If you wanted to reassure yourself that Dr. Phil is an opportunistic quack who’s only out for ratings, you only had to tune in this week. I wrote this blog last year, but it still stands up.
The Dr. Phil Family was back with a vengeance.
Let me give you some background.
Eight years ago, Dr. Phil took on a wealthy Florida family which consisted of a fighting and philandering couple, a witchy little 12-year-old and a 15-year-old pregnant gal. Dr. Phil’s job was to straighten out this dysfunctional group and hopefully give little miss round heels some insight into her own stupidity.
The amount of therapy devoted to the Dr. Phil family would have cost the average family at least a million dollars.
It included weekly flights from Florida to L.A. plus posh accommodations; a full camera crew; and tons and tons of Shirley Temple makeovers.
At the start, there was a lot of yelling. By the end of the six years, it was mostly crying and eye-rolling.
For those of us parents going through our own guilt and pangs, it made us feel a whole lot better. We realized how great our kids were and how sensible our own decisions were.
And it was riveting television.
At the end of season one, Alexandra, the pug faced, acne scarred teenager mother delivered a healthy son whom she called Nathan. The mum, Erin, forgave the dad, Marty for his transgressions. And younger teenager, Katharine, learned to say thanks instead of fuck you, mom.
So Dr. Phil pronounced The Dr. Phil family “cured” and sent them packing. He also announced that there would be another Dr. Phil Family. This never materialized because Dr. Phil wasn’t done with the first one.
A couple of years later, Alex came back pregnant again. By this time she was 18 and had just left her husband Chris and was taking up with a guy named Tony who was, like Chris, a jail-bird.
Dr. Phil chided her for being a silly girl, her mother yelled at her for being a whore, and Alexandra began a pattern of eye rolling which remained one of the most consistent elements of the show. Alex had the second baby,whom she called Layla, and planned on another marriage to Tony, whom her mother detested because “he smokes like a chimney and drives her truck around and doesn’t have a job.”
Who could blame her?
Meanwhile, Alex got into a car accident, got hooked on painkillers and had her children taken away.
The children were given to Parents-of-the-Millennium Erin and Marty.
Alex shacked up with Tony.
She became pregnant again.
Meanwhile, Katherine, the other daughter started swearing again, calling her mom and Dr. Phil a bunch of losers. Dr. Phil doesn’t appreciate bad manners, so he booted her off the show.
By the third installment of The Dr. Phil Fucked up Family, which premiered last fall, Alex had the third baby who became hooked on Oxy, as most babies do.
Erin still had all the kids. Tony was out of the picture. Alex was on the street.
Marty just sat there in a chair and cried.
And once again, there was Dr. Phil and his band of producers — to the rescue.
That’s when Alex disappeared altogether.
This week we were treated with an intervention, courtesy of one of Dr. Phil’s success patients, Brandon who instead of shooting heroin now intervenes, along with his mom. The intervention was an abject failure and so the family decided to call the cops on Alex. She is currently on the lamb.
Again, riveting stuff.
I’ve watched the journey all the eight years.
I have come to the following conclusions and predictions.
--The parents are inept. Marty will continue to cry. Erin will continue to get cosmetic surgery that makes her face look like a hammock.
--Alexandra is stupid. She will become a stripper or a hooker — or a welfare mom with sixteen kids and sixteen different fathers.
--Katherine is insane and evil. She will become Lindsay Lohan’s next girlfriend.
Dr. Phil — boundaries, man.
Katherine acts out; they buy her a horse. Alex is parenting badly; the parents take over the kids.
The two girls are nothing more than spoiled little bitches who are getting all this attention, not just from their parents but from millions of people around the world. They have producers catering to their every whim. They have state of the art health care, thanks to Dr. Phil and his experts.
They have morphed from pug faced little nobodies into the Kardashians.
Flying here. Flying there. SUV this. Horsey academy that.
They write a blog on the Dr. Phil website.
Word, Dr. Phil.
Tell them to talk to the hand.
Both girls are the age of majority and they are still fucking up. And they are doing so on television!
Cut them loose.
Tell them in your folksy manner that if they do the crimes, they do the time.
Stop the handouts. Halt the trips to the hairdresser.
And for God’s sake take away their blogs.
We don’t want to hear anything more about their feelings.
Maybe then, they’ll smarten up.
As for you, Dr. Phil: how’s this working for you?
What’s that you say?
Ratings are up ten points.
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