What is more satisfying than a comeback story? I’ll tell you what. A reality show about a comeback story. Last night, Oprah’s network OWN debuted the series “Lindsay,” a show literally about Lindsay Lohan’s recovery. I’m in reality TV heaven, you guys. The show follows Miss Lohan from last summer after her completion of a 90 day court ordered rehab in Malibu. If you haven’t been following Lindsay’s life—in which case I wouldn’t blame you at this point—let me simplify it for you. Over the course of over a decade, Lindsay Lohan has gone from adorable child star, to hot starlet, to celebrity train wreck. She has been flirting with has-been territory for a few years at this point, threatening to come back and then falling back into substance abuse land. This show documents her attempts to finally sober up and be taken seriously again. And I’m already kind of invested after the first episode. Help.
The series opens with Lindsay meeting with Oprah before her televised interview. One thing I can say about Oprah is that the woman could probably convince anyone into anything. Oprah could probably cajole me into waxing my eyebrows off and make me think it was the best decision. The fact that even a diva like Lindsay Lohan was visibly nervous around Oprah makes me think that even if she didn’t want to do this show, she was lowkey bullied into it out of fear of Oprah’s wrath. Love it. Anyway, the rest of the episode is centered around Lindsay moving out of LA and back to New York. She spends most of the episode looking for an apartment in SoHo, and honestly a Lindsay Lohan apartment hunt is more depressing than one of us peasants looking for our own place. I’m serious. The girl is either denied from apartments because of who she is, or the price of the apartment is quadrupled because of who she is. Either way, she spends her time in pure hell, living in a hotel room, chain smoking cigarettes, and hiding from paparazzi.
She visits her mother Dina at one point, and they literally look the same age. Not in a good way. This girl isn’t even 30 and is already ODing on plastic surgery. Whether you think she’s a brat or not, I can’t help but feel bad for the girl. Her neuroticism throughout the show is hard to ignore. She freaks out when her normal driver Steven isn’t there one day. She loses it when she shows up to a shoot that has dialogue she didn’t agree on. She clearly trusts no one, and it’s uncomfortable to watch. “I hate being lied to,” she says to the camera. Yeah Linds, we can tell.
Her story, like many other attempted comeback celebrity stories, is both fascinating and sickening. It’s uncomfortable to see a person try to recover and fail time and time again, especially on camera. This isn’t a show that glamorizes addiction. It’s a show about an addict who just happens to be famous. Lindsay Lohan shares the same experiences as any other addict would. The perpetual distrust of people around her, the temptation to stray from sobriety, the desperation to regain respect.
In an eerie scene at the beginning of the episode, Lindsay is packing for LA and finds a fortune cookie fortune among boxes and boxes of clothes and shoes. The fortune reads “Long life is in store for you.” Here’s to hoping. Lindsay Lohan is a mess, but even the hard to reach messes have the potential to be cleaned up.
Rula Al-Nasrawi is a Columbia Graduate whose writing has appeared in Vice, The Atlantic, and other online publications. Her first language is valley girl. Californian bred, NYC residing. @RulaOfTheWorld