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Intervention
So, sold by the catchy music in the commercials, I've been watching Intervention on A&E. It's on Sunday nights. They convince the people that they're just doing a show about addiction, and then they pull an intervention on them at the end after showing how fucked up they are.
It's crazy. The always do two people: in the last episode, one was a 31 year old guy who had been a young genius. He graduated from UCLA at 14, started getting a PhD in biochemistry, starting developing goofy raps to teach biochemistry to UCLA undergrads[1], dropped out of school to pursue an entertainment career, and ended up becoming a compulsive gambler, gambling all kinds of money away, including a bunch of money his parents gave him. They had to sell their house, had only made him move out a year ago, and are still giving him money to pay his crazy debts to all kinds of different companies.
There are a bunch of amazing lines that make it obvious that his parents coddled him and did everything for him and it made him never grow up. He shared his philosophy on parenting, which was "if you have kids, you have to give them everything forever with no exceptions." It's fucked up. They also show him playing blackjack and esentially having a tantrum when he's losing.
The second person was an actress (whom I recognized) from the first three seasons of ER. She was a compulsive shopper, was severely depressed, and did all this crazy OCD shit. It was really fucked up, especially since I remember this person being a normal actress on some show, and then they show her doing all the compulsive checking behaviour and getting all intense and manic when she shops. Again, it was really fucked up.
Unlike the people the first week, both of whom did well in rehab, neither one this week seems like to make it. The actress was done in a month after her insurance company decided she was well enough to not cost them a shitload of money any more. The gambler checked himseld out after three weeks and claims to have stopped gambling. He also extracted a bunch of concessions and promises from his family in the intervention, so it sounds like they are going to continue to support him. That shit is sad. I can't even imagine how fucked up it must be to have to consider cutting off your own kid and getting a restraining order against him.
Anyway, I recommend this show. I thought it was pretty compelling.
[1] They showed some clips of this, and it was hilarious. A bunch of nerdy whitebread college students, probably in the late 80s or early 90s, were eating this stuff up. I can't believe this kid was actually convinced that he could make a career of this crap.
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