Popular culture: February 2008 Archives

(Here's the original.)

Somewhere between not caring enough to watch the Super Bowl ex-el-one-one and not finding the energy to pop in a DVD lies my extended viewing of “Celebrity Rehab.” A mini-marathon of VH1’s new reality show was available yesterday evening, and I watched several hours of the program like the combination TV addict and celebuwreck enabler that I am.

According to the VH1 web site, the show is “supervised” by Drew Pinsky, MD,* a board-certified internist and addiction medicine specialist (and as one episode reveals, a guy with very well-developed biceps), who prescribes on-camera addiction therapy for nine residents of a Pasadena rehab facility. The distinction of these residents is that they were formerly or are currently marginally engaged in the business of show. Four I had actually heard of, including actor Jeff Conaway (Grease, “Taxi”), actor Daniel Baldwin (“Homocide: Life on the Street,” “Celebrity Fit Club”), former professional wrestler Chyna (“Surreal Life”), and an ex-wife of Sylvestor Stallone, Brigitte Nielson (Rocky IV, “Surreal Life,” and “Strange Love”). Three of these (Baldwin, Chyna, and Nielson), and at least one other contestant resident, Jessica Sierra (“American Idol”), seem to be earning their present keep from reality-show appearances. (Generally, the length of the celebrities’ bios at the VH1 web site appears to correlate inversely with the quality of their contributions to the entertainment industry.)

The show itself, which incorporates what is now the traditional filming style of reality TV (including the creepy, white-eye, night-vision shots) is engaging and, yes (oh, the irony), addictive. A non-exploitative tone is set by Pinsky, who appears to genuinely care about his patients’ recovery and avoids coming across as just another celebrity-enamored physician. Thanks to Pinsky, you could actually get sucked into the idea that the program provides a realistic view of substance-abuse rehabilitation, until you remember the cameras.

And the cameras are the big objection to the show and to Pinsky’s therapy, which seems likely to fail as long as dramatic fucked-up-ness gets camera attention above and beyond sober, chain-smoking behavior. Celebrities, being first-class cravers of attention, would seem particularly vulnerable to the pull of the camera at the expense of their own substance-abuse recovery. And the more marginal the celebrity, the more desperate the craving. Case in point is the performance of Jeff Conaway, who comes off like a big, saggy, largely incoherent infant in a wheelchair. You can’t help but wonder if Conaway’s pained, over-the-top helplessness^† would be just a little subtler if he knew he wasn’t being filmed. Indeed, a glimpse of the actor’s tendency to chronically pander to the camera is inadvertently revealed when Conaway, momentarily out of rehab character, jumps up in a fit of pique from his group-therapy chair, after Baldwin accuses him of bringing drugs into the facility. Ambulatory recoveries like that are rarely seen outside of televangelist performances.

But at least in Conaway's case, it does appear that he, in fact, has an active substance-abuse problem (namely alcohol and prescription opiates). In the case of other celebrities, it’s not entirely clear why they’re even in the facility. After watching several episodes, I still don’t know what Chyna’s hooked on other than the camera lens. And Baldwin indicated that he’d been clean for 9 months before the show. So he wasn’t even de-toxing; he was evidently just there to share his cautionary tale with the rest of the world. What a guy. This gesture can be classified under the don’t-do-me-any-favors heading, especially when Baldwin poses in eye-rolling fashion as the wise and seasoned rehabber to the younger first-time residents.

Nevertheless, you think something from Baldwin’s prevous stints in recovery might have sunk in, when he begins to question Pinsky about the health of filming such an exercise. Baldwin ultimately decides to bow out of the program, after objecting to an impromptu wet T-shirt contest in the facility’s pool (thankfully, Conaway was not a contestant). But just when you’re perhaps ready to give Baldwin some minor ethical props, it’s suggested in a promo teaser that he may have scrambled home to his pregnant wife for reasons that involve a fellow rehabber, who also happens to be a porn starlet.

Thursday’s episode is promised to provide additional details. And sadly, I’ll probably be watching—that is, if a family member doesn’t successfully flush my remote down the toilet.