Summer TV, Part 2

So! Yesterday I was talking about my TV viewing guilty pleasure, America's Next Great Baker or whatever the name of it is.  And then, last night, I settled in with two hours of my OTHER TV viewing guilty pleasure, Intervention.

Do you guys ever watch Intervention?  It's the one on A&E where they film a drug addict under the guise of making a documentary about drug addiction.  So the FIRST part of the show is all, drug addict spiraling out of control, which is quite frankly FASCINATING.

And they interview family members about the drug addict, and they interview the drug addict himself, and of course, according to the drug addict, it is always, ALWAYS someone else's fault.

"Dad was never around."  "Mom was too busy to care about me." "My uncle abused me when I was a child."

This part is INFURIATING.  It's like, STOP BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE, YOU A**SH*LE.  YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF.

Ahem.  Sorry.  I tend to get a little carried away watching this show.

ANYway, next comes the intervention, which is always messy and awful, and then the drug addict gets shuttled off to rehab.  Like, RIGHT THEN.  Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not get high one more time, BAM!  You're on a plane.  To rehab.

And then they interview the drug addict WHILE he's in rehab, and he's always, "Yeah, I'm doing so much better now ... I'm nothing like the person I was ... I'm in control of my life now ..." blahblahblah, except this part is always amazing because they always look SO MUCH BETTER once they've got several weeks of rehab under their belts.  They look healthy, and happy.

And then ... and then comes the last minute of the show, where the screen goes to black, and a message appears that is something like this:  "Three months after completing rehab, Jamie relapsed on meth.  He left his parents' house and his whereabouts are currently unknown."

And even though you KNOW it is coming, that part always hits you like a punch in the gut.  I mean, you watched this guy (or woman) when he was a useless, manipulative drug addict.  And then you watched him in rehab, where he miraculously metamorphosed into a caring, clean human being.  And then ... you find out that he threw it all away.

It sounds depressing, and oh yeah, it is, but every once in a while?  The end of the show comes, and the screen goes to black, and a message appears that goes something like this:  "Sue completed rehab and is now working full-time.  She has been clean since November 2011."

And that?  Is why I keep watching Intervention.  Every once in a while, there's a happy ending.