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Demi Lovato didn't "suffer an overdose" -- she caused it -- so says a famed interventionist. Jeff VanVonderen -- who appeared on the A&E show "Intervention" -- says Demi's alarming relapse resulted from choosing to stop using the tools that kept her sober. It's tough love for sure, but Jeff says it's all in Demi's hands. The good news ... he says she was able to use the tools to stay clean for 6 years, so she...

A&E’s reality show Intervention hinges on a classic bait-and-switch: Participants are told they’re being filmed for a documentary about addiction, only to later discover they’re the subject of a well-orchestrated intervention. By the time it was canceled in 2013 after 13 seasons, Intervention’s premise was widely familiar. Its three main interventionists — Ken Seeley, Jeff VanVonderen, and Candy Finnigan, all former addicts themselves — were recognizable to viewers; its opening sequence elicited Pavlovian excitement from its dedicated fans, who made YouTube homages to its most famous subjects and ran online forums where commenters could dissect recent episodes. Last year, in what show creator and former producer Sam Mettler calls a “very rare” occurrence, Lifetime, an affiliate of A&E, purchased new episodes of the show, only for A&E to take it back. A&E premiered the first episode of its 14th season Sunday night. With a now-iconic premise,...

Aw, man, Intervention is ending. A&E announced today that the five episodes that will air starting in June will be the show's last. According to the network, of the 243 people who've had interventions on the show, 156 are currently sober — a pretty impressive record, thanks in part to the show's strategy of matching addicts with specific rehab facilities. All shows end eventually, and Intervention had a hell of a run: What could have been an exploitative mess was instead a riveting, intimate drama that helped shape the contemporary understandings of addiction crises and recovery. Intervention, in the words of Jeff VanVonderen, there are people here who love you like crazy and feel like they are losing you.

Penny’s long-standing declaration that it’s the Year of Penny may actually come true in 2012, but I’m going to go ahead and declare this the Episode of Penny. While Zachary Knighton put in a valiant effort to make it the Episode of Dave, this was Casey Wilson’s best Penny outing yet.

After going through another dating disaster, Penny unwisely took advice from functioning lunatic Jane (the relentlessly funny Eliza Coupe) to nab a fixer-upper fellow and change him into an ideal gentleman like she did with Brad. I don’t know which visual I loved more, physical-comedy...