A&E's Intervention

Image credit: Photo by emdot on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I've heard a lot about the A&E series Intervention, but since I've never wanted to spring for the cost of satellite or an extended cable package, I'd never actually watched it myself until this week: I followed The Discovering Alcoholic's link to streaming video versions of the show on Hulu and watched an episode about a drug addict named Alyson. The majority of the program was focused on Alyson's drug use and unhappiness, as well as the distress of her family. The intervention itself was quite a small part of the show and the only part of recovery we saw was a stated willingness to start rehab, followed a sober and smiling Alyson, crying tears of gratitude as she received her one year chip at the end of the show.

The show was filled with pain and drama. And there was a time when I used to love that kind of thing, in real life as well as on screen. During my daytime TV watching days, my tastes ran more to the Jerry Springer side of things than anything as staid and dull as Oprah. I loved watching crazy people fighting. Wow, look at them. Can you believe the stuff they do? The intensity of emotions and the out-of-control situations were thrilling to me.

Yet what I noticed about the drama this time was that it was boring. Can you believe it? Boring! Yep, terribly, horribly, deadly boring. Sure, I could relate to the pain. I really felt for Alyson and her family. I could see them hurting, and while my experiences, my story, my unmanageablity took a different form, I knew that hurt. But the part of the show that was supposed to keep me on the edge of my seat gasping "I can't believe she would do that!" completely failed to enthrall me. Nothing that happened was surprising or shocking; it was predictable. "Yep, there's that same old addict stuff. There's that same old codependent dance."

I wanted Alyson and those around her to hit bottom and get on to the interesting stuff, the good stuff, the recovery stuff already. Instead, it was an hour of watching the sound and fury that signifies nothing; everyone was spinning madly, screaming wildly, flailing around, in a loud, crazy dance, but no one was going anywhere. When the journey really began — one step, one day at a time — the cameras stopped rolling, the screen went dark, and everyone moved quietly on their way. But perhaps that's just as it should be.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.