Yellow post-it notes were affixed at various places around the production offices of the Dr. Phil television show in Los Angeles. These simply said "Get Me More Weirdos."
Doctor Philip McGraw was a man under a lot of pressure. Years ago the psychologist had used some appearances with Oprah Winfrey as leverage to start his own television advice show. Now he had become the fifteenth highest paid celebrity in the world. It all had seemed simple enough; just come up with enough material for five shows per week. That required finding suitable guests (who for a real-world therapist would be "clients") from the horde of applicants who wished to present their woes to Phil in front of an audience.
Phil understood that these people were deranged in that they were more interested in bringing attention to themselves from the widest group of strangers possible as opposed to actually finding solutions to their problems. He also believed that his role as a therapist had vanished with the very first episode and he was now a showman presenting a carnival of emotional freaks.
It was actually quite tiring to attempt to bring variety for his studio and television audiences while keeping up the sham of "helping" this daily influx of troubled but narcissistic guests. At the age of sixty-seven Phil sometimes envied people with an easier if lower-paying gig.
Alex Trebec, I like to slide down into his job at some point. He's just a sign reader; he doesn't have to actually do or know jackshit. He's seventy-eight; maybe he'll retire soon.
Dr. Phil was also a man with a lot of temptations. The production of his show brought him into contact with the many unstable people who were his guests and many of them were female. (Of course he had legions of fans too but he did manage to keep them as at a distance.) As the rock star of TV therapists Phil knew he would not be able to tap the amount of pussy that real rock stars did. But if he did give into any temptation he felt he would be swamped and his life would ultimately fall apart. Any hint of indiscretion would probably be the death of his show and his career. One didn't have to be a dark star of sleaze like Harvey Weinstein to get into trouble nowadays; he knew how little it took to destroy someone like Kevin Spacey or Louie CK. He might wind-up working in a Walmart in Wichita Falls.
During one day's taping he had a typical dysfunctional family to shepherd through his "safe place to discuss difficult things." The center of this was a mother and daughter combo named, respectively, Matilda and Annette. As usual one part of Phil's mind tried to reason through this as a clinician while another part of him sank into an ooze of despair.
The main point of contention in this family was that twenty-year old Annette had dropped out of college to work full-time in a strip club - as an "exotic dancer" as put it. She claimed she needed to do this to support her one-year old daughter. "Mister Annette," as Phil thought of the daddy of this child, had disappeared to an unknown location.
Annette had deep-seated grudges with her mother Matilda who had had her own share of misadventures in her youth involving stints in rehab and even jail. "Mister Matilda," the patriarch and Annette's father, had long been divorced and out of the house but had agreed to appear on the show to offer his own ineffective comments to the discussion.
I'd take drugs too if I had to live with this loser,
was Phil's assessment.
There was one more orbiter on stage, Annette's big brother Tom, who was a born-again Christian and a father of two. Although Phil was a Christian himself he secretly thought that Evangelicals could be rather ostentatious about their religion.
Overall, he had a feeling of dÊjà vu about this set of distressed guests.
Didn't I have exactly this set of circumstances last year?
It was possible; there were only seven deadly sins and ten commandments to break. There was a limit to the variety of human failings that could be displayed on his show as the years went by.
Phil was also rather distracted today by the fact that both mother and daughter were blatantly flashing their crotches at him. They both had short skirts and both were working a set of moves crossing and uncrossing their legs that would have impressed Sharon Stone. Phil noted that Matilda had on dark but see-through panties that revealed her impressive pubic bush underneath.
Old school,
he thought.
Annette had a white thong that camel-toed nicely on her shaved crotch.
How wide is that thing, a quarter of an inch?
He had women do this on the show before, but rarely two at the same time. The last he could remember were two sisters, not a mother-daughter team.
On one hand he found this to be amusing and yet it was quite a distraction from his attempts to make coherent policy for this chaotic family.
I wonder what they're trying to do? Gain an advantage over each other? Or are they simple attention whores?
He speculated that the mother might think of banging him because he would appear high-value compared to her perennially drunk and unemployed ex-husband.
Or compared to the parade of dreadful boyfriends that I suspect have come through her door over the years.
He wasn't so sure about the daughter; he imagined she'd demand a cash transaction for anything requiring the removal of her thong.
Eventually the taping came to an end and Phil sent the family on their way to an uncertain future. He didn't have to refer any of them to one of those very nice rehab centers in places like Malibu. Those were usually better than any of the homes he had lived in himself in the years before he became famous.
**********
There was one aspect of Phil's presentation of himself that was absolutely true: he did depend on his wife Robin to get him through his own vicissitudes of life. He had been married to Robin McGraw, nÊe Jameson, his second wife, since 1976.
What wasn't made publicly known was that sixty-four-year old Robin was pretty open-minded about many aspects of sexual kinkiness. Phil's private tastes were not as wild as those of some of the guests he interviewed. In any case, whatever activity he came up with was usually enthusiastically endorsed and enacted by Robin. In turn, Robin was a very imaginative lady and came up with her own suggestions for naughty behavior.
On this particular evening Phil was alone in his private office after the show's debriefing. Robin came in and pretended to be angry at him. Phil knew immediately that she was not serious and indeed was playing a game with him. There was something a bit too theatrical about her demeanor. He quickly guessed the essence of what she was doing, but he remained curious about her execution of the plan. She had the capacity to surprise him at times.
He was sitting at his desk when she came in and closed the door behind her. She folded her arms and said, "I have a bone to pick with you, mister."
He knew from the phrasing alone that she was putting on an act. Going along with the ruse he said, "Come on, Robin, it's been a long day. Can't this wait until we get home?"
"No, were going to resolve this here and now." He was about to protest further when she said, "I saw you looking at the cunts of those two sluts you had on stage."
"Well, good Lord, they were displaying their crotches like two cats in heat."
"Pussies, in other words. Like mom with her see-through panties and baby-girl with her thong."
Phil was genuinely surprised at that, "How did you see it from that angle?"
"At one point I got up and took a little walk to the left side of the stage."
Phil figured this must have happened when he was distracted by the material on his "big board." His production staff had compiled a list of dueling e-mails between Matilda and Annette, and he had been trying to pick through the maze of contradictory statements.
He said, "Okay, you know what kind of underpants they had on. So what?"
