A week after the New York medical examiner’s office announced that a celebrity DJ died after downing a lethal cocktail of cocaine and prescription drugs, MTV announced it will go ahead and air a reality series in which that DJ recruits young addicts for rehab.
The eight-episode series “Gone Too Far,” hosted by Adam Goldstein, a.k.a. DJ AM, will debut Monday .
That original launch plan was scrubbed when Goldstein was found dead in his Manhattan apartment in August, and MTV had been unwilling to discuss whether it was even contemplating a run at salvaging the reality series. The show was yanked just days after VH1, another of MTV Networks’ cable channels, was forced to scrub two reality series after a guy who’d been cast in both shows was named the only suspect in the death of his onetime wife and then turned up dead himself in a motel in Canada.
MTV made sure to note in its announcement that it was going ahead with the telecast of “Gone Too Far” “with the consent and support” of Goldstein’s family.
MTV also made sure to include a statement from Goldstein’s family saying that “after careful consideration we have decided to air the show” because it would depict “the side of Adam that we knew and loved,” and because of their “profound belief that it will inspire others to seek help.”
In “Gone Too Far,” young addicts are given recording devices to show viewers how they procure and ingest drugs. In the first episode, Goldstein is sent into a bodega to buy a crack pipe to demonstrate how easy that is, according to an account in Entertainment Weekly, which had received an early version of the episode just days before Goldstein was found dead — along with a crack pipe, as well as bottles of prescription drugs. It is not clear whether it was the same crack pipe; MTV officials declined our request to speak to network suits.
The show will not be re-edited in the wake of Goldstein’s Aug. 28 death, an MTV rep told us last week.
According to footage screened for TV critics this summer, after the addicts score their drugs of choice, Goldstein would use his I’ve-been-there tough-love technique in an intervention to persuade them to go into rehab. Or persuade them that a stint in rehab was the price of reality-TV stardom.
The show also glommed on to the distraught/clueless state of the addicts’ family members, catching them as they prepared for the Goldstein-led intervention.
And yet, when Goldstein’s body was discovered in his apartment, MTV asked the media to “respect” the privacy of Goldstein’s family, a request that was pretty rich.
