Was Celebrity Rehab Developed in the Casting Lab?

Talk about clinical… this logo looks like it belongs on a box of Vytorin or something

It’s fun to bitch about how little “reality” exists in the realm of reality tv. With casting formulas and stock characters, writers and story arcs, it’s easy to confuse “reality” shows with scripted ones.

But the fact is, reality can be be boring.

And no one tivos boring shows… at least not on purpose.

One thing that is never boring is a trainwreck. Remember how wildly popular the Anna Nicole show once was?

Well, rehab is the proverbial station where trainwrecks come home to roost.

Of course, the Anna Nicole show fizzled out in season 2, because once you got over the novelty of watching a trainwreck, there was no story to follow. Anna Nicole had no goals… she just was.

Fortunately for Vh1, there is no danger of that happening here. You see, rehab is also like a train salvage yard where every train gets taken apart, examined for usable parts, and hopefully, remolded into a better train.

This makes for great storytelling:

Will Mr. Trainwreck get himself together, or will he act out?

Will he take other patients down with him? Which ones?

Will he even make it past day one? Or will drug withdrawal prove too much for him?

As you can see, rehab already possesses the story arcs and characters necessary for a successful reality show. Call it Trainwreck TV… with a Twist.

With such plentiful natural resources, it stands to reason that there’s no need for casting formulas, right? Why would you play with mother nature when she’s already given you what you want?

Put another way: If you were built like Scarlett Johansen, would you hit the plastic surgeon’s office with a picture of Pamela Andersen?

Apparently the execs at Vh1 would. Even though the casting pool was relatively small– how many drug addicted celebs are willing to air out their laundry on basic cable?– they managed to fill Celebrity Rehab with cartoon stock characters.

Or maybe I’m just jaded; it is possible that they went looking for celebrities with substance abuse problems and simply cast the most addicted quasi-household names. After all, isn’t it unethical to treat something as serious as drug addiction as if it were Flavor of Love 3?

I don’t know… some of these people would have been right at home on FOL. Or it’s spin-off, Charm School. Or Flavor of Love’s female-counterpart, I love New York.

Check out some of the characters on the show and decide for yourself!

Stock Character 1: The Porn Star who wants to reform

Portrayed by Mary Carey, star of Tit Happens & Lick My Balls

Defining moment: When getting bags checked for contraband upon intake, Mary pulls out several vibrators, dildos, and strap-on.

Oh, I almost forgot– Mary also brought a silicone replica of her vagina. After witnessing the stunned reactions of the staff, Mary offers what she deems to be a perfectly reasonable explanation. The virtual vag is, quite simply, a gift for another patient whom she was told would be in attendance, Seth AKA Shifty. Because he’d had the real thing before and may want to repeat the experience… sort of.

Stock Character 2: The Angry Meathead/Wife Beater

Portrayed by Ricco ‘Suave’ Rodriguez, the first Ultimate Fighting Champ to test positive for Steroids Cocaine

Defining moment: During group therapy session, Ricco pipes in with a story about how he beat a DUI.

Specifically, while driving (1) with a suspended license; (2) high, and (3) with his girlfriend Karmen in the car, Ricco slammed into the back of an 18-wheeler truck and then hit a wall. Believing that his girlfriend was dead, he dragged her body to the driver’s seat so that the cops would think she was driving.

Ricco said that even though the cops could tell he was driving due to the position of the seat, the girlfriend — after surviving the incident — told cops that she was driving. According to Ricco, their “attorneys took care of it.”

After nonchalantly telling this story–which you can tell he is kind of proud of– Ricco lashes out at Shelly, the counselor who has the nerve not to laugh at this most amusing of stories. Later, when recanting the Shelly’s reaction to Karmen, he says something like “Can you believe she didn’t laugh at it? All of my friends laugh at it!”
To which Karmen replies,”Yeah, that’s cause all of your friends are assholes.”

Stock Character 3: The Washed-Up Has-Been Actor’s New Jersey Enabler Girlfriend.

Portrayed by Jeff Conaway’s Girlfriend, Miss Vicki (Whose name, appropriately, rhymes with hickey. Duh.

Motto: “I only did drugs behind your back after you got me hooked on them.”
Defining moment #1: Decides she wants her BF (Jeff Conaway) to leave rehab, because these rehab people aren’t bending the rules to suit her needs, but knows he wants/needs to stay. Hatches insta-plan before our eyes to push Honey’s buttons and get him to bail out of rehab ASAP. Proceeds to put on sticky-sweet pseudo-angelic face, walk over to Honey and, in the guise of pretending to be open and honest, casually mentions she’s going to see her ex-boyfriend who’s “just gotten out of prison”, as this will surely send Conaway out the door. In pursuit of her, the prisoner, and/or dope. Ahh, but later, when Conaway calls her to say he’s checking himself out and needs her to come and get him, she’s like all “Oh, no, stay there, work on your recovery…”
Defining moment #2: Using a grape juice bottle, brings alcohol into the place on visiting day (because she knows they will check her for pills.) When Conaway asks her for a sip of juice, she acts all coy and makes a show of trying to stop him. He grabs the juice bottle and gets a sip of alcohol– not good for an admitted alcoholic. When he angrily confronts her on this, she says “I did it because you asked me to. You told me to get drunk and show up here so they’d admit me also, and you’d have company.” As if (a) showing up sober with a clandestine bottle of alcohol constitutes this, and (b) he would make such a comment in a serious manner!

Stock Character 4: The man with two faces/Villain masquerading as Nice Guy

Portrayed by Daniel Baldwin, aka the fugly Baldwin brother with the drug problem

Defining Moment: After pretending to be there “only to serve as an inspiration for others” because, dude, he “has been clean for, like, 7 months,” Baldwin himself leaves, pretending to be bothered by and/or above the way the program is run. He claims to have had to leave in order to stay sober, because the rehab peeps allowed him to catch a glimpse of fellow patient and porn star Mary Carey’s wet t-shirt. Which is somehow a threat to his sobriety. Presumably because of the havoc it caused on the home front for him.

See, being the straight-up loyal guy he is, after witnessing such an un-pure scene, Daniel immediately called his pregnant wife with the details. So now she’s upset, his sobriety’s at stake, and he has to go.

This seems like a mere overreaction on Danny-boy’s part, kind of prudish even. As if poor Mary isn’t a mess enough to begin with, now it looks like everyone will be blaming her wet t-shirt for the loss of Daniel, who seems to be such a wonderful, vital part of the group.

Well, in a jarring turn of events, we learn that the reason for Dan’s sudden exit did have to do with Mary Carey and sex-related stuff… except, Danny Boy was responsible for something much more porn-tastic and thereby sobriety-threatening than a mere wet t-shirt.

This whole time, Daniel was texting Mary pictures of his junk!! And asking for her to reciprocate! Maybe he felt ripped-off that she seemingly reciprocated with a lousy wet t-shirt instead of a full-frontal pic–like the one he sent her? A lousy wet t-shirt that was on display to everyone else, adding insult to injury?!

No, I’m afraid that things are a lot worse than that in the case of ol’ Danny Boy. It looks like Mary did not make any attempt at reciprocity, leading an anxious Daniel to start worrying about what she may do with the pictures of his junk. Girlfriend had actual evidence of the real Daniel in her cell phone. We see him whispering things to her on the sly, like “You’re deleting those pictures, right?”

It seems that once Mary stopped playing along, Daniel got worried that he’d be exposed for the two-faced fraud that he is. So he did what addicts do best: he ran. Before the virtual bomb he made could go off. This way, when things got really messy, he’d be long gone.

Of course, like all good terrorists, he called in afterwards to see how much damage he’d caused. What a casting director’s dream he turned out to be!

For those of you who still believe that a cast like this could have come about organically, I’ve got bad news.

However it happened, it looks like Celebrity Rehab was cast using the same formula as another generously-titled reality show that’s currently polluting the airwaves. I am referring, of course, to the Trump-tastic Trump-trash-tic Celebrity Apprentice.

Think about it. Both shows have a Taxi-veteran ( Jeff Conoway and Marilu Henner), a fugly Baldwin brother (Daniel and Steven), a adult-entertainment ‘actress’/model (Mary Carey and Playmate Tiffany Fallon), a rocker (Crazy Town’s Seth “Shifty” Binzer and KISS’ Gene Simmons), an Ultimate Fighter (Ricco Rodriguez and Tito Ortiz), a “Family” member (Family Matters‘ Jaimee Foxworth and The Sopranos‘ Vincent Pastore ) and one or more D-listers last seen on The Surreal Life (Joanie ‘Chyna Doll’ Lauer & Brigitte Nielsen and Omarosa).

So, fellow Vapid Culturists, you tell me. Did the cast that makes Celebrity Rehab compulsively watchable happen by mere coincidence? Or was it developed in the (casting) lab, much like like Vicki’s Norco?