OWN
'Lindsay' follows movie star and media sensation Lindsay Lohan on her journey through recovery following a very public period of crisis.
Lindsay Lohan started her new Oprah Winfrey Network reality show Sunday night behaving like a model prisoner.
Yet by the end of the first hour, she looked like she was starting to think about sticking a shiv into someone.
"Lindsay," an eight-week series on OWN, was part of the deal whereby Oprah got the first interview after Lohan finished up her sixth rehab stint last July 30.
It's a good deal for Oprah, because Lohan brings attention to a network that can still use it.
As a reality TV show, though, "Lindsay" turned out to be surprisingly routine. Perhaps because Lohan's behavior has been so reckless in the past, it's unlikely she could do anything in front of Oprah's cameras that would slam into or clear the bar she has set in the past.
OWN
Oprah Winfrey got the first interview with Lindsay Lohan after the actress finished up her sixth rehab stint last July 30.
Reality TV fans and celebrity watchers have seen a lot worse than they saw Sunday night - though Lohan, for very good reasons, framed her behavior simply as a sign she has finally started to grow up.
She was moving to New York for a fresh start, she said, and while she still felt like a prisoner "all the time" because of paparazzi and media attention, it would work because she had learned to separate and isolate herself from the "craziness" and "insanity" around her.
She didn't directly acknowledge that her notoriety has been fed by her rehab stints, her DUI arrests, her public family throwdowns and her jail time. But one of the final scenes Sunday showed an exasperated Lohan reprimanding her real estate broker because she's required to get 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."
In keeping with the upbeat Oprah spirit, "Lindsay" is heavily sprinkled with the language of rehab and self-improvement, about "making the right decisions" and "being in the right place."
Oprah Winfrey Network
In keeping with the upbeat Oprah spirit, 'Lindsay' is heavily sprinkled with the language of rehab and self-improvement, about 'making the right decisions' and 'being in the right place.'
But even through the first hour, Lohan's early optimism and buoyancy were clearly eroding.
She agreed to do a cameo in a short lingerie film because she's friends with the producers.
When they asked her to add a few lines of dialogue, she balked. Her voice rose, she started crying and she pulled out.
Going through with it, she said afterwards, would have "compromised my sanity and my sobriety."
George Burns/Harpo/Harpo Productions, Inc.
Oprah Winfrey interviewed Lindsay Lohan on OWN in August, 2013.
It was, repeat, a short lingerie film.
"Lindsay" did give an indication how some of this obvious fragility developed and persists. She is followed by paparazzi everywhere, at one point cancelling a planned trip to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because "it wouldn't be fair to the others" if she showed up with a trail of camera jocks.
She feels like a prisoner "all the time," she said, and despite her periodic insistence that she had learned to carry on anyhow, her frustration with the press seemed to rise in direct proportion to her other stress.
She looked at 10 apartments over almost two months and when she finally got one she liked, she hit the "renter's liability" wall.
To make herself feel better after that setback, she had her people move her to a different room in her hotel, just for a change of scenery.
Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/AP
Lindsay Lohan attends Z100's Jingle Ball presented by Aeropostale on Friday, Dec. 13 in New York.
Viewers then got to hear Lohan talk about how "I have to do everything myself," while several assistants back at the hotel frantically moved the equivalent of a small movie studio from her old room to her new one.
She also sounded a little detached when she talked about how moving back to New York would get her closer to her family - the same family, presumably, that has co-starred in many of her headlines.
"It's comforting to be around my family," she says. "They're a huge part of my recovery and I wouldn't have it any other way."
Okay.
Everyone around Lohan seemed to take the cue from Oprah and treat her as if the sixth time was the charm and she really has turned the rehab corner.
That's the right way to play the game. Still, as Lohan's own tension level rose and she got a little more snappish, that was reflected in the people around her - including Oprah herself, who in a well-circulated tease to future episodes laments that Lohan behaved exactly the way people had warned Oprah she would.
As a coincidence, the place where Lohan did her sixth rehab, Cliffside Malibu, was one of the advertisers on the premiere of "Lindsay" Sunday night.
The ad starts with a somber warning that "83% of rehab clients relapse within the first year."
Welcome to the intersection where art and commerce meet Lindsay Lohan's life.
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