No one's questioning that the individuals usually have mental/emotional/social problems. But the show makes it seem like all reptile keepers behave this way and that is what's not fair. It's only spreading the misconceptions about responsible reptile keepers and that's what feeds anti-exotic pet laws and things like that.
I'm actually watching one as I type about a man who kept a Burm, just one, for fifteen years, and one night he got drunk and hit his head on the tank so that he was bleeding. He fell into the tank, the snake tried to eat him, he died. In the beginning of the show, the narrator said something like "We may never know what combination of loneliness, desire, and sadness would cause a person to keep the company of animals like these". I don't think there's a single Burm owner out there that wouldn't be offended by that statement.