Dr. Phil (talk show)

This article is about the television show. For the host, see Phil McGraw.

Dr. Phil
Genre	Talk show
Created by	Oprah Winfrey
Presented by	Phil McGraw
Opening theme	"Shine" by Meredith Brooks used from 2002 to 2008
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	16
No. of episodes	2,191
Production
Executive producers	Oprah Winfrey Phil McGraw
Camera setup	Multiple
Running time	45 to 48 minutes
Production companies	Harpo Productions (2002–10) (seasons 1–8) Peteski Productions Paramount Domestic Television (2002–06) (seasons 1–4) CBS Paramount Domestic Television (2006–07) (seasons 4–6)
Original release
Network	Syndication
Release	September 16, 2002 (2002-09-16) – present
Related
The Oprah Winfrey Show The Doctors

Dr. Phil is an American tabloid talk show hosted by Phil McGraw. After McGraw's success with his segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil debuted on September 16, 2002. On both shows McGraw offers advice in the form of "life strategies" from his life experience as a clinical and forensic psychologist.

The show is in syndication throughout the United States and a number of other countries. Its tenth season premiered on September 12, 2011. Occasional prime time specials have aired on CBS. The program has been nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award every year since 2004.

Since September 2009, Dr. Phil has been broadcast in HDTV with a revamped look and a new theme written and performed by McGraw's son, Jordan.

Dr. Phil is a production of Peteski Productions and distributed by CBS Television Distribution. Harpo Productions co-produced the series until 2010, with Paramount Domestic Television and its successor CBS Paramount Domestic Television serving as secondary co-producers until 2007, and it was originally distributed by King World Productions.

This program is recorded on videotape before a live studio audience at Studio 29 on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, California. Dr. Phil tapes from August through May with a break in December for the holiday season.

Reruns of earlier episodes of the series began broadcasting on the Oprah Winfrey Network as of January 2011.

Format

The show covers a wide variety of topics including weight loss, financial planning, errant children, gift suggestions, children who have been diagnosed with autism, unhappily married couples, rebellious teenagers, mothers who dress far from their age, mothers who refuse to attend weddings, children being stars and their parents' rights, the emotional benefits of controlling, dysfunctional families, mothers who refuse to give their married sons money, and support for charitable causes. Radio personality and former child star Danny Bonaduce came to the show twice in a year to discuss his failing marriage (and later divorce) with second wife Gretchen.

On several shows children and/or adults have taken polygraph exams, usually done by retired FBI agent Jack Trimarco. The show is generally serious in tone, leavened with humor from time to time. It has its occasional tense moments and often trashy scenes, like that of The Montel Williams Show, but without melees or aggressive fights on stage, in contrast to tabloid talk shows, such as: The Jerry Springer Show, The Steve Wilkos Show or Maury Povich's program. McGraw is noted for often bringing families back on multiple shows for follow-up "therapy" sessions in his segment called "Dr. Phil Family."

Generally, the program is filmed and guests appear in studio, but in 2006 the Dr. Phil House began as an occasional series. McGraw and his production staff invite guests to a special house wired with numerous cameras and microphones. There, his staff monitors the conversations of the guests he is trying to help, and intervenes when necessary in order to prevent physical violence. McGraw also provides on-the-spot advice and counseling to the "house guests". McGraw's wife Robin sits in the studio audience for almost every show and, at the end of the show, walks off the set with him.

Notable episodes

• In a show that aired on May 2, 2005, twin sisters Jocelyn and Crystal Potter appeared. Crystal claimed to want to work in the adult industry together with Jocelyn, who rejected the idea as repulsive. Brothel owner Dennis Hof was interviewed and stated that the two could make half a million dollars per year in his establishment. The sisters' testimony proved to be less than truthful: beginning in 2002, they appeared as the "Potter Sisters" in numerous pornographic films together, and in 2003, they even appeared together with Hof in the porn film Goin' Down At The Bunny Ranch. The show received much criticism due to perceptions of hypocrisy, because even though McGraw was an outspoken critic of pornography, his own son Jay McGraw was married to Erica Dahm, a Playboy Playmate (December 1998), who was notable for performing with her two identical triplet sisters.
• The Dr. Phil House was set in an actual house within the Wilshire Park neighborhood in Los Angeles. It received numerous complaints from neighbors about the disruption caused by filming crews, the guests, cables and production trucks clogging the neighborhood and the constant traffic caused by filming. After the Los Angeles City Council revoked film permits, in September 2006, Dr. Phil stopped filming there. However, "Peteski" Productions, the show's production company, which drew its name from the nickname of one of McGraw's sons, retained ownership of the house. The Dr. Phil House later moved to a studio back lot, and the interior of the house shown in the program became that of a sound stage and ceased to be that of the actual house.
• In 2006, a confidence scam was discovered, involving a psychic shop that fraudulently represented Dr. Phil. The three Texas women running the scam, Ann Theresa Stevens (aka Nancy Evans), Serena Stevens (aka Betty Ann Lee), and Cher Evans, had set up a phone line that they claimed was run by the director of Dr. Phil. By telling customers that they could have a phone conversation with McGraw for $750 an hour, they scammed Dr. Phil's viewers out of thousands of dollars.
• On December 12, 2006, the show featured a segment on Bumfights, and attacks on the homeless across America. McGraw discontinued an interview, before asking any questions, with Ty Beeson, producer of the video series, who had styled himself in a manner similar to Dr. Phil. Beeson was escorted off the set by uniformed Paramount Studios security guards as the studio audience clapped and cheered.
• On September 30, 2014, Amie Carter and her ex-husband Chad were interviewed. Amie claimed that Chad was an absentee father. They also discussed about their 7-year-old mentally disordered tempered son, Jayden, who got known for the 2010 video "Tantrum in the parking lot".
• On September 14, 2016, 13-year-old Danielle Bregoli and her mother Barbara Ann were interviewed for the segment "I Want To Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried To Frame Me For A Crime" to discuss Danielle's behavior, which included stealing a crew member’s car while the episode was being filmed. When Bregoli became irritated at the laughter that the audience exhibited at her expense, she responded to it by saying, "Catch me outside, how about that”. Her pronunciation of this phrase became a viral Internet meme "Cash Me Ousside Howbow Dah", and Bregoli became known as the "Cash Me Ousside Girl". On February 10, 2017, Bregoli reappeared on the show with her therapist, but without the studio audience, due to the events of their previous appearance. Her first appearance on the show, and the catchphrase it spawned, would inspire a single based around the clips that was recorded by DJ Suede The Remix God, which entered the Billboard Hot 100, Streaming Songs, and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts in its March 4, 2017 issue. The song in turn led to a series of dance videos that were uploaded onto YouTube.
• On October 20, 2018, 16 year-old Treasure and her mother Monique were interviewed in the segment "My African-American Daughter Believes She is White" to provide therapeutic intervention with her belief that while being born African-American, she identifies as "white". Treasure made various claims to substantiate her outrageous belief that transracial identity is a norm. Although the issue of identity is commonly in question, Dr. Phil's critical response to her theory serves to further her idea that she would be able to identify as she chooses.

Dr. Phil Now

Episodes under the Dr. Phil Now banner usually feature current events in the news with McGraw's viewpoint, often with an interview with the subject involved, which may include a suspect in a true crime case, the parents in a contentious child custody battle, or a celebrity subject. These episodes often feature more urgent music, and often feature McGraw originating the segment from the master control room of KCBS-TV with a bank of monitors tuned to various news networks and local news stations to give a more news-like feel to the episode.

Criticism

McGraw's advice and methods have drawn criticism from some fellow psychotherapists as well as from some laymen. McGraw's critics regard advice given by him to be at best simplistic, and at worst, ineffective. The National Alliance on Mental Illness called McGraw's conduct in one episode of his television show "unethical" and "incredibly irresponsible". McGraw said in a 2001 South Florida newspaper interview that he never liked traditional one-on-one counseling, and that "I'm not the Hush-Puppies, pipe and 'Let's talk about your mother' kind of psychologist."

In popular culture

In the episode "HumancentiPad" of the fifteenth season of South Park, Eric Cartman appears on the Dr. Phil show after accusing his mom of "fucking him".

In The Garfield Show he is parodied as Dr. Whipple, an animal psychologist.

Dr. Bill on The Fairly Odd Parents is a parody of Dr. Phil.

In Drake and Josh, the main characters appear on a parody of the show hosted by Dr. Phyllis.

Further reading

Sophia Dembling, Lisa Gutierrez (2005). The Making of Dr. Phil: The Straight-Talking True Story of Everyone's Favorite Therapist. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-69659-5.

External links

• Official website