If you aren’t reading these recaps, I at least recommend the comments section; we have a lot of very thoughtful Fug Nationals, and sometimes they’re sharing pretty personal things in there which are applicable to the subject matter of this show, and it’s been fascinating and inspiring. Thanks, guys, especially because comments on a show like this about a person like Lindsay Lohan could get SO out of hand; y’all are demonstrating why Fug Nation has such a damn fine reputation.
Also: We’re doing the scroll format for this one because I had way too many grabs to put in a slideshow. And it’s a doozy this week, from Scenes From A Celebrity Move to somebody leaving the show. Let’s begin.
It would appear that AJ has Lindsay doing craft projects. Those look like spray paint cans, which sure SEEM like things she should’ve been using out on her balcony with fresh air to ventilate the fumes. I have concerns about AJ’s level of common sense with this one, especially because I’m not sure scrawling “LIVE” on a roll of pink paper is going to be the spark that ignites the flame of sober desire in Lindsay’s mental Bunsen. I can’t wait until someday LiLo blames the entirety of this episode on the effects of breathing in the paint. I’m surprised that didn’t happen, actually.
Dina, meanwhile, is shoved off into a corner talking on her phone and basically doing nothing while Lindsay and AJ talk about Lindsay’s career. I like to think that either Lindsay, or the production, or both, were like, “You are out of your depth here, Dina, so just SIT DOWN and we’ll wave if we need you.” She does not catch on fire from paint fumes, nor from any spontaneous divine smitings.
So, we pick up with more of this idea that Lindsay has about how her agents and management team aren’t pushing hard enough to help her. Lindsay wants to fly to L.A. with this producer named Randall Emmett, whom she’s been talking to about starring in his movie Inconceivable. Randall has indeed produced a LOT of stuff, so much so that I wonder if he’s just a put-up-your-Benjamins kind of guy who has a lot of them to spend — like, a “producer” as opposed to a producer — because with that number of projects, I don’t know how he would have time to do anything creative. And it sounds like he wants her to meet various people about this, which sounds a lot like a money guy making suggestions to the rest of the team, at which they may roll their eyes and privately be like, “I wish that guy would go away,” but I am of course TOTALLY making all that up. For all I know he is a tireless driving force who champions excellence by embodying it. By the way, the IMDb page for this movie currently says “plot under wraps” which could also mean “does not exist yet” and has Lindsay as the only star attached, claiming it’s still in pre-production. When you consider this was probably shot in October… yeah.
So, Lindsay is planning to go to L.A. with Randall, and AJ observes to us that Linds is “riddled with fear” about her career, and tries to ascribe that to her deep artistic nature and need to channel all that passion and energy. But what I am hearing is: She’s terrified she will never work again, and she doesn’t have any fallback career, other than potentially as a model for leaflets about the avoidable pitfalls of hair extensions.
However, she does say this: “People don’t want to hire me. It’s like a flight risk.” I hope that’s a real bite, and that she didn’t secretly precede it with, “Some jackwagon told me that…,” because it’s refreshing to hear her say it so plainly. She should tattoo it onto the back of her hand. She points out that it costs films money to insure the production against her not showing up because she was out partying, and that “I don’t get that chance anymore. I have to be doing whatever it takes to stay sober so can show up, suit up, and do what I need to do.” I would love to know when this interview was filmed.
So, AJ decides to arrange for a meeting between Lindsay and her friend DeVon Franklin at Sony (well, actually, he’s at Columbia, but it’s Sony-owned). AJ calls him and passes the phone to Lindsay, who takes the call off-camera and then comes back in tears because it was a religious experience:
No, seriously. He ended the call by praying with her. When Dina hears this, she goes, “WELL. I’m not even WORRIED now. It’s HAPPENING.” That is, quite seriously, the dumbest thing she has said. You’re right, Dina. Let’s just stop fretting about stuff like substance abuse and backsliding and job prospects because some VP at Columbia invoked the Lord on a phone call. I mean, I’m glad it was meaningful to Lindsay and everything, but Dina’s mindless la-di-da response effectively gives Lindsay permission to think she’s done enough work here. The ENTIRE rest of this episode proceeds to kick that approach in its nethers.
Lilo also says that DeVon told her that they bring up her name for every movie because they think she’s “the most talented actress there is,” but that her agents aren’t in meetings trying to change the conversation about her. Lindsay sniffles that she loves her agents, but that she believes they don’t sell her that hard, instead clients that they think are easier to book and thus yield surer commissions. I would feel sorry for her, but it’s 2014. Coke Pants was in 2007. That is a LARGE chunk of years in which her agents presumably had to fight uphill battles as she worsened her own reputation. After six or seven years, yielding surer commissions isn’t such a bad strategy. What’s their motivation anymore? The burden of proof is still on Lindsay and she’s only seventy days out of rehab at this point. She demands too much, too fast. [Note: A Fug National brought up that he’s married to Meagan Good, and when Googling that (he is really cute, it turns out), I found out he’s done something called “Oprah’s Life Class,” so clearly he’s in good with this network and maybe his friend is actually OPRAH and not as much AJ, and he was doing the show a favor which LL then threw back in his face.]
Unfortunately, Lindsay thinks going to L.A. with this Randall person will change her life and prove to everyone that she’s an angel on whose limbs small woodland creatures yearn to perch and sing alleluias. To Lindsay, the horizon — whatever it is made of in a given day — is her Pinterest board, and she tacks all her hopes onto it. Remember when she thought living in her own apartment would be the ONE thing she needed to ground her? Right. Now that day is here, and suddenly, going to L.A. to talk to people is the one thing she needs to find success. Goals are good, but sometimes the baby steps are, too, kid, and I think she needs to stop acting like external forces are going to be her salvation.
SOMEONE, however, has been hard at work stacking and cataloging her shoes. I’m sure it was #SaveMatt. Or AJ. Or a camera assistant who couldn’t say no. We learn that Linds has a ton of clothes here, and even MORE coming from L.A. in a moving van, and needs to get rid of a few things in order to make room for bare necessities like furniture, and a hundred other boxes of clothes she doesn’t remember she owns. The BAREST essentials. Lindsay happens to live above a high-end consignment store, so she has #SaveMatt carry a few things downstairs — and we’re talking only a few; it’s not a drop in the bucket so much as a drop in the ocean.
As soon as Lindsay and her garbage-bag pants get downstairs, though, she starts SHOPPING at the consignment store. So instead of clearing OUT things in her place, she is in fact bringing more stuff INTO it. This feels like the biggest metaphor of all. And Dina is all, “Oh, yeah, oooooh, what a DEAL,” because she absurd and is doing no parenting and cannot help Lindsay get a grip because she is devoid of one herself.
Seriously, Lindsay is cooing over how a garment that “should be five thousand” is only $500, and lapses into that thing where she HAS to buy it because it’s so comparatively cheap. Girl, we’ve all had those moments. I feel you. But a) $4500 off is still $500 out of your pocket, kind of like how people often wrongly act like “tax deductible” equals “free”; and b) DO YOU EVEN HAVE $5 IN YOUR POCKET, much less five hundreds? I strongly suspect she is as broke as my last nerve. I mean, the production had to front the cash to move her into her apartment, against her paychecks allegedly. #SaveMatt no longer works for her in real life, and I think it’s because the show paid for HIM, too, and she couldn’t have afforded it on her own. A few episodes ago she was freaking out about getting her paychecks, and hasn’t booked much work. So it’s laughable to me that she’s being so cavalier about $500 — much less the $4000 she then tries to spend on a few more must-have pieces like fringe wedge-boots and three coats — and even MORE laughable that HER MOTHER WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ADULT HERE is like, “Woooooo, I want that!” YOUR MOM IS A GLORIFIED WOO GIRL. Please, Oprah, buy this girl a WW#SMD chain (What Would #SaveMatt Do). Because the man with this face, in this scenario, would have REALLY GOOD get-a-grip advice:
His mouth says diplomatic things, but his eyes… he is a wizard of WTF.
However, Lindsay’s defense, this Alaia coat WAS awesome. (It was hard to get a good grab because she was always moving and so was the camera.) But it’s also the definition of non-essential to her life right now. Still, if you allow yourself ONE splurge, make it that, and then GET OUT. I kind of can’t believe #SaveMatt didn’t hustle her ass out of there, but then again, I have a suspicion that #SaveMatt always knew this job was finite and was beginning to enjoy standing back and watching the runaway train that is her brain.
Dina FINALLY thinks to point out that maybe, just maybe, $4500 cash from her clothes would be a better thing to have in hand than… more clothes. “Think about THAT,” she rasps, like she just discovered a new relativity theorem. YES. THINK. (Also, just imagine what she could get if she sold more than half of these things, most of which she admits she’s never even worn and might not even like and which were free. Consignment stores say no to a lot of stuff, but some of this is pristine and still tagged.) Instead, Lindsay takes the clothes in a trade. And the shop owners look THRILLED by this turn of events. Lord knows if she got any kind of good deal. “She picked out expensive things,” the store owner says. “She does that,” #SaveMatt replies.
His eyes did open in this scene, but this still so perfectly encapsulates #SaveMatt’s aura, where he is trying to explain just how much crap this girl has in her apartment. He comes up with, “She has more high-end stuff than anyone I’ve ever seen.” Thus, INCLUDING PRINCE. RETHINK YOURSELF LINDSAY.
Also, can we talk about why that frilly umbrella even made it to New York in the first place? Did she ever ACTUALLY go through her boxes when she was in that behemoth storage space, where she could have sorted through all this and sold or donated it BEFORE paying to move it to the city? Did she just not realize how little closet space her pocket change would buy in Manhattan? Do I need to be her Get A Grip Friend? I think I would quit on arrival.
WHY DO YOU (STILL) OWN A PAPARAZZI PLAY SET. WHY IS THAT A SENTENCE I EVEN HAVE TO TYPE.
So, bless #SaveMatt, when the moving truck arrives he is still in his suit, looking sharp, digging into these boxes with AJ. Lindsay’s apartment is CHOKED with them. And still no furniture has even made it off the truck, and Lindsay is still ASLEEP, or at least, hiding out in her room. Which means nobody can PUT things in her room, so the living room keeps filling up, and she never shows her face to even discuss anything with the people busting their asses to fill her home with all the stuff she has admitted is largely useless to her. How touching.
But, there is an AMAZING moment where the movers are hanging out downstairs, and the crew is shooting them semi-guerrilla style — like, they obviously signed releases to be on camera, and are either miked or have a boom nearby, but the crew is not at all up in their grills and it’s clearly an actual break scene and not staged — and one of the dudes says, “She’s still sleeping,” and the others are DUMBFOUNDED. “Never. Again,” one of them says dramatically. “Movie stars. NOPE.” That is a t-shirt right there.
This was sort of sweet, if also insane. So, AJ decides Lindsay is going to LOSE HER MIND when she eventually does get up, walks into her house, and sees the chaos of a forest of cardboard. “It’s time to create some peace!” she says on the logic that anything Lindsay sees that looks familiar and comforting and like this is a house and not a warehouse will keep her from going off the deep end. So she muscles everything away and puts this one oversize chair (or undersize couch) against the wall and arranges a trunk and a table on either side, then COVERS them with scented candles and LIGHTS THEM ALL. To recap: movers still in and out, people jostling all around, cardboard everywhere, and AJ is putting LIT FLAMES all over like flickering death traps. Except they smell good so when everyone incinerates at least it will be fragrant in a positive way. But there was something correct in the REST of her thinking, and this little scene made me very sad, because AJ’s heart was in the right place and I don’t think Lindsay even looked at it.
So, Linds comes out, says, “Oh my God” before she even makes it onto the camera, and turns tail and goes back into her bedroom. And then:
It’s not AS bad as it sounds: After an indiscriminate amount of time, he comes back and says they can resume shooting, but he also brings with him a plan that must have given him an aneurysm to say out loud. Which is: They are going to put all the boxes BACK IN THE TRUCK.
This is the mover’s reaction. It is priceless. It is the Rembrandt of dumbfounded reaction shots.
Now, I think this was #SaveMatt’s solution just as a way of making ANY kind of decision that would result in a manageable Lohan. And he’s probably correct, because Lindsay is so wired to the term “chaos” that she’s basically using it as her safe word, and all she has to do is say it out loud and everyone will stop what they’re doing and turn the ship, so he is trying to hold the wheel. Even if that means UNMOVING HER. I think the idea is to get the furniture out, then bring all the boxes back downstairs and move the furniture up, and then… figure it out from there. But she’s lived this long without furniture; why not just make her go through what’s up there and put the rest in storage, and have it delivered in phases? She has a chair and scented candles. What more does she need?
But the net effect is that everything the movers just did, they now have to undo, and this van was there for their full fourteen-hour day, which must have been a wonderful treat for all and sundry. Why was NONE of this properly investigated at her storage space in L.A.? I really think Lindsay mostly just half-assed this thing because she figured it wouldn’t be that hard, and if it was, it would be someone else’s hard. Instead, her inattention has blown back at her, again, and so she went haywire.
When Linds does come out, she’s in horrible denim coveralls. As if she’s going to do any actual work. A HILARIOUS concept.
Instead she just lies down on her air mattress while her “friend” Liam pokes at it with his toe, as if he’s never heard of such a thing, and is about to circle the drain of an existential bathtub of thought about whether an air mattress without air is still an air mattress.
This is Linds’s face when noting that people seemed to think Liam was her boyfriend. She insists he’s just a friend. That facial expression says, “Our genitals are friends and I had known him for three hours and he slept over that night and he signed a release and that’s the only reason I know his last name.” I could be WRONG about that, but if I were simply reading sheepish expressions and an inability to make eye contact with one’s humble interviewer, that is what I would infer.
This is Lindsay when she realizes two things: Her two couches do not appear to be on the truck, and neither is her fitted sheet. Of these two crises, which one sends everyone into more of a tizzy? THE FITTED SHEET. THE THING YOU COULD GO BUY AT BED BATH AND BEYOND FOR $20, AND EVEN THAT MIGHT BE OVERSPENDING. I mean, she could go online and buy new couches, too, if she’s that hard up for places to sit. If only she had $4500 handy. OH WAIT. Also, all those designer duds, and she’s in a tank top knotted over leggings and no bra. There is something refreshing in her not dressing up for the cameras, and yet tragic that she doesn’t care how she looks on camera.
This is one of those times when I think #SaveMatt wanted us to see his disbelief without actually breaking the fourth wall. For this is all the stuff that’s been packed onto the moving van, and the mover tells him it will take FOUR HOURS to unpack it AGAIN just to look for the “seven or eight boxes of bedding” that Lindsay can’t find. One bed. SEVEN OR EIGHT BOXES OF BEDDING. SERIOUSLY, JUST GO TO TARGET. #SaveMatt could even SPOT HER the $20. It’s ridiculous. I feel for him, but I also wonder why — in the absence of sense at the top of the pyramid — people couldn’t have INFERRED what the priorities were and catalogued what was written on all the boxes that came out, or peeked inside them before they went upstairs. Anyone who has ever moved in their entire life knows that you need clean towels and sheets within reach. Most people even pack a couple boxes of random essentials and label them as such so that they can find them. DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE?
I just thought this shot was hilarious. Also, you know shit has gotten real when #SaveMatt is in a t-shirt and not a vest.
So, now we move onto the weird bits of the show. I am wondering if this scene actually took place AFTER the one we’re going to see later (or as part of the same day for which she had been entirely briefed, and thus knew what was coming), because Lindsay is giving some SERIOUS attitude in her face and in her behavior. Her body language is standoffish with AJ, she’s giving mumbly and non-specific answers in an obnoxious tone, and at some point she starts staring at her phone and giving little shit-eating smiles when she ignores what people are asking her. The subject matter is, when will Lindsay go to L.A., can the crew film her there, and when is she returning? Lindsay says she will leave Wednesday, never directly answers the second question, and says she hopes to leave Friday or Saturday, at the latest, because she hates L.A. AJ presses her about why, and she shrugs and says she just doesn’t like L.A., in a way that suggests a non-answer.
We also find out that Lindsay is supposed to stay with AJ in L.A., and meet with DeVon at Sony/Columbia. If you sense an ominous undertone in that sentence, you are correct. Someday her tombstone will read simply, “She was supposed to.”
Somebody needs to tell me why it was necessary to frame AJ this tightly. If she stuck out her tongue she’d be licking the camera.
This conversation is incredibly winding because it deals with things we did not see, and they didn’t get any bites from anyone explaining it. From what I gleaned, AJ and Dina and Lindsay — and God knows who else — went out to dinner one night, and at that dinner, Dina told AJ that Lindsay took a drink at some random other time. So AJ wants to talk to her about it, and the way she orchestrates it is that she asks Lindsay about whether skipping some of her routines, like meditation, is throwing her off-center. Lindsay is defensive about this and says there’s no point in harping on her skipping that because she can’t change the past, and what matters is that when she got freaked out on moving day, her response was to lock herself in the bathroom and meditate, and it calmed her. “But that’s not something I want to talk about. That’s sacred,” she says. The list of things that are Too Sacred To Discuss is getting really long, and may also include that headband and crop top, because nobody asks her about either one.
AJ thinks that it’s good to discuss what has worked for her, and I think she means, as part of the show that’s documenting how she’s re-aligning herself. Lindsay says the only reason anything works for her is if people stop asking her about it, because asking if she’s at meetings or meditating or whatever equals pressure, which is totally her trying to get out of having to tell anyone what she is or isn’t doing, which is BAD NEWS because if everything was on the level I think she’d be trumpeting it gladly.
And THEN she lets fly this mind-boggling assertion: “When I’m left to my own devices, I know the right things for me and I do those things on my own. It’s when there are other voices that I feel judged, reprimanded, condescended to, and that’s what made me” take bad steps. So, yes, once again, she’s saying that it’s OTHER people’s fault when she f’s up, because when it’s just HER, she makes great choices. Dear Lindsay: Can you give me examples? Please show your work.
AJ’s face says, “That is such a crock I could slow-cook a brisket in it.”
She asks Lindsay if perhaps something happened to give people a reason to doubt her, and thus, to keep asking what she’s doing. “Definitely. In my past. Why are you even asking me that? That’s obvious. I live in awareness of that,” LiLo says. Lindsay, you live in awareness of nothing. AJ gives her more No Bullshit Please faces and says the reason she’s asking is that Dina told her at dinner that Lindsay had been drinking. “At that dinner where she was [drinking]?” Lindsay says, trying to deflect the blame onto Dina, which is something I’m usually in favor of doing, so you KNOW we’re in deep here if I’m calling B.S. on THAT.
AJ then reveals she found wine in the house the next day (and I wonder if production is the one that found it). Lindsay huffily says that if she HAD been drinking, she’d talk to Sober Coach Michael about it and go to a meeting. Which she says she did, with a friend, and then she NAMES HER FRIEND, like, kid, it’s Alcoholics ANONYMOUS, and I know it sucks that you don’t get to be anonymous there, but let’s not ruin it for everyone else.
Lindsay then puts on her Huffy Face and gives AJ a lecture about how a real friend would’ve brought this up to her in private; AJ fires back with how upset she was, as a supposed close personal friend per Lindsay’s own words, that it was DINA getting in her ear to tell her Lindsay was drinking.
GET READY, because Lindsay’s response is a doozy: “That’s someone who was living in the guilt of their own actions, projecting it on me,” she says, and DING DING DING DAILY DOUBLE SHOWCASE SHOWDOWN NO WHAMMIES. This is proof positive that it’s way easier to see through someone else’s crap than your own, because that is EXACTLY A HUNDRED PERCENT what Lindsay herself does. And it’s what she does in this entire scene.
AJ tells her that she wants to help Lindsay tell the truth about all this, “which is what you told Oprah you were giving” — very smart to drop the O-bomb — and that means that she’ll ask Lindsay tough questions on camera so that Lindsay can set the record straight. Lindsay deflects her again by saying she would ONLY ever talk to Michael Sober Coach about this stuff and that she resents AJ throwing this on her while the cameras are filming. (It all happens in a way where I feel like if Lindsay was briefed about the content of today’s discussion, her response must have been, “Good luck trying, because I am going to SHUT YOU DOWN,” as the tone of the scene was never warm. It was always cold and combative from Lindsay’s side. If she was warned, she could’ve worked out a way to handle it that didn’t involve boxing out AJ, and/or that was producive. But she’d have had to care enough to do that, or be a remotely emotionally productive person, and neither seems to apply.)
Do you guys think it was fair game of AJ to ask about it? I generally do. If this were a show about anything else, it might feel sensational and solely for drama, but this is a show ENTIRELY about Lindsay getting back on her feet, and the crux of it is knowing how stable those feet are. Lindsay HAS stated she isn’t comfortable discussing the issue of her sobriety or her sacred recovery on camera, but then what the hell is she doing here? Why is she doing on a show about her recovery, if she’s not willing to discuss her recovery? As I noted before, if she really felt it were working, she’d be singing it from the rooftops. This comes across like she’s afraid to say anything definitively about her health that someone out there could prove, or at least claim, was a lie. And something about the way this girl operates makes it feel like she’s ALSO hiding behind reverence for The Program — “It’s SACRED TO MEEEEE” — to get out of telling truths, be it consciously or not, and therefore that it’s less about not wanting to discuss her recovery than it was about not wanting anyone to see through the veneer of recovery.
I think it’s entirely possible that production was really struggling with what might’ve been going on with Lindsay behind the scenes, and/or found the booze, and felt like it needed to uncork The Nuclear Option. And the only person who could execute it, at this moment, was AJ. Because God knows the director can’t get frozen out, and they can’t get risk the head of #SaveMatt, or else the entire thing would fall apart, and who else is there? Dina clearly doesn’t want to be involved in anything real (or has been told she can only participate minimally, by Oprah or other Powers That Be; does anyone else think it’s weird that a woman who has sought attention as much as Dina has isn’t inserting herself into this as much as possible and/or trying to paint herself as loving, caring, concerned, involved?), and Michael Lohan is nowhere to be found right now. I actually DO think AJ is invested in her — if for no other reason than she’s on TV as a life coach and probably doesn’t want to fail at it, but I also think she legit wants this to work out for Lindsay. For all we know, AJ felt she needed a nuclear option to force Lindsay to confront things or discuss things, and asking her about it on-camera was a way to do it.
However, I can also see where if the two of them have developed a coach-pupil relationship of any kind off-camera, Lindsay might think it’s weird if it never came up between them privately. AND YET Lindsay is also an extremely unreliable narrator even within her own head, so who knows, maybe it DID come up privately and she wriggled out of it or had been giving AJ the slip for days. I have no idea what might’ve convinced AJ to do it this way, but I don’t think it was JUST to goose the show. I mean, maybe? But it didn’t come off that way.
The net effect:
So, as you may have guessed, this means her meeting with a VP at Sony/Columbia — the one who prayed with her, brought her to tears with his faith in her, and was supposed to MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN, per Dina — also did not materialize. Why? BECAUSE SHE MISSED IT. BECAUSE SHE IS INCAPABLE OF NORMAL-PERSON FUNCTIONS.
One of the things I love about this show is its mock-ups of tabloid pages. I want to start making these for Jessica anytime things happen in our lives. “FUG GIRL OUT OF DIET COKE: Is Blogger Irresponsibly Switching To Pepsi?”
Apparently this all happened while she was in L.A. Lindsay, on camera, says, oh, well, there was my friend, and we went to get food, and I was leaving, and my bag was near the wine, and then suddenly there was a photo. Super contrived. It’s very “they both reached for the gun,” and now I’m picturing her sitting in Richard Gere’s lap while they spin a musical yarn about her innocence. I would believe it more if she said she was flicking a cigarette. Seriously: How dumb do you have to be to reach for wine in front of any windows when you are one of the world’s most stalked addicts? Like, it’s bad to fall off the wagon, and whatnot, but if you’re going to do it, take that wine bottle into a closet and pour it into a soda can. The first rule of lying is make sure it’s a good lie, well told. Her words don’t sound convincing even if they are true, which is weird, because addicts are supposedly great liars AND she’s an actress. It makes me even less convinced by Dina Lohan saying she believed Lindsay every time she said she was fine, because if this is her caliber of defense… And frankly, I mean, that hand is not reaching for the purse. That hand sure looks like it’s reaching OVER the purse.
Also, I did some Googling, and this Daily Mail story about the whole thing is interesting: First, it misidentifies Sober Coach Michael (unless “Michael” is a pseudonym), and it ALSO claims he cost $2500 A DAY. It claims she chose to let him go because she thought she could do just fine on her own, which is not what the show itself has established, so I wonder what’s real (my theory: she couldn’t afford it beyond what production may have paid for). The Daily Mail is not exactly a bastion of journalistic reliability, though, so… anyway: That is some information.
We are also told, via a card and not the footage, that in this interview Lindsay admitted to taking a drink a month earlier (but we don’t know if that’s a month earlier than the point of filming the reality footage, or the shooting of this braless interview, which could have been way later). She blames jumping into a relationship with a guy as soon as she got out of rehab, who was drinking, and Sober Coach Michael must be tempted to change his cell phone number at this point. “I had a glass of wine and that was it,” she says, and it makes me wonder what common sense dictates that we’re supposed to multiply that by to get at the truth. She says she was scared about it for a long time and then finally realized it was stupid not to admit it and deal with it. THAT much is true. Oh, KID.
After she gets back from L.A., Lindsay and AJ meet for an EXTREMELY frosty meal. AJ leads off with why Linds didn’t meet DaVon. Lindsay says, as if this is was a totally unavoidable pitfall of being a human being, “What happened was the meeting was at 12:30, and I got up and it was 12.” Alarm clocks. Wake-up calls. Cell phone alerts. ALL of these things exist in the world so that Lindsay Lohan, on a big day, with a meeting where she can’t afford to slip into same old habits, will not slip into same old habits. She is a self-saboteur of the highest order. She is the High Priestess of LET’S JUST NOT. Lindsay claims she and DeVon worked it out and came to an understanding and it was super great, which I guarantee you is just him being polite.
AJ obviously thinks that’s a load of horse shit., as is the fact that she went back to L.A. prepared to house this person and then never heard from her. (Lindsay’s response: “I just turned my phone off.” I’M SO SURE.) AJ quite correctly tells the camera that when you are friends with someone, and you are bending over backwards for that person, there is a level of consideration one can safely expect. “Lindsay and I are calling each other friends, but there is no consideration,” she says.
Here is what I think happened: Lindsay went out there pissed and wanting to punish people, and then a meeting or two did not go well, and so she, deep down, sabotaged the one at Sony and backed away from everything because her frightened subconscious thinks NOT trying and failing is less of an indictment than TRYING and failing, because if it’s the latter, then she’s screwed, and if it’s the former, she can still pretend there exists a life vest of her own caring.
AJ starts pushing Lindsay about whether she met any new friends on her trip. It sounds like an inane question but I think AJ is trying to ask her whether she fell off the wagon, without saying it directly again. Lindsay goes, “This is not a discussion,” and then stares to the side crossly before going out for a smoke. The mic picks up her saying, “I hate when she digs. I hate it when she keeps GOING.” And AJ tells the camera this is her first experience being totally blown off by Lindsay, and that at their next session, she will ask what work Lindsay is willing to do with her so they can take things to the next level, and if she isn’t interested in that, then AJ will leave and tell her to call when she’s ready.
So the next night, AJ shows up for her session, and Lindsay refuses to see her. I get the sense Amy and #SaveMatt and AJ were all complaining about Lindsay and they cut around it because they didn’t want it to look like the production was ragging on its subject. #SaveMatt says something about her insisting it wasn’t on the schedule, pulling the same bullshit as before, and AJ is like, “I TOLD her the content [of the discussion]. There’s no reason to run.” AHA. So that suggests to me that they ARE vetting a lot of these things past Lindsay, which makes practical sense, and also explains that earlier scene a bit (while also blunting her offense at it, because if she was told AJ was going to ask on-camera, and she still appeared on-camera to be asked, she shouldn’t yell at AJ for asking her about it on-camera. If that makes sense).
And then AJ gets red-eyed and emotional, and says that her idea is to leave before it gets personal, because if it gets ugly, then Lindsay can’t ever come to her again, and she doesn’t want that. But she realizes it’s time for her to go, and I don’t know if it’s that Lindsay fired her, or production had to fire her, or both, or Linds shit-canned her and they had to shoot a bunch of stuff afterward in order to explain it on-camera… I don’t know, but it’s a shame, because now Lindsay is down a Sober Coach and down a Life Coach and #SaveMatt clearly next if Lindsay isn’t careful. It’s not like I thought any of them were such stellar coaches, but I DO think AJ’s heart is in the right place, and Lindsay REALLY needs people like that in her life. Because if they’re present, they’re certainly not accounted for on this show.
Then Lindsay tears up in a passing mention of relapsing and trying to stay sober, but her general takeaway on AJ is, “She brought a friend to me when I didn’t have any,” blames the dissolution of their relationship on AJ asking her about drinking on-camera, and then concludes, “All in all, she was a blessing in disguise.” And, like, I think Lindsay means that as a compliment, but that is SO NOT A COMPLIMENT. What was her disguise?It SOUNDS like Lindsay saying she was a blessing in the guise of a soulless she-troll, or something, which is awful. Lindsay can’t even find kind parting words correctly. You can’t hire Tina Fey to write your life, girl. Start writing your own and make it good.
