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?

Last year Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Britney Spears & Co. introduced the world to the Five-Star-Hotel/Drug-Detox-Unit. Sadly, some of us knew all about such places already… Now, you can too!

Finally, Vh1 brings the dark voyeur’s wet dream to the airwaves with Celebrity Rehab.

Like the prescription drugs it aims to wean patients from, the show has a legitimate purpose (giving credibility to the rehabilitation process, at least according to Dr. Drew), but ends up being popular for unintended side-effects that are a whole lot more fun. Like watching porn stars attempt to bring in strap-ons, dildos and silicone “virtual vaginas”… as gifts for the other patients.

Some of the Contraband

Living in the spoiled rich kids’ mecca that is Orange County has allowed me to witness the otherwise unfathomable antics that occur regularly in the beach-side “recovery” (read: over-privileged druggie day-care) scene. To give you an idea of just how bad things get, a NIMBY grassroots organization called Concerned Citizens of Newport Beach has evolved. They are suing the city at this very moment, trying to take back their formerly pristine peninsula.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Suffice it to say that the only thing scarier than the garden variety junkie is the junkie with status and money– Lindsay Lohan, anyone?

Okay, maybe that was a bad example on the status part, but you get where I’m going, right?

Individuals who are raised with a grandiose sense of entitlement are far removed enough from reality as it is. They do not need drug problems.

Thus, it follows that when you put twenty of these types under one roof and add in a little drug withdrawal-induced bitchiness, you’re left with quite the pyrotechnic show!

Finally, the spoiled trust fund brats are contributing to society–maybe even the GNP?– by offering up a unique brand of entertainment!

Not that I’m getting all reverse high-and-mighty in a Justin Bobby-“I drive a ghetto El Camino so you won’t think my Daddy’s worth a gazillion dollars”- sort of way. In fact, I’ll admit to having been a limited beneficiary to a trust fund (but mine required me to go to law school, and then vanished once I graduated!). And I’m not going to pull a Bill Clinton and pretend to be a stranger to illegal substances. So I guess it’s fitting that I have what you may call friendships with some of the more benign aforementioned Trust-funder/Addict types. Though I like to think it’s only for voyeuristic purposes.*

*if you think I’m talking about you personally… present company excluded! (As always, of course.)

Two years ago in the summer season, one such friend of mine (a substance enthusiast I’ll call Didi, after a character from a Jay McInerney novel), checked into one such 5-star rehab here in the beach area (which is made up of Huntington, Newport and Laguna Beaches, for those keeping score). I looked forward to visiting her there because it offered up the chance to view what seemed like a bizarre art-house movie, where people acted in ways that were entirely opposite of what you’d expect based on their looks .

There were soccer moms with perfect hair, skin, teeth and such trying to figure out how to smuggle in their eating-disorder aids (i.e. laxatives); trophy-wife types getting busted for drinking from hairspray bottles, and even one crazy spoiled Newport Beach princess who had to show the nurses how to draw blood from the only good vein she had left… in her neck.

The setup’s inherent commercial possibilities did not go unnoticed; in fact, every time we spoke during her stay, DiDi said something like this:

Okay, so you know how everyone comes in here royally trashed? Because it’s like their last hurrah and everything? Obviously they know we’re going to be wasted when we sign our admission papers, so I just keep wondering if they snuck something into those papers granting them rights to use footage of us for a reality show? I know they have cameras in here– supposedly for security or whatever–and yeah, I was jacked up at the time but I know I saw the word ‘release’ in there more than once! Two of the other patients are working actors, you know. They keep saying how this would make great TV. And for once it’s not the meth talking– they’re clean!

It took quite the protracted effort on my part to talk Didi down from this seemingly ridiculous notion, which I did by citing confidentiality/HIPAA issues, and explaining all of the legitimate ways the word release could have been used. I hereby grant the institution the right to hospitalize me in the event that I try to kill myself was one that made total sense to her, BTW.

So you can imagine how I reacted to the promo for VH1’s Celebrity Rehab. Viewing it made me think I was the one on drugs–hallucinogens, to be precise. So much for the second ‘A’ in A.A./N.A., et. al.

But damn, did it look interesting! A trainwreck-o-phile’s dream come true! Complete with washed-up celebs from Vh1’s own d-list roster! Only this time, there would be a reason for the inclusion of has-been “celebrities” besides ‘this is Vh1 and we can’t afford big names’. If you need rehab, you probably have hit bottom (let’s hope– if not, it probably won’t work– you may not be desperate enough to change.)

Dr. Drew… Yes, Please!

The most surprising thing about this show, other than it’s existence in the first place, is the presence of Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Despite the fact that he’s appeared on Loveline, a radio call-in show with Adam Corolla for years now, Drew’s fairly well regarded in his chosen field of addiction. And Dr. Drew is certainly no Dr. Phil- he’s licensed in addiction medicine, for one thing. He is also a Professor at USC School of Medicine. Drew may be serious guy in a tie, but you can tell he’s got a fun, snarky side lurking beneath the surface. He’s that hot professor you had in college; the one you sooo wanted to seduce, but knew would turn you down until graduation day, because he’s a stand-up guy like that.

I’m not the only one who thinks he’s hot, BTW. As fellow vapid culturist-cum- blogger StinkyLuLu says:

..I’ve come to think of Dr. Drew as the illegitimate love child of Dr. Ruth and Dr. Joyce Brothers. Then, again, truth be told, sometimes I just like to think of Dr. Drew…that voice, that hair, that reasonable affect. Sanjay Gupta might be a bit hunkier, but Dr. Drew is the dreamiest. And, from the looks of things, the man has the patience of a saint…

Sadly, Dr. Drew may be the most recognizable face on the show. Some usual suspects from the Vh1 ‘celeb’-reality roster are there, of course. They include (clockwise, left to right:

• Brigitte Nielsen (who qualified by being drunk on Surreal Life)
• Jeff Conaway (who qualified by getting booted from Celebrity Fit Club for being too drugged up to work out)
• Daniel Baldwin (who qualified by demonstrating drug-induced rage/asshole-ism on Celebrity Fit Club– or was ity another marginally famous Baldwin?)
• Joanie Laurer aka Chyna the former pro wrestler (for qualifications, see Brigitte, above).

Oddly enough, Vern ‘Mini-Me’ Troyer and Janice ‘World’s First Self-Proclaimed Supermodel’ Dickenson were conspicuously absent from the lineup. Which can only mean one thing.

For some, denial is a force more powerful than fame-whoring.

Other cast-members you won’t recognize include:

Jessica Sierra, the former American Idol finalist (or so they say). Her mom was a hooker and druggie who died in some random dude’s backyard. Dead or no, Jessica loathes her mom for choosing the path she did. Alas, Jessica herself has become a druggie. And now, in the apparent interest of striking while the publicity iron is hot, Jessica Sierra has opted to follow in the great footsteps of our fearless vapid leaders Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian by releasing a sex tape.

FYI: This is Jessica Sierra, not her mom.

I say, way to live down the family legacy there, Jess.

Rehab: Step in the right direction, away from becoming your drug addicted hooker mom.

Sex tape: step in the wrong direction, brings you closer to the hooker part.

One step forward, two steps back…

In addition to the aforementioned motley crüe, there’s Jaimee Foxworth, the child-star from ‘Family Matters’ (starring Urkel, character whose voice rivaled Fran Drescher’s in the contest for ‘most annoying’.)

Here’s Jaimee on Tyra…. and probably on pot, too.

The most recent dose of mainstream fame Jaimee has seen involved an appearance on Oprah, wherein she cried about having fallen into porn, or, more accurately, cried about getting recognized/busted for doing it. As if she thought she was getting paid to appear in a porno that wasn’t going to see the light of day? Sorry Jaimee, but that excuse only flies when explaining sex tapes (read: where your co-star is typically a boyfriend with whom you’ve had sex before, and is probably not a porn actor), the amateurish-quality of your porn films notwithstanding.

Oh, and Jaimee claims to be addicted to pot. Personally, I think she’s addicted to getting paid for appearing on camera, but I’m not an M.D. *

*Update: My BF, who is an M.D., agrees with me on this. And as a Pain Management Physician, he knows a thing or two about narcotic addiction, thank-you-very-much.

Mary Carey, Porn Star, Gubernatorial Candidate and Celebrity Rehabber

Speaking of porn, another one of the patients is none other than Porn Star and former Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Carey. Can you believe Arnold Schwarzenegger beat her? From loud farts to attempted strap-on smuggling, Mary has been a constant source of entertainment.

In addition to every skeevy dude with a mustache in the San Fernando Valley, Mary has slept with another patient, Seth AKA “Shifty” from the band Crazy Town. If you can overlook his crack addiction, mohawk, head-to-toe tatoos and questionable taste in sex partners, this guy seems to be the most decent man of the bunch. Not that there’s much competition.

The only other guy is some Ultimate Fighting Champion named Ricco Rodriguez. Think Rico Suave, but on steroids and without the slimy charm (ok, maybe keep the slime).

Ricco “Suave” Rodriguez shows off the muscles he uses when beating his girlfriend

This meathead actually believes his kid–the same kid who is currently in Child Protective Services’ custody– has gone unaffected by his drug use (and, by extension, his girlfriend-beating tendencies…not that he sees these things as problems. Which is, itself, the problem.) Apparently, the fact that the underlings at CPS won’t give him his kid is a problem though, because that’s why he claims to be in rehab. If he can solve the problem of the CPS staffers’ short-sightedness by going on TV and showing what a real stand-up guy he is, there will be no problem. Capiche?

It will be interesting to see what direction this show takes. If it is anything like real-life 5-star rehab, people will give up and/or get booted off of the proverbial island. Dr. Drew, the apparent voice of reason, gave a lecture in episode 1 where he said as much.

Still, with ratings, fledging careers and screen-time to worry about, expect no shortage of antics.

Not that this will be a problem– at the end of the day, it is rehab, after all.

Next time: Given the degree to which Reality shows rely on casting/character/story formulas, it’s hard to imagine that Vh1 departed from the usual methodology when casting, filming and editing Celebrity Rehab. Then again, it’s even harder to believe they’d stoop to the level of scripting things when people’s very lives are at stake. And it’s not like the set-up was bound to be lacking in drama. So what did they end up doing?