DaveChung.com - A Guy's Blog From Girl World | Living Lohan: Grandma Won’t Budge - Michael and Nina Reunite

Tonight’s episode of Living Lohan focused on Ali and Cody getting brother Michael Lohan and his girlfriend Nina back together, along with the struggles that “Nana” Lohan, Ali’s grandmother, has been having since her husband of fifty years passed away. 

While it was nice to see Michael Lohan continue to have a presence on the show because he provides a lot of positive 
energy to the family, the family struggled to figure out why Nana didn’t want to come to Las Vegas to watch Ali record her album.

After running through excuse after excuse, Nana finally revealed that her apprehension towards traveling with the Lohan clan came down to a lack of motivation that has stayed with her since the passing of her husband. While persistent, mother Dina Lohan wisely backed off and it looks like the Lohans will be heading off to Vegas next week, sans Grandma.

Clearly, there are a lot of haters who are not such big fans of Living Lohan, especially when compared to shows like The Hills or Keeping Up with the Kardashians. And tonight, while I’m not crazy about the show myself, I took issue with something that I finally noticed about the show.

Much like The Kardashians promote DASH and SMOOCH on the reality show about their family, Living Lohan helps promote Ali’s album, which is fine. Just like on The Hills, the show seems to have some kind of deal going with The Dolce Group, because the girls always go to restaurants and places owned by the company (Ketchup, Les Deux, etc.).

However, I finally noticed today that the Maloof brothers, of Sacramento Kings ownership fame, are the executive producers for the Lohan reality show. And not coincidentally, Ali Lohan is recording her album on the Maloof record label and looks like she’ll be staying at the Palms Hotel Resort and Casino in Las Vegas while recording, also owned by the Maloofs. So not only is there a deal in place professionally, but the Maloofs are in charge of the overall show as well.

Sneaky, but brilliant.

As the season progresses, unless there is some more separation between the Maloofs and Lohans, who are going to be tied together in one way or another due to Ali’s career, some moments on the show might feel like even greater product placement moments than what we see on The Hills everytime a new restaurant shows up. Not only can the Maloofs tell the story they want to tell through the less compelling cast of this reality show, but they can likely promote any of their ventures because of them holding all the power on the program.

Will Living Lohan just become one big commercial? Now that we’ve lost Michael Lohan for an episode at least and don’t have Nana in Vegas next week, I have a feeling we’re in for product placement galore, much to the enjoyment of the Maloofs.