Lindsay, Ep 1: Reality? Check.

Okay, so let’s begin with “Lohan Facts”:

Lindsay was born July 2, 1986, in New York City, to Michael Lohan — an ex-Wall Street trader-slash-jailbird — and Dina Sullivan Lohan — a television personality, manager, and intoxicated party-goer

At age three she was hired by the Ford Modeling Agency and began doing commercials. By age ten she appeared in her first TV, the soap opera "Another World", and at 12 she starred in her first film, “The Parent Trap.” Lindsay as a child actress is precocious and talented and seemingly very good at her job.

In 2007, at age 20, she was nominated for a Screen Actor's Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for "Bobby" and also had her first stay in rehab, at the Wonderland Center in LA.

In May, 2007, Lindsay was arrested, for the first time, for a car accident in Beverly Hills. Not yet twenty-one she is charged DUI, possession of cocaine, and misdemeanor hit and run; she was hospitalized briefly, then released, and then had her second stint in rehab at Promises in Malibu.

A month after her release, in July 2007, Lindsay was arrested again, in Santa Monica, and charged with DUI, possession of cocaine, transporting a narcotic into a custody facility and driving on a suspended license. With bail set at $25,000 and paid, Lindsay checked into her third rehab facility.

In court in August 2007, Lohan was charged with seven misdemeanors from the May and July 2007 incidents, and plead guilty to two counts of being under the influence of a controlled substance, and no contest to DUI charges and reckless driving. She was sentenced to 36 months probation, an 18 month alcohol education program, 10 days community service and court-ordered rehab — her fourth time — at the Cirque Lodge, and 1 day in jail.

In November 2007, Lindsay reported to the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, for a minimum 24-hour stay; she was released after 84 minutes due to overcrowding.

For a while, all is calm on the Lohan front, but then, in March 2009, an arrest warrant was issued after Lohan violated her probation; county paperwork shows that she had not violated probation, and the warrant is dropped.

In October, 2009, her three year probation sentence from the 2007 arrests was extended a year so she could complete required alcohol counseling. In May 2010, Lohan failed to appear in court after she ALLEGEDLY lost her passport at the Cannes Film Festival; a judge issued an arrest warrant and set bail for $100,000, which is paid.

Later that month, Lindsay appeared in court after completing 10 of 13 required alcohol counseling sessions and new conditions of her bail are set: no alcohol, weekly random-drug testing, and she must wear an alcohol-monitoring bracelet. Two months later, in July 2010, Lindsay is sentenced to 90 days in jail for violating probation and missing those last three alcohol counseling sessions.

On August 2, 2010, once again in court, Lindsay is handcuffed and taken to jail, where she serves 13 days before heading to court-ordered rehab — her fifth time — at UCLA Medical Center. Just three short weeks later, Lindsay is released from rehab when a new judge decides she can complete the program at home.

A month later, on September 24, 2010, Lindsay appeared in court after failing a drug test on a controlled substance; her probation is revoked, and she is jailed. The decision is later overturned, and she is released on $300,000 bail and ordered to wear a new alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet. Three days later she checks into Betty Ford — her sixth rehab stay.

On October 22, 2010, a judge ordered Lohan to remain in rehab until January 3, 2011 for probation violation. She is released just after the New Year, and three weeks later, on January 22, 2010, Lindsay is arrested while shopping in Venice, California, after walking out of a store wearing a $2500 necklace.

In February, 2010, she is arraigned and booked on felony grand theft charges and released on $40,000 bail. At the end of the month, back in court on that same charge, she is told a plea agreement will mean jail time, and she requests, and receives, an extension to consider the deal; in March, she rejected the plea deal.

A month later, Lohan is sentenced to 120 days in jail for violating her 2007 drunk driving probation; she is also sentenced to 480 hours of community service, 360 hours to be served in a women's center and the remainder at the LA morgue. Directly after the sentencing she is taken into custody, but her $75,000 bail is posted and Lohan is released from jail within hours of being taken into custody.

On April 22, 2011, the grand theft charges are reduced from felony to misdemeanor, reducing the jail time, if convicted, to a year or less. The next month, Lohan begins community service at the Downtown Women's Center where she completes just three hours of her 360 hour sentence.

On May 11, 2010, at a hearing for the theft case, Lohan avoids a trial and enters a plea of no contest. The sentence remains the same as was handed out on April 22 with two days credit for time served plus 3 years probation. Three weeks later Lohan arrives at LA County jail to serve her 120-day sentence, but due to overcrowding she is again fitted with an electronic monitoring device and sent home to serve her sentence — reduced to just 35 days — under house arrest.

In June, 2011, Lohan is in court in connection with her probation for the 2007 drunk driving case. The judge orders her to entertain no more than one person at a time after she once again fails a blood alcohol test and pictures of her partying while under house arrest surface.

In October, 2011, in court again, Lohan's probation is revoked, bail is set at $100,000 and she is removed from the courtroom in handcuffs. She makes bail within 2 hours and once again begins her court-ordered community service in the LA County Morgue.

The next month, at a scheduled hearing, Lohan is told she must serve 30 days in jail beginning November 9, 2011, and, following that 30-day term, if she does not show up to work 12 days at the county morgue and attend counseling sessions, she will be locked up for another 270 days. Lohan reports to jail early to begin serving her sentence and serves just a few hours of her 30-day sentence.

In March, 2012, a judge ends Lohan's felony probation, but she remains on informal probation for two more years on the 2011 misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. Lindsay Lohan is twenty-five, and has spent 250 days in rehab, 35 days on home confinement, 67 days doing community service, 19 days in court, and has made six trips to jail.

A quiet summer — in Lohan terms — ends on September 19, 2012, when Lindsay is arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident, after driving into the parking lot of the Dream Hotel in New York and ALLEGEDLY striking an employee of the restaurant next door. In November, Lohan is again arrested following an ALLEGED altercation at a Manhattan nightclub. The nest month her probation is revoked for the 2011 theft case.

In March, 2013, Lindsay pleads no contest to misdemeanor charges stemming from the 2012 car crash and is sentenced to 90 days in a rehab facility, 30 days of community service and 18 months of therapy.

It is after that 30 day rehab stint — number seven for those keeping count — that Lindsay sits down with Oprah for an interview, and agrees to a reality show docu-series on OWN.

Now, let’s talk about that ….

The show begins with Oprah and Lindsay speaking “privately” — on camera, naturally — before the interview actually begins and Oprah puts on her best Oprah Is God face while Lindsay puts on her best This Time I’ll Be Better expression.

The reality show docu-series is about Lindsay moving to New York for a fresh start after her seventh rehab stint , and maintaining her sobriety and reducing the amount of chaos in her life, which, she says, is the root of her addiction issues.

So she begins looking for an apartment in New York, which is a struggle for most people, but quite the task for Lohan, who has the reputation of having trouble circle her. She reprimands her real estate broker because he never told her she'd need "renter's liability" insurance before she can move into her new apartment. 

"I can't get it," she tells him, "because of who I am."

And the chaos continues. Lindsay looks at ten apartments during almost two months, and when she finds one she likes she gets the “renter’s liability” insurance line  and so that apartment is lost. However, rather than soldier on, Lindsay demands that she get a new room at her hotel, so  she can have a new view, and her assistant is sent packing, to do the packing of all her stuff, littered everywhere in the room, to carry it to another room in the same building where, I guess, the chaos is lessened.

She says that, while she still felt like a prisoner "all the time" because of paparazzi and media attention, she needs to separate and isolate herself from the "craziness" and "insanity" around her. Then she shops; and shops. And smokes; and organizes jewelry and goes to a fashion show. And shops.

A scene of Lindsay’s hotel room looks more like a high-cost Hoarders episode, with Lindsay’s clothes strung all-around the room and the floor littered with her jewelry. And then to add more chaos to the mix, she heads to mama Dina’s house where the rest of her stuff in being stored until she finds an apartment.

This, in my untrained mind, is the most screwed up relationship of all. The two women profess their love for one another, yet Dina constantly nitpicks Lindsay and every time Dina reaches out to hug her, Lindsay seems to pull away. It feels like a Camera Only Relationship.

As she says time and again, she is best when she’s working, but she doesn’t want to work a film premiere for Paul Schrader’s The Canyons because all the talk would be about rehab and jail and not about her art; she cancels a trip to London. Instead, she agrees to do a cameo in a short lingerie film because she's friends with the producers, but when  they unexpectedly ask her to add a few lines of dialogue, Lindsay gets angry; Lindsay gets teary; Lindsay storms off.

Lindsay does not make the cameo in the short film because, as she says, it would have "compromised my sanity and my sobriety."

Part of her attempt at sobriety is going to AA meetings, but we see none of that because Lindsay will not go to a meeting lest a photographer follow her; she claims it wouldn’t be “fair to the others" if she showed up with a trail of paparazzi. I got the feeling that was just an excuse.

One thing I noticed, though, is how much Lindsay complains about doing everything herself, when, by the first episode, it’s clear she has at least one assistant — a man, though a woman is there, I guess, just to remind Lindsay about how fun it was “when we fill in the blank” — and a sober coach, and a realtor. Lindsay, in fact, doesn’t do much at all for herself.

I get the feeling Lindsay thought this reality show docu-series would keep her on the path of sobriety, but she doesn’t seem to have changed any of her ways. She still has people around her telling her how fabulous she is — even the sober coach acts more like a fan — and she is still deeply embedded in the chaos that ruins everything, be it her apartment hunt, which goes on, and her need to have rooms filled with things to keep her happy and occupied, her mother's co-dependency.

The Lindsay that appeared in the Oprah interview last fall, the one who seemed to acknowledge her addictions and issues, is nowhere to be seen; instead we get unkempt Lindsay, shopping Lindsay, chain-smoking Lindsay, snappy Lindsay chaotic Lindsay. And the cycle seems to continue.

I get the feeling that Lohan kept herself mostly in check — or at least as much as possible — while she filmed the show, but the minute it was over, Lindsay was in a fight in Miami, saying she was robbed in new York, and back to bar-hopping with friends.

We’ll see. 

Lindsay Facts via CNN