Addiction as high drama

LIFE is full of cliffhangers and uncertainty, but reality television much prefers a script. The last five years have seen a range of lives, authentic or contrived, brought to the small screen, yet somehow they’ve only become more predictable. And even though straight documentaries may follow where the subjects take them, they’re typically edited clean of rough burrs, enabling a viewer to feel that some question at the outset has been brought to resolution by the end.

Refreshingly, then, the pallor of incompletion hangs over “Intervention” (A&E;, today, 10 p.m.), easily among the most harrowing of TV shows, all the more so for its refusal -- or, cynically speaking, its inability -- to guarantee closure for either its viewers or its subjects.

Each episode focuses on one or two addicts of various stripes -- alcohol, drugs, cutting, bingeing and purging, and so on -- who consent to participate after being told they’re being filmed for a documentary on addiction; the intervention comes at episode’s end.

Though interspersed with testimonials from family and friends about how the subject’s addictive behavior has brought ruin, the footage of the subject, alone, performing the rituals of addiction are the most gruesome and make up the bulk of the show. Last week, Jessie, an arrestingly beautiful young woman, was shown standing over the toilet, willing herself to vomit. In another scene, she pulled over her truck on a secluded road to do the same. (Her brother noted that their parents have discovered bags of vomit in her room.) The previous week’s episode followed Sylvia, a dynamic woman in her 50s, who drinks herself into a stupor daily; the cameras caught her literally unable to stand upright.

The subjects are burying themselves, of course, but also, it seems, advertising for help. Sylvia, a former actress, seemed especially aware of the camera’s presence, screaming for her children at top volume in her empty house (they live with her ex-husband). She also seemed to demand the most from the producers, who on at least two occasions intervened when she attempted to drive drunk, and on other occasions filmed her while she was at the wheel, downing mini-bottles of vodka. One wonders if the camera itself isn’t some sort of enabler here. Even mere viewing feels complicit.

Addiction rarely happens alone -- one person’s addictive behavior begets addictive behavior in others, and some of the series’ most troubling moments come from the loved ones who’ve been supporting the addict’s habits, both implicitly and explicitly. All the same, though, when it comes time for confrontation, the poetry of these people can be overwhelming. Last week, Laurie, an abuser of prescription drugs, was on the receiving end of some harsh words from Katy, her teenage daughter, when she resisted the idea of treatment: “Either way you’re gonna be away from us for a while. One way you’re gonna be away from us forever, and the other, you’re actually gonna get us back. Which do you want?” It’s Eugene O’Neill by way of Oprah, and it’s devastating.

The sheer outpouring of emotion here is on par with only ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” But on that show, the emotional arc of its participants has come to feel pat -- everybody knows what’s coming. The uncertainty that suffuses “Intervention” makes it more moving or more exasperating, often both. Entering treatment is hardly the same thing as staying sober.

“Intervention” drives that point home in follow-up shows, which track the progress of a handful of subjects. If their initial episodes were disturbing, these can be a slap in the face -- in two recent follow-up packages, only one of those profiled (of six) had remained completely clean since the initial treatment.

In one case, Antwahn Nance, a charismatic former Los Angeles Clipper, took up with a girl half his age in rehab and tried to keep a watchful eye on her after their release while all but ignoring his ex-wife and children. He also returned to drugs. At the end of his follow-up, another treatment center offered to take him and his girlfriend in. They lasted just a week. Beyond that, who can say? And, as ever, the worst is not knowing.