Dr. Phil, this is gonna be a changing article in your life. I am gonna lay out for you a series of common-sense steps you can use as a wake-up call.
Because, while your “Oprah” spinoff daily advice series got off to a pretty big start this week in terms of popularity, it’s not OK to rest on your laurels.
It’s not OK to start thinking of yourself as a big man on television, even though you are, granted, a big man, big enough to beat the living hypocrisy out of a weasel like Jerry Springer.
It’s not OK to start strutting around like some prize bull in a herd of heifers.
You may tell people to cut the bull in their own lives, but I have watched your early shows, and you are no bull, Dr. Phil. At least not yet.
I’m not just barkin’ at ya. And I’m not alone here. Do you hear that ringing phone?
It’s Mr. Wake-Up, and he wants to speak to you.
Remember, even your fellow Texan, Anna Nicole Smith, was more popular than ribs at a picnic her first week on TV. The first week is easy. People are always looking for novelty. The rest of your television life is hard.
You remember, too, what happened to another non-MD who used the title “doctor” to establish a media presence? That’s right, Phil. I’m talking about Dr. Laura. She was hot one moment, all but gone the next.
You know why? She didn’t keep it real.
You’ve been getting real in your first week, Dr. Phil, surprisingly real. You’ve won over even some doubters like me, people who were indifferent to your frequent “Oprah” visits and thought you wouldn’t have what it takes to carry a talk show.
Now listen up. Do you want me to whack you on that shiny head and use bad words about you, or do you want the truth?
I thought so. Here’s the truth: You are a dog that is hunting, Dr. Phil.
But you’ve got to stay real.
Now, I’m gonna repeat that: Get real, Dr. Phil, and stay real.
Not just a little real. Real real. Really really real.
In other words, don’t get fake, like the moment when you brought your wife, Robin, on to testify to the way you’re not always so wise at home.
The sentiment may have been true, but the moment felt fake, and fake is as bad as a bowl of hot soup on a steamy day. Viewers know fake just like viewers know soup.
I like a nice squash soup, incidentally, Dr. Phil.
Are you nuts?
No, Phil, you are not. You’ve got an easy camera manner, folksy but just this side of cornpone, and funnier than I thought. Even your vigorous reliance on catchphrases, which could be annoying in, say, Maury Povich’s mouth, comes off as charming in yours, at least in the early going.
A flat-out fact?
“No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s still got two sides,” you say, and who among us who has never been a short-order cook can argue?
Your set, a sort of masculine, woody version of Oprah’s, looks great, with a series of monitors used for everything from throwing guests’ misdeeds back at them to canny promos for coming shows to, bigger picture, making your homespun self seem a little more contemporary.
Your producers, obviously, are pros who know how to use video to add information and energy. We can hear people talk till the cows come home, but there’s nothing so powerful as seeing Monday’s bad mom shrieking at her poor son, knowing that she’s doing it in full knowledge of the camera’s presence.
Your music, unabashedly rushing to underscore the sentimental, I could do without. It’s garbage and unnecessary. Do y’all get that?
But, bigger picture, you keep from going to the gutter of most of the rest of daytime TV, which you aptly describe as, “`Look what we found. Isn’t this weird?'” And I believe you when you say you won’t go there, no matter what the ratings may be.
Don’t go there.
Boyfriend.
Speaking of that, you even handle the Oprah thing well, acknowledging her role in your television life, but not overdoing it.
A family affair
How’s Oprah working for you? Just right. Certainly more right than the way wife Robin is working, and I do worry about your pledge to bring on your son, as well.
But as much as you’re off to a good start, I think there’s still danger. You’re promising too much. You bring on people who admit to terrible behavior, you show that behavior, and you try to “shock” them into straightening up.
“I just met ya two minutes ago,” you told a madly bickering couple on your first show. “I can’t stand either one of ya.”
To the lawyer suing fast-food restaurants over a client’s obesity, you say, “What a load of crap.”
You’re saying what everyone in the audience is thinking, and the crowd, me included, laps it up.
Of course it’s gratifying to hear you tell the squabbling couple with the young son, “The first thing you do is grow up, [say] I’m gonna require more of myself than I have required.”
But what has really been accomplished. You line up their promises to reform like crows on a clothesline, and you send the people off to wild applause. The audience feels happier than polecats in the vicinity of a clothesline about the alleged transformation they have witnessed.
Reality check
But you’re a smarter man than to pretend that you’ve solved these people’s profound problems just by shaming them on national TV.
You’re too canny to really believe that the shrieking terror of a mom will become Betty Crocker just because she cried a little and you talked tough at her.
You’re getting a big tune-in now because people are curious and because they like what they hear. But know your history: Very few well-meaning shows last with the fickle daytime audience.
Don’t be a Springer
Even Oprah, remember, had to spend many years dipping into the gutter for her topics. And no more a man than Springer his own self began his daytime life insisting that he was going to do serious-minded “issue” shows. Now he’s shorthand for what’s wrong with the medium.
To maintain the level of audience that will spare you from even having to think about Springer territory, you’re going to need every bit of their trust.
But to establish real and lasting credibility with the audience, you need to follow up with some of these guests. You need to be more careful about your instant diagnoses, stressing, as you don’t do often enough, that you don’t know all the facts.
And, most important, you need to be a lot more skeptical about accepting these people’s promises to reform at face value.
There is a vast chasm between the word and the deed. You know this and the audience, when it gets over the rush of good feeling, knows it, too.
Such provisions and caveats won’t make for flat-out feel-good TV, granted, but it is get-real TV. It’s the real version of the Truth Television you keep touting.
Do you hear the phone ringing, Dr. Phil? It ain’t no hound dog baying at the moon. Stay real.
Let’s get to it.
Cooking up a little wisdom
Without his colorful aphorisms, Dr. Phillip McGraw would be like a pomegranate without its tasty seeds. But can he keep them fresh, five days a week (3 p.m., WMAQ-Ch.5), 52 weeks a year? That’s where we come in. This week, McGraw, said: “No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s got two sides.” Although we’re not exactly sure what it means, it’s catchy. So here are more food-related wisecracks he is free to use as the season wears on.
– In the snack-food aisle of relationships, sometimes we reach for the Lays when we know the Smartfood is better for us.
– You can put Tabasco sauce in a Popsicle, but it’ll still be darn cold.
– Nobody eats flour straight out of the bag, but try tasting bread made without it.
– One all-you-can-eat shrimp dinner doesn’t make up for a lifetime of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
– Cracking 20 eggs won’t ever get you a whole chicken.
– When life hands you lemons, learn to like lemons.
– Turn up the heat, add some beans and watch your marriage go from chilly to chili.
– Tomato, to-mah-to, potato, po-tah-to. Let’s work the whole thing out!
– Life is like a knife. Sometimes you get peanut butter on it.
– If your family’s walking on eggshells, it’s probably because you’ve got scrambled eggs in your head.
– That’s not a meal, it’s an act of terrorism.
– Let sleeping pork rinds lie.
– Sometimes a banana is just a banana.
– With the milk of human kindness, there should be no such thing as skim.
– Some days you might feel like Cap’n Crunch or some days like Count Chocula. The difference is how you pour the milk.
– Beware of veggie burger wimps posing as real hunks of sirloin.
– Don’t spend your whole life pickling pineapples, only to discover that you should’ve been preserving pickles.
– You might be able to eat 27 hot dogs at one sitting, but that doesn’t mean one corn dog wouldn’t taste better.
– Marriage is like ratatouille: You forget about all that eggplant.
– A cake doesn’t become a cake till it’s survived a really, really hot oven.
– Don’t settle for a Dunkin’ Donuts Coolata when there’s a Starbucks Frappacino around the corner.
– Soy milk is soy milk no matter how much Hershey’s syrup you put in it.
– Parenting is like a hunk of headcheese. Deal with it!
