On 'Rehab,' sobriety as a career move

January 10, 2008|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

Soon, next to the stars' "Favorite Designer Bags" and "Favorite Exfoliation Products" in People magazine, we'll see "Favorite Rehab Facilities." Going to rehab has become not only a punch line - all together now: "no, no, no" - but a valuable resource for PR agents in Hollywood's Thirty Mile Zone. When this week's pretty young Icarus flies too close to the fun and lands in the tabloid waters, a stint in detox is as useful as finding God - and less cerebral! The bimboisie can wash their sins away at Promises, or Passages, and get back to the red carpet toot sweetly.

At this moment in this kooky, crazy, mixed-up thing we call pop culture, the notion of building a Hollywood career out of rehab - going in and out of recovery like Patti LuPone does Broadway shows - is not completely Swiftian, or Chayefskian, or Onionian. And so tonight at 10, VH1 fills the market gap with a new reality show called " Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew." On it, an assembly of lower-echelon performers de tox together at the Pasadena Recovery Center under Dr. Drew Pinsky, radio host and, as he tells us, "board certified addictionologist." He's like Dr. Phil, but more McDreamy and less Oprah-atic.

Surprisingly, the cast of "Celebrity Rehab" does not include Danny Bonaduce, a pioneer in the business of reality Humpty-Dumpty-ism, or any of the Osbournes. The vaguely familiar faces in this group of budding and seasoned rehabbers include the Amazonian Stallone ex Brigitte Nielsen, porn actress Mary Carey, one-time "American Idol" contestant Jessica Sierra, "Family Matters" child star Jaimee Foxworth, former pro wrestler and nude model Chyna, and Seth "Shifty" Binzer, lead singer of Crazy Town. The most familiar name probably belongs to infamous brother Daniel Baldwin, a recovering crack addict who let "Primetime" follow him through recovery last year, and whose commitment to sobriety appears to be genuine.

But the breakout star of "Celebrity Rehab" is going to be a guy named Jeff Conaway, from the sitcom "Taxi" and the movie "Grease," in which he played Kenickie. Conaway, who once left VH1's "Celebrity Fit Club" to go to rehab, is a suicidal mess. He arrives at the Recovery Center completely loaded, and Pinsky suspects that Conaway's girlfriend is going to keep smuggling in various and sundry chemicals for him. Slurring and belligerent, unable to walk on his own, Conaway brings on the drama and the realism.