Clearly, after the events of the last six episodes, filming with Lindsay essentially ground to a halt. These two hours are patched together from filler, stretched-out shooting days that are spread out as far as possible, and interview bites that I think are cobbled together from stuff they’ve already shown, just to fill the dead air with some sound. I don’t know if Lindsay stopped cooperating, or had almost nothing going on in her life, or what, but this is where the show becomes the crew only shooting with her on infrequent days and even then often not from within her house. But there is a bombshell at the end that we’ll all need to discuss, so let’s press forth…
The first piece is Lindsay shooting Billy on the Street with comedian Billy Eichner, for Funny or Die. The premise: They’re so angry that How I Met Your Mother is ending that they’re going to trash a branded HIMYM car with sledgehammers. And at first it promises to be more of the same — her call time is 1 p.m., they’re worried about losing the light, etc. — but just as they set 3:05 p.m. as the drop-dead for proceeding without her, she decides to leave her apartment. Her excuse is that she’s sick with a chest cold, and she does sound hoarse, but still. It’s more of the same. It’s like she thinks pushing her limits is an art, and she’s trying to master it. But we do at least get to see her wearing a welder’s mask, staring contemplatively at the sky. I hope that’s her book cover. Wishing Weld, by Lindsay Lohan.
The one line she contributes — that we see — is “Reruns can’t sustain me,” which Billy Eichner allegedly thinks is genius, but which she delivers with all the comedic oomph of someone sending back her dinner because the steak was overcooked.
And then when they ask her to stick around and give them two wild lines — re-recordings of stuff she already said, in case the mics didn’t pick it up, or stray lines they can cut in if needed — she gives them this face. Over TWO LINES. The dude in the middle is the show’s exec producer, and he can barely contain his astonishment that she’s claiming her voice is too shot for two wild lines. She would rather leave and go somewhere else another day to record them, and you can see this guy inwardly groaning and realizing that having to schedule her again is going to be slow-cooked insanity. Eventually, his guys tell him they have what they need and she can just leave, so it becomes a moot point. Kind of like most of the rest of the finale, actually.
Next up, the kind of shot that must give Amy Rice acid flashbacks:
This stuff must haunt her whenever she’s forced to remember this working experience: Lindsay Lohan, slumped in a bed, refusing to do much except check her phone. Even as Amy tries to ask her questions, she gets stiff one-word answers, and Lindsay doesn’t ever leave her bed. There is also a scene in which we have to watch her getting new extensions. She says her hair is so dead from being cut and colored a lot — through whose fault, girl? Your hair didn’t just fall into a bleach bottle — that extensions seem more productive than waiting for it to grow out, and that they cost $1200, but that’s okay, because they last two months. You know what else lasts two months? My $130 highlights and trim.
That this show was able to make anything out of what it got is a real credit to her creativity — the way she was able to get supporting players to help with interviews — and to the people who put all the pieces together in the edit bay. Most documentaries you at least probably have a sense of what the final picture is that you’re working toward, but this must have felt at times like one of those double-sided jigsaws where you’re never entirely sure if you’re fitting the right sections together or what you’re even DOING or where you are.
As such, they buy footage from a YouTube gossip show — much cheaper, I assume, than anything else — about something that happened when Lindsay went to Miami for Art Basel, which she did not allow the cameras to shoot, in favor of bringing her own camera, with which she apparently only gets one shot of herself and then a shot of a paparazzi boat or something. So thanks for all THAT usable footage, Lindsay. What a great compromise this whole “give Lindsay a camera” thing turned out to be.
Lindsay claims the trip was not to go to Art Basel week, and that it was a mere coincidence that it was happening at the same time she planned to stay at a friend’s place on Star Island (a fancy, exclusive residential area), and that she doesn’t even really want to go to anything, and gosh, why are all these INVITATIONS coming in, because she only told two people she was even going to be IN Miami… right. And I guess the place she stayed was a rental her friend procured, and there was an altercation involving Paris Hilton’s brother Barron.
On Instagram, Paris got real crabby about it. Understandably; he is her brother. Basically, he claims Lindsay ordered someone to beat the shit out of him because she heard him making fun of her, or somesuch; the Daily Mail – among others, and yes, grain of salt, etc. — says Lindsay’s boyfriend was commenting on her weird behavior to Barron, and he responded with some strong language about her being a drug addict, and that Lindsay freaked out and demanded they throw Barron out of the party, and it escalated. She claims she had already left the party by that time and had nothing to do with it. He said, they said, she said. Personally, having watched the show and seeing how Lindsay reacts to things, the Daily Mail account sounds the most plausible. (I KNOW.) It’s worth noting that Paris Hilton has a long history of badmouthing Lindsay — remember the infamous “firecrotch” incident, which will remind you what a heinous person Paris Hilton is, as well as that slime Brandon Davis — and so it’s certainly possible they wanted to get at her. But then again, that was EIGHT YEARS AGO, so it seems like a stretch that this was part of any stupid long-term conspiracy or whatever, and more than possible that Lindsay would have at least taunted him while he was getting beaten up, even if she didn’t order it up herself. I don’t know. As with any of these things, we will never know. And as with any of these things, everyone involved is an idiot, and Lindsay has not earned the right for me to believe the best of her, and when her FATHER is the one backing up her story… well.
This is her face when she’s asked to explain the incident. She says she had been a guest “a few days prior,” and then says she moved to a hotel right after the incident, so either she’s changing her story or that sentence didn’t come out of her mouth the way she intended. She then refuses to discuss the incident further.
However, looking nice and fairly professional in this white outfit, she has a talk with #SaveMatt about how the story keeps chasing her around and won’t go away, and reads a statement that she personally crafted. It was going to go up on her Web site, but her people — including #SaveMatt — talked her out of it because they think feeding the flames will make it worse, although she keeps insisting that’s not true. I tend to think it is ALWAYS best not to poke the crazy, and that it’s easier to stay above reproach if you simply don’t dignify things with a comment. But I also haven’t been accused of ordering a beating. Anyway, here is the statement, verbatim from what they showed her reading. Stamp it with sic.
My intention was to have a nice fun time with friends and family in Miami and that is all I did. It’s unfortunate that because I am a name to some people, rather than an actual person with feelings and hardships and a life to live, that those who choose to not know the real me would negate all that I’ve been working hard for in the past two years, and the thought that there are people out there who don’t know me are so easily excited to take that all away saddens me. For what, I ask myself? Fame? Validation? Boredom? Money? Fun? I don’t care to know the answer, but I do care to let the fans that support me and the professionals that have helped me overcome my battles know that their work and love isn’t going to waste. I’m living proof of how one’s actions can result in overshadowing their talent and dreams. I just ask that my name be kept out of a very again unfortunate situation that I have no part in. I’m working very hard on myself every day trying to gain back the trust of people that I admire, to get back on set and live the life that I know I’m meant to live. This is not anyone telling me to put a statement out. It’s not written by anyone but myself, sitting in my bedroom, thinking about how many films I’d like to be doing right now. So with that being said, I felt that I had to say something. I don’t doubt that whatever I say will be analyzed by media outlets, I will be judged, and the person that I am will be made out to be whatever people want it to be. I’m not afraid to use my voice and speak my truth. Oh, and yeah, I won’t be going to Art Basel next year.”
Hey, Linds? Didn’t you say you weren’t going down there this time specifically for Art Basel? Careful with your little jokes, there, because sometimes they undercut you.
This statement says a lot of nice things, but then it also does that whole thing where she attacks the lameness of her detractors — it never works to tell the people who are reading this that, if they believe the worst in her, they’re Just Jealous, or bored, or whatever — and then spins it so that it’s not about her actions, or even potentially her putting herself in a stupid situation, and instead all about how WE are the problem and she’s just an innocent girl having a rough time. It is textbook alchemy, the kind we’ve learned about in spades on this show, and it’s quite interesting. And the problem for her, now, is that she is in a position where it always sounds like she’s standing in a big pile of bullshit even if she is telling the truth. And it’s going to be that way for a long time. Which is why, if she is telling the truth, it really is better to say nothing at all. Because when she opens her mouth — or unleashes the Notes app on her iPhone, or whatever — she automatically sounds like someone on the defensive trying to spin a yarn. It sucks. We’ve all probably been in that position where we’re arguing against someone who has that magical ability to always be on higher ground and puts you perpetually climbing uphill even when you know you’re right. And it SUCKS to be there. And yet I still don’t believe her that she wasn’t there.
Then we get a filler segment where #SaveMatt tries to convince us that their working relationship is really great now and he’s super pleased, and that his job is fun, which is intercut with a scene of a) him going ahead to a restaurant to make sure Lindsay will have a nice table, and b) her being nasty to him because she decided he didn’t tell her things that he in fact DID tell her and she just didn’t get the texts (which I definitely don’t believe; I think “I’m not getting texts” is her excuse for when she gets texts she completely ignores). The footage undercuts the words in the most beautiful way, so that as he talks, you can see his nose grow and grow and become a mighty balance beam of truth that he will be unable to walk without falling. #Mattnocchio also says that because Lindsay is sober, she’s on a night schedule, because she “has more energy” — as opposed to when she’s on a night schedule because she’s partying all the time, I guess; let’s not pretend she is ever on a day schedule — and defends her ability to sleep all day because she doesn’t have that much going on and so it’s totally fine. Boy, someone seems to have gotten a memo that he’d better fluff Team Lilo.
Then at the restaurant, her “friend” is telling a story about the first time he smoked pot and how he used a honey bear bong — something he shares as if he invented this — and then he goes on and on about how his vodka tonic is super strong. Lindsay’s bites around this are all about how the moment she catches herself wanting to take a drink, she sees herself walking into court, wearing handcuffs, and it stops her, and that she’s conscious of making sure she doesn’t surround herself with the wrong people. Like a guy who won’t stop yammering about how strong his drink is, maybe? You’re four months sober. He needs to respect you and order a freaking Coke, whether you tell him it’s okay for him to get a cocktail or not.
Then we watch her do more community service. The kids are cute, and she’s good with them, but oh my GOD, then she says this about her pile of hours that she owes: “At this point you hope that maybe after all these years, they’ll say enough is enough. It’s all I can hope and pray for.” ARE YOU KIDDING. Honey, for one thing, that is a PLUM ASSIGNMENT. REMEMBER THE MORGUE? Or, would you rather be papped picking up trash off the side of the highway? And also, precious child, it works the opposite way: After all these years, they are not going to stop giving you hours just because they’re familiar with you. They’re going to give you MORE service because YOU KEEP EFFING UP AND THEY KEEP PUNTING ON DOING ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT IT. WOULD YOU RATHER BE IN JAIL? I’M SURE THAT CAN BE ARRANGED. This girl needs to learn to count her blessings, but I think more importantly, she needs to learn to identify them. She is the walking definition of a First World Problem.
With apologie to Lonnie here, he was willing to put himself on camera and be identified as having anything to do with Lindsay’s styling, so… here you go, sir. Now you’re on the hook.
Oh, and I skipped a moment where it’s revealed Lindsay is at minimum “casually seeing” the crazy drunk Russian guy from last week who got his ear pierced with a knife. He is walking to her apartment and singing things about Broadway while she has him on speaker, giggling and telling everyone, “Well, he’s Russian,” as if all Russian people are either ditzy or just known to have songs in their hearts. I guarantee you she had to look at the release he signed to remember his name.
Lindsay is at the Jingle Ball to introduce Miley Cyrus — so, we’re into December, which we knew actually because Art Basel was in early December — and she is wearing this outfit that we fugged. And there is a whole long discussion about whether she needs to pose with her hand up on her waist to prove that she’s wearing shorts, because with her hands down to her side, it looks like a giant t-shirt. Lindsay blows off everyone’s concerns about that, which is typical, although I do notice that in some of the photos she made a point of raising her hands so that the shirt hem hiked up enough. We are also reminded, although I’m not sure if I ever knew this actually, that Dina was a Rockette back in the day. I’m sure the Rockettes are super proud of this and have her photo up on their wall of fame.
So, then this happens: My interpretation is that Lindsay thinks it’d be good for her cred, and make her look cooler on the show, if they can make it look like she and Miley are buddies. So she tells people she needs to see her and pretends it’s for the professional reason of needing to discuss her intro, as if Miley Cyrus gives even a quarter of a shit about any of that. And when Miley does not materialize…
… this happens.
#jingleball2013 #Z100radio @mileycyrus can’t wait to announce a talented beauty http://t.co/z6lHTfMrEu
— Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) December 14, 2013
That was the Tweet; per Miley’s own Twitter, from what I can see, she did NOT ever respond. Lindsay basically got Twitter-jilted, and you have to think about how embarrassing it must have been for Lindsay to take a camera crew to this thing just to say two lines on-stage and not even get face time with Miley, because Miley Cyrus is actually too famous for Lindsay Lohan.
When she goes on-stage, her intro sort of dips into being about her — she says Miley has shown us a whole new side of herself, “which I can relate to…”, which… nice try, Linds, but none of it makes this YOUR night, nor any less random that you’re standing on front of a girl dressed as a reindeer giving a two-line introduction to someone who wouldn’t even talk to you. It’s way harsh, Tai, but… it’s the way of things now. Personally, I think it would’ve cost Miley nothing to pop by for a hug, but she’s probably correct to have avoided the OWN cameras because at this point GOD ONLY KNEW what this show was going to be.
Remember Inconceivable, the movie Lindsay was attached to with the producer whom she flew to L.A. to see? This woman is also a producer, so she takes a lunch meeting with Lindsay and talks about how they want to create a set environment where, yes, Lindsay is number one on the call sheet, but everyone is equal and respectful of everyone’s time. Which is a very diplomatic way of saying that the fish rots from the head, and Lindsay hasn’t worked on a film that didn’t become a fetid carcass in a long time.
Hilary also has a touch of the Crazy Eyes, but in a way that I kind of enjoy.
Lindsay is wearing the same outfit from the earlier scene with #Mattnochio, where she read her statement, and that one seemed like it was shot later in the day — like, at the end of it — because her hair was messier. She interviews, “I see all of these actresses doing all the things I have been doing since they were born,” and that she’s realizing she doesn’t have what they have anymore because she lost it, because she created distractions. Yes. “Distractions.” Although I will say Lindsay has been very up front in this whole thing about admitting that she has zilch going on professionally right now and that it’s making her antsy and desperate, which is probably almost as hard to say out loud as some of the other things she won’t say.
She also wore a cute navy coat that’s way better than any shot of it I could get — but basically, she turned it out for this meeting, and that was nice to see, and in fact served as the only point to that otherwise depressingly jumbled and vacant hour.
Next up: Lindsay films herself doing an interview about Los Angeles with Jared Leto, which means we don’t really get to see him, but we do hear him softly asking her questions. He asks her what’s driving people to move there, and she immediately says, “Fame. And all that comes with it,” and then after a pause, mutters, “Good luck. Good luck.” She also tells him that she has disappointed herself more than anyone else, and that what she thinks will happen for herself are, “Only good things,” which she delivers with this sad, wistful, almost scared look. I almost feel like this should have been the end. It’s a lot more honest than what they came up with.
Now we dip into some of what she talked about on Watch What Happens Live, which is: She cooks for people. It is as dull as you imagine. That dude her sweater is pointing to is Gavin, whose name made a cameo in an earlier show as someone of whom Michael Lohan disapprove. Which… that could go two ways: Either it’s a sign that you’re REALLY awful, or it’s actually to your credit.
I don’t know if she got her arrow sweater dirty, or they cut in something of her cooking another night because they wanted to get in one more unfortunate braless shot. Or maybe she took off the sweater because she got warm. Either way, one of her takeaways from this show should be that even if bras are not her favorite thing, they should be her very best friends in this world. Bras will never drink in front of you, nor bring wine into your house, and they will always support you.
She then does a shoot for Nylon Singapore, and for as much as the photographer waxes poetic about her posing, she uses all the same tricks in every outfit — including her old favorite, Running Hands Through Her Hair And Tousling It.
I love this grab because you can start to see the next shot, of the photographer being interviewed, and she has THE MOST IMPRESSIVE cloud of hair. I was trying to figure out who she looks like to me, and all I could come up with was this incredibly obscure reference to Crocodile Dundee (it’s the woman on the left).
And of course, there’s a shot where she’s in leggings and a plastic skirt, because it’s Nylon, and so her pelvis wearing an umbrella just seems right.
Next up: a meeting with a literary agent. Lindsay is AGAIN in that same white outfit with that same hair, and what I’m assuming is that she only gave Lindsay one shoot day and stacked it with meetings, and they spread them out across both episodes so that they had enough footage. Although having seen her closet, it’s possible she only has one polished, presentable outfit, and the rest is refried hellfire.
Lindsay tells her literary agent, Scott Waxman, that she sees two potential books: a coffee table thing with lots of photos, or a memoir. Her agent immediately is like, “MEMOIR,” because nobody needs a coffee table book of pictures of Lindsay Lohan. Like, NOBODY except maybe Dina is going to buy that and put it in their living room. MAYBE the basket next to the lav? MAYBE. But the Internet on your tablet is basically The Coffee Table Book of Lindsay Lohan and so that is a fairly terrible idea. Lindsay points out that her mother’s book is about to come out, but that maybe it’d be nice to share HER perspective, because she has a different one, and one that is probably not as focused on making Dina look like a champion. Scott delicately points out that perhaps she should tell her story the way she wants to tell it, which… was kind of supposed to be the pitch of this TV series, and look what that turned into, so Scott might want to hire a ghost writer tomorrow and then give that person a side deal to write a behind-the-scenes tell-all if the memoir falls apart. Or even if it doesn’t. She offers up journals from the past decade as source material, and his ears prick up and he tells her that it will be a multi-million dollar deal.
Interestingly, all I could find on the Internet was that in March — with “minimal” sample pages — publishers backed off his attempt at starting auction bidding at $5 million, and that she was “about to” sign a deal with HarperCollins for $1 million. I never found a confirmation on that on Publisher’s Marketplace, though, so I wonder if that was a situation where they were near a deal and so her side leaked it in the hopes of forcing it to become a reality, and making HarperCollins feel like it had to go through with it. Also, the date on that “announcement” dovetails with the premiere of this show, for whatever that’s worth. The PageSix story claims everyone balked at the high price tag because of her reputation and concerns she wouldn’t follow through, so I wonder if — RIGHT on the even of a spate of episodes that might confirm that fear — this WAS indeed leaked to rush things so that anything HarperCollins saw on the show would not confirm its worst fears. The presence of no official announcement, however, makes me think that perhaps this backfired. Regardless, it’s almost a certainty that HarperCollins didn’t let that information out, because they gain nothing from it. That leaves only Lindsay’s side.
The filmmakers basically now resort to pretty shots, like this one of Lindsay where a waitress is reaching across her to fill up a Champagne glass. Which is interesting on a whole mess of levels. She’s at a party for Just Sing It, an app that she and her brother Michael Jr. are working on together, which is basically like Vine or Instagram, but for videos of people doing karaoke. Which is a whole new level of oversharing, and yet also might be scarily entertaining, except that I don’t want to POST any such videos. But it has four and a half stars on iTunes, if you care, out of 175 votes, and this random review calls it wonderful for the socially inclined musician. There. Never say I didn’t do anything for you, Lindsay.
Michael, for his part, chips in more vague bites about her staying sober, culled from the same interview they used last week during the Foxwoods Halloween party. Michael has seemed like the sensible Lohan, noting that her addiction is a disease and she is challenged by having to develop the skills to say no; Lindsay’s bites chime in that her friends “wouldn’t be around me, drinking, if they didn’t know I could handle it, and that’s how I know they’re my friends.” NO. That is how you know they aren’t thinking about you. You don’t put your faith in people simply because they do whatever the hell they want to do around you, or they take whatever you say on blind faith because it’s more convenient to their lives to believe you. It’s one thing for friends to be comfortable doing anything and everything around each other, and another for a person to just be like, “I’m going to drink around her. Whatever, she can handle it.” It smacks again of Lindsay taking very little control, under the guise of acting like she’s taking ALL the control.
And then Michael points out that part of the process is learning that if there is a relapse, it’s not the end of the world, because there is always hope and people who care about you. And… this is another place where I really feel for families of addicts. Because it must be TREACHEROUS to walk this fine line between offering support and not demonizing slip-ups, and appearing to be coddling and permissive. Because you really do probably have to be careful about making that person too terrified to admit a wrong, or even a temptation, for fear that the person will self-sabotage or give in completely to the failure rather than admit it; but you also don’t want to create an environment in which that person feels comfortable dipping in and out of his/her vice at will because everyone is so cuddly about it. It HAS to be agony to figure out how to do that.
Lindsay shows off a photo someone sent her of this bumper sticker, and I have to wonder if she realizes it’s not a compliment.
We also featured Lindsay’s outfit from this event, which was in Shanghai in January, and is for — ahem — The Sohu Fashion Achievement Award. Which must have been very hard up for contenders, because I can’t remember the last time Lindsay achieved anything in fashion, except for that time she achieved Total and Complete Fugtrociousness by making leggings, one pair of which had BUILT IN KNEE PADS and was tastefully called “Mr. President.” She did not allow the crew to film her in Shanghai and again took apparently only a cursory amount of footage herself; this was all clearly taken from the event hosts themselves. Then she did a photo shoot for a Chinese magazine:
The horror. It’s SUPER boring. It’s not even good travelogue, either, because of her lack of interest in filming anything, and now her boobs are wearing toupees.
Next up: Sundance.
You can guess what happens next.
Way to keep it classy, Lohan.
She is in Sundance to announce Inconceivable with Randall Emmett. Now, I don’t know how common it is to go to Sundance and throw a press conference for yourself for a movie that doesn’t even EXIST yet (it happens plenty with films that are AT the festival), but this scene is super awkward because it looks like they spent about $5 to do this.
Seriously, that is the curtain through which she and Randall walk to “enter” the conference. I’m pretty sure that until five minutes before they were arrived, that was still folded up in its packaging inside a Target shopping bag.
And this is how populated the press conference is. I seriously think they just did this for the show.
I mean, at least when Sam Rockwell goes there to promote his actual, in-the-can movie, he gets woodsy backdrops. Anyway, Randall tells us that he checked, and Lindsay is a half-billion-dollar box office star (which is a mark of how far she’s gone in the wrong direction), and that Lindsay’s manager (or agent?) Evan had called him about getting her attached to this project. Interesting. Because Lindsay presented it earlier as if she and Randall had been going in on it together, and spent at least two episodes of this show bitching about how her team never put her up for things. My notes actually say, “Evan called him? Why does Evan get no love from her?” #SaveEvan. And then at the press conference Lindsay gets all the questions, and complains in interview that Randall made her do all the talking, even though, honey, this press conference is not so people can hear that guy yap about you. It’s so they can see that you can still string words together. She mostly does, but her answers are all very boring, about how she enjoys producing and she’s excited to get to work. She does bring up her woes, slightly, in a way that makes me wonder if her “bravery” at doing so is actually just so that she can lower people’s expectations of her and have an easier bar to clear.
#Mattnocchio comes back on only long enough to dispense with himself. He says the one thing that I truly believe he wishes he could keep on the record — “The last several months with Lindsay have been like riding an insane horse through a burning stable” — and then TOTALLY BACKTRACKS and pretends he was kidding. Dude, you so were not kidding. Don’t pull that shit with me, sir. He claims that they had a complicated relationship at first but then says it’s always like that when you’re getting to know a celebrity — that much, I can believe — and says that he has to go back to L.A. for a bit but that he hopes they’ll work together again in the future, if they get a chance. TRANSLATION: The shoot was ending and Lindsay was barely letting them do anything anymore, so the production didn’t need to pay for him to wrangle her, and he was DUNZO anyway.
Then #Mattnocchio carefully refutes these:
He does so quite adeptly. He says the idea of her not paying him could never have been true because he always gets paid up front, so obviously, if he was there, he was getting paid. What he does not say is that she SURELY was never paying him in the first place. I suspect the grain of truth in these stories is that if she’d wanted to retain him and pay him herself, it would’ve been too expensive; he clings to debunking the interpretation that she suddenly ran out of money to pay him and, I believe, tells a very technical truth indeed, wriggling through this loophole as fast as he can before his nose jumps a foot and impregnates the camera. That’s pure speculation on my part, but I stand by it.
Then the show takes us to some Man On The Street stuff from after the show has aired. Some of them think it’s interesting; one woman says she watches just to learn more about her because she was curious, and another was amazed to see how pathetic and self-involved Lindsay is. One woman, who will regret this later, thinks Lindsay is awesome and a total style icon and that she should keep doing what she’s doing, which is clearly their attempt to inject the opposite perspective so that they can cut to this tremendously sage person:
Our Lady of Extreme Accuracy says, of Lindsay, that she’s floundered increasingly as the show progresses: “She’d be fortunate if she could cut her hair and dye it black and go live quietly someplace for a while.” Yes. AT YOUR HOUSE. My adoption crusade has found its new target. This woman will neither stand nor SIT for baloney. She won’t even buy bologna. It will be all poached chicken and prunes for Miss Lindsay while she earns an honest living with her hands.
#Mattnocchio pretends he has returned to Lindsay for Letterman Week because she needed him, but I suspect it has more to do with the production needing to shoot a little bit more for the finale, which constitutes almost nothing: her entering and exiting Letterman, and getting her hair done in her living room. The Letterman interview comes off to me as if the call to Oprah was totally pre-planned WITH Oprah and not the hilarious spontaneous prank call it was described as afterward, and Lindsay wears a piano dress with knee socks — the former being just fine, and the latter being ridiculous in a Serena Van Der Woodsen kind of way. Which reminds me that when I was looking up her book deal on Publisher’s Marketplace, a search on her name revealed that in 2004, Gossip Girl was originally sold as a MOVIE to Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), with Lindsay Lohan attached to star. As which lead, I don’t know, but BOY, is that all-around a weird match of talent and material. Jess and I were saying that based on Gilmore and Bunheads, Amy Sherman-Palladino might be the LEAST suited EP to adapt Gossip Girl — which may indeed be why the project died — and that includes, say, Aaron Sorkin, which NOW makes me want to SEE the Sorkin version of that show. Aaron Sorkin would have loved the hell out of Dan Humphrey, I can tell you that much.
Lindsay finds out that the owner of her apartment building wants to sell out from under her, and she jokes that she wants to use her bad reputation to scare away any potential buyers so that she doesn’t have to move again. The takeaway from this for Potential Buyer: If she falls off the wagon again, it’s your fault.
She already talked about this on Watch What Happens Live, but in the show interview, Lindsay gets very emotional about this incident. She says the sexual inventory was a big part of her recovery, and when she was moving, two people helped her with the stuff that had all her journals in it from Betty Ford, and she knows one of them took a photo of it and leaked it. She also says that the person is not in her life anymore, and “might be on the show at some point.” I don’t know who that could be. Life Coach AJ came after the move and left long before the leak; Sober Coach Michael also left before the leak but COULD have been around for the move, and maybe it’s not why he left but it is why he’s gone more permanently. I’m not trying to implicate him, either; just pondering who was on the show and is now gone. Other people would just have to be tertiary folks who floated in and out of the background of scenes. BLIND ITEM. She says it was a mean-spirited and disgusting act and that she hopes that desperate person finds some peace, and again, she IS an actress, but she also seems pretty pissed about it. As much as I think it is not IMPOSSIBLE that she leaked it herself to try and overshadow the behavioral problems from the first few episodes, I actually also don’t think she gains anything in that situation, to borrow from Scandal. It doesn’t do anything FOR her, and it doesn’t change the conversation to anything that particularly benefits her, and it IS the type of juicy thing some asshole would totally take a photo of and sell.
In all this, she also manages to work in the fact that her sponsor is a very well-known name — specifically, that she would only have shared that list with her sponsor, who is also famous, as if that makes the person more trustworthy and/or better at this than regular people (although I guess the idea is that famous people who have lots of dalliances aren’t going to blab about OTHER people and THEIR dalliances). But she has no real business implying ANYTHING about the identity of her sponsor because it’s Alcoholics Anonymous. Now all it’s going to do is create and invite speculation, and that’s both tacky, and possibly also a diversionary tactic so that people will talk about THAT instead of about all the rest of it.
And then: Lindsay talks about how it made her cry to watch the show, and that at times it felt like watching someone other than herself. She mentions that she sees she is a narcissist, although she’s quick to point out that’s a trait of the industry, and says there wre times she would say, “This is really sad. Who is helping her?” Which is also what we said, but the difference is, we’re not Lindsay. We were also begging LINDSAY to help Lindsay, and her takeaway from the show sounds like it was that OTHER people failed. Which is standard for her. And she says that her issue was that she’s used to stepping in front of a camera and being on, and that if she didn’t feel capable of being on, she’d ask the cameras to go away — and says, “No one knows this, and we can FINISH after this [meaning, the shoot], but I had a miscarriage for those two weeks that I took off.”
And then she stops talking for the inevitable “Oh my GOD” and sympathy from Amy Rice.
So, effectively: MIC DROP. She mic-dropped a miscarriage.
I had a lot of feelings and reactions to this. Jess and I agreed it is sad, plausible, and yet awfully convenient — and I think probably all three of those things at once. But I’m not going to speculate. It’s between her and her doctor and, if need be, her conscience. We will never know if it is true or not, and I certainly PREFER to believe the truth of the incident itself, not because I relish it at ALL, but because I don’t want to think that anyone would outright lie about an event that major and awful and personal. Besides, I think Lindsay is more of an inveterate twister of truth than a person who spins lies out of whole cloth.
But what I will say is this: I was uncomfortable with the way she used that information. The way — the how — she said it. So blankly, plainly, pausing in a way that screamed, “GOTCHA,” as if she expected that using the word “miscarriage” automatically excuses everything and retroactively wipes clean the slate. It really, really came off that way — from the delivery of the words, to the look on her face right after she said it:
I kind of wish I didn’t even have to acknowledge this whole piece, but it’s potentially very psychologically informative. Because that is such an “I KNOW, RIGHT???? Can’t yell at me NOW, huh” facial expression to me. And then you fold in that THIS is how and when and why she chose to dangle that little tidbit. They shot this interview, I believe, the same night she was on Letterman — so about two weeks ago. Ergo, this was uttered amid all the furor over whether she was off the wagon, and what a pain in the ass she was at the beginning of the shoot, and all that other negative press; this was the only time they got her on camera since the show started airing, and her response was to use that stage to write off her behavior to a) the failures of others, b) the editing (something she actually said later, on Bravo, but still), and c) a miscarriage. All of which, again, puts the blame on something else. Again. And… like, if it’s true, I’m very sad and sorry. But I REALLY wish it didn’t feel so much like she was leaning on it as an excuse that she believed would make her unimpeachably Teflon. Like she is taking something absolutely heartbreaking for most women, and using it for easy absolution.
And when you’ve watched seven weeks of a person finding loopholes in every scenario to avoid taking personal responsibility for any of it, well… we’ve discussed again that the burden of proof will be on her forever. She will probably look guilty before proven innocent for a long, long time, because this show has taught us a lot about how her mind reacts to situations and bends and flexes the eventline to fit her the most comfortably. It isn’t fair. But it’s the jail she built for herself, and she only periodically seems to realize she’s in it.
And then she actually does cry, for other reasons:
She calls her addiction “a fucked up disease” and says that although she has addictions to certain things, she doesn’t have an addict’s mentality. Isn’t part and parcel of an addict’s mentality not always understanding — or at least excusing — that you are an addict? She says she’s referring to a sense of right and wrong, and being aware of that, but still. She says she went to see a shaman and saw her whole life, from birth to death, and did a cleanse, and that she’s now shooting Inconceivable in June and the karaoke app is working and she’s in a good place. She also gets choked up and says that there are certain things no one understands, or… and here she kind of jumbles her words and comes out with that it’s all “fucking terrifying” and that she does at least feel different than she did when they started. I hope it’s all true. It’s definitely affecting when she cries — and she self-consciously jokes that the crew loves it when she does — and when she notes how scary it all is, you really do believe it. And you hope that somewhere in there, beneath the bombshells she delivered with everything but ta-da jazz hands, beneath the excuses and the crisis alchemy and the blame deflection and all the rest of it, she saw somebody who isn’t as far along as she thought she was, and she realized stuff about where she has to go. I can only hope that watching herself from a distance showed her the things she couldn’t see before. Because I have to hope that none of this was in vain. And not just because I sat through it and wrote countless words about it. I just… it’s not even borne of rooting for her anymore, so much as that the idea that a person could be presented with this time capsule and glean nothing from it is a colossal waste indeed, and there’s been enough of that in her life to date.
And of course, our last shot of her is stopping in her foyer and pulling up her thigh-high stockings, because she’s wearing a stupidly short skirt or shorts. Same as it ever was. Somehow, that feels poetic.
