in season 3.
- Former auctioneer Matt Blevins joins in during season 3 and annoys everyone, to the point of almost being evicted from an auction in "Hands Off My Embroidery" for bad behavior.
- Flat Joy: Bubba wasn't too happy Ricky chose the more predictable auction in "A Fistful of Auctions" until they found the Wild West Decanters. "Yay." "Woo-hoo."
- Fun with Acronyms: A storage locker with a lot of goods and potentially high price is described as by Victor as a "BOAT Locker": "Break Out Another Thousand."
- Genki Girl: Mary.
- Gonna Need More Cash: Before going to a unit of a local deceased tycoon in "The Good, The Bad and The Hungry," Lesa gets more cash from the bank to compete for that unit. She even uses gun-based comparisons about it. She wins the unit and finds a trove of designer goods with the price tags on them. The profit, $6248, is enough for her to have the highest profit for the episode.
- Grail in the Garbage: The occasional peculiar item found in a locker that may turn out to be worth big bucks to the buyer.
- Gut Feeling: "Bounty Hunter Bubba Fett" had Bubba bid and win a locker that would have some Boba Fett action figures, not just in original packaging, but also in fiberglass protective boxes. All because he had a good feeling about that locker. Ricky was worried, then shocked when the action figures net a profit of $8,225. (At first he wasn't sure if Bubba's gut feeling was right, then amazed when the profit showed how right it was).
- Handsome Lech: Victor! If they're female and attractive, chances are he'll be hitting on them. Though Jenny turns him down flat in one of her first episodes, he scores phone numbers from a local beauty queen and her friend in "Hoarder Patrol".
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Victor falls victim to this in "Mo' Money, Moe Prigoff" thanks to Moe. The locker in question is full of household stuff and Victor says he has an upper limit he's willing to pay. What he doesn't know is that Moe wants to drive the price up to screw Victor over. They go back and forth until they reach Victor's limit, at which point he says that he's done and just wants to drive the price up to screw Moe. More bidding ensues and Victor starts pointing at Moe, expecting him to make a higher bid. He keeps pointing and pointing, until it dawns on him that he fell victim to his own game. The whole thing backfired on Moe, though, as the locker contained four antique clocks which Victor was able to sell for a profit.
- He ends up again falling victim to this in "Bubbapocalypse Now" by Bubba, who had been mind-victimized by Victor earlier (and lost money on a locker then). This time, though, the African-American Barbies he finds aren't enough to keep him from posting a loss.
- Hurricane of Puns: The Stinger of "Mo' Money, Moe Prigoff" features Victor making a bunch of clock-related double entendres.
- Hypocritical Humor: Blatant case in the episode "Rules to Buy By." Jenny finds an old game that says it is a "Machine that thinks like a Man" and of course she ignores the most obvious answer of Man referring to humankind, and calls it "sexist." She proceeds to take it to an old woman in a toy store and they both make an incredible amount of offensive and sexist jokes about thinking like Men (Including stereotypes about Hockey and Beer) and of course they can get away with it since it is alright for Women to be sexist, but not Men.
- I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: What the "Queen of Pies" tells Victor when he asks for her apple pie recipe.
- Jerkass: Victor is a New Yorker and is even described in the opening credits as "The Outsider," and definitely fills this role. However, he's definitely not as bad as Dave.
- Even with his rivalry with Lesa, he's able to recognize one item she has as a paintball gun, and helps set up an appraisal of it for her. This backfires on him massively as it's appraised higher than what he thinks it is. He proceeds to spend two minutes being pelted with pink paintballs.
- In later seasons, Victor has dialed it down while Ricky and Bubba have dialed it up.
- Kitchen Sink Included: The things some people store and forget about.
- Large Ham: Ricky indulges in a little hamminess in "Out of Af-Ricky", when commenting on something Bubba found in a locker he bought.Ricky: "I leave the auction for one day, and Bubba has done bought somethin' that's gonna curse my family 'til the day I die!"
- Meal Ticket / Gold Digger: Moe to Mary.
- Motor Mouth: Walt could give Dan a run for his money.
- Nice To Your Artist: Moe gives Mary, the artist who turns much of what he gets from his locker into sellable artwork at his gallery, her fair share of the profits from it ($1500 was her share). Even though by doing so, the announcer hinted, it cost Moe the title of "winner of the auction." That goes to Victor, who found valuable clocks in the locker that Moe dumped on him. (See Hoist by His Own Petard on the main page) Moe offers to take Mary to a storage auction—with the hint that perhaps more stuff that can be made into art might be had from it.
- A Sequel Hook which is fulfilled in "Puffy in the Sky With Diamonds", when Mary accompanies Moe to a storage auction and does indeed find more things that she can make into art.
- And in the third season, Mary has joined the main cast, teaming up with Moe.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Both Ricky and Bubba fit this trope. In one talking head interview, Ricky admitted that his accent wasn't entirely real, and Bubba admits he lays on the "country hick" act thick to lull others into a sense of false security. According to Bubba's character page on the A&E website he knows electronics and computers, helping his uncle Ricky with newer technologies. He also enjoys fine arts and one day hopes to amass a collection of his own.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Victor in "Snake, Rattle and Roll" when he realizes the scooter that he paid $1,600 for a locker for is just a cheap Chinese scooter that doesn't even start. He ends up with a $1,400 loss.
- Victor again in "Mo' Money, Moe Prigoff" when his attempt to bid Moe up blew up in his face (see Hoist by His Own Petard).
- Victor gets a third one in "Bubbapocalypse Now" when Bubba takes a page from his book and bids Victor up (see Epic Fail and Hoist by His Own Petard).
- Everyone except Mary and Jenny does this when Lesa returns.
- Mary in "Mary's New Hoopty Ride" finds that car in her locker unit is little more than a frame and a seat—not even an engine.
- Once an Episode: Walt explains the auction rules at the start of every auction.
- Precision F-Strike: Lesa when she finds out that the teak wine bar she sold to Moe for $500 was valued at $3,400.
- Promotion to Opening Titles: Roy Williams in "Dallas Cowboys and Indians", nicknamed "The Player" in Season 2. Mary Padian, Moe's artist friend, is nicknamed "The Junkster" as she turns "raw materials" others see as "junk" into artwork in Season 3.
- Put on a Bus: Lesa and Jerry (The rumor being that A&E found out that Jerry was arrested twice).
- The Bus Came Back: They've come back to challenge Mary and Jenny, with Lesa showing she Took a Level in Jerkass in the meantime.
- As of Season 3, Moe has been dropped from the opening credits and Mary is now going solo. As of now, no one knows why or if he's coming back.
- Victor has also vanished from the opening credits with no explanation.
- Shout-Out:
- Victor tries to channel The Mentalist in deciding whether to go for a locker based on what he can feel from it.
- Another one has him going "Ex-cellent" like a certain animated rich villain.
- Special Guest: NFL wide receiver Roy Williams appeared in several episodes.
- The Swarm: One of Jenny's lockers had a lot of termites that swarmed the buyers.
- That Came Out Wrong: Often coupled with Record Needle Scratch when the speaker knows it.
- Victor finds four valuable antique clocks in a locker that Moe tried to bid him up on (see Hoist by His Own Petard above):
"Moe really stuck it to me, but with clocks like these, he can stick it to me all day long *record needle scratch* ...that didn't sound right."- In "Remember the Alamo?" Moe finds a working Ms. Pac-Man console that nets him a profit.
"This just proves that I can have my cake and my podiatric surgerynote and eat it too. Wait a minute... that didn't sound right." - Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Moe and his wife Michelle.
- The Voice: Thom Beers, the show's producer (and voice-over artist) does the opening and closing narrations.
- Wham Line: From "Rhymes With Witch" "JER-RY!" Yup. Lesa's back.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Jerry has a problem with snakes, which he mentions in "Snake, Rattle and Roll" when he and Lesa bring some rattlesnake-made items to an appraiser.
- Zonk: A locker's contents can sometimes be this, especially if a bidder spent a lot of money on it. Can just as easily be averted if there turns out to be something valuable buried underneath all the worthless items. Jerry invokes this by name in "Bounty Hunter Bubba Fett".
