The Doctor Will See You Now

Eliya Smith

In my defense, I fall in love with Dr. Phillip McGraw a few weeks into the pandemic, when reality is slushy — months still from evincing any sort of pattern or logic, however cruel — and I am at my personal nadir. I waste the days submerged in a vat of self-pity: wondering how my college analog would be spending her senior Spring, watching infection rates tick higher on my laptop, and logging into zoom school from the pink-bannistered twin bed I slept in for the first eighteen years of my life. I rarely sleep at night and books are gibberish but movies have plot, so I seek out the deathless glow of short clips. YouTube, obligingly, feeds me byte after byte of Phil. We share a look, he and I, and then, just for me, he points his morally unimpeachable finger at the morally impeached, facing down rabid children, neglectful parents, other womans and klepto teens until the sun leaks through my shades. And I am a little bit numbed and a little bit fortified and, finally, a little bit sleepy.

In the mornings I decide I no longer like Dr. Phil. His head is too conical to permit such baldness (or too bald to warrant such a pointy crown; I vacillate on this point). I think it is wrong to air people’s problems on national television, as he does, to take advantage of those who either covet attention or who grapple with problems so insurmountable — accompanied usually by a conspicuous lack of resources to surmount them — that their last hope is televised therapy. Not to mention the fact that on occasion, Dr. Phil interviews people who spew hatred, people he argues with but nevertheless amplifies, which makes me irate.

Then two, three, four a.m. hits, and again I am trawling his page for clips I may have missed. I feel bad and I want to feel better. Outside of my bedroom there is pain and disease on a scale I cannot process. No one can fix it and no one is trying. Here, where Dr. Phil is, there is healing and salvation. I am comforted by Phil’s assuredness, by his unwavering certainty — you can see it in his body, hear it in his voice — that if wrong exists, right does, too, and that progress is possible for the people on his show, if only they follow his advice.

I understand, of course, that the show is a charade. Dr. Phil manufactures intimacy, but he is aware, always, of those to whom he performs. Really those people are the ones watching him months later from their television sets, but their avatars sit in the soundstage opposite Phil in the form of a small in-person audience. For me, it is this exchange between the performers (Phil and guests) and the spectators that makes the show, despite its obvious emotional fraudulence, feel so stirring. The more I watch these people — the watchers — the more obsessed I become. Phil’s powers of restoration seem drawn directly from the crowd, from their surging warmth in response to whatever he says. The troubled guests make silly defenses of their abominable behavior; Phil comments drolly; the audience laughs. I laugh, too. He is so funny. When Phil turns somber, the audience is dutifully appalled, or moved, or aghast; whatever the situation calls for. His eyes flit to his audience. He loves them for loving him. And how content they seem, in their escalating rows of chairs.

Initially, the clips YouTube feeds me are reruns, filmed in pre-pandemic times. In that vestige of a world I am already forgetting, crowded audience members share air, fight for armrest real estate, and

respirate without compulsively attributing complex backstories to the particles they ingest. Eventually I notice a change. When Dr. Phil commences filming for its nineteenth season in September of 2020, his production team devises an alternative to the traditional studio audience setup. In place of dramatic cuts to dramatically arched eyebrows are three walls of screen mounted on the stage, behind the chairs set up for Phil and his guests, out from which smile rows of webcammed faces. Following this intervention, the show briefly seems off-kilter, hollow, but both Phil and I quickly grow accustomed to the adjustment. He seems able to redirect his awareness of the crowd backwards, into the screens, and in this way his salutary powers remain undiluted. I decide I don’t mind if he doesn’t.

At this point in the pandemic, when my Phil fix has become a nightly imperative, I go nowhere and see no one. I am always in my pajamas, croaking hello to the same three people. I miss the stupid squeakiness of smalltalk; of hearing myself try on personas; sensing eyes process my clothing, the way I nudge air through space. I had not previously understood that this routine contact with the world played such an integral role in shoring up my personhood, crafting an outer shell of my self, without which I feel blobbish and undefined. From my bed I click through clips feverishly, overriding autoplay because autoplay knows to intersperse Phils with non-Phils, and I am too greedy for judiciousness. There’s another clip, a smattering of new faces. Phil lectures, the guests cry, the audience thrills. He smiles, checking with his peripherals for a moment the screens behind him, those faces flushed with Philinduced glee.

I pull my screen toward my face, so close I might eat it. I want that. I want a flash, for even a second, of Phil’s healing gaze. I want Dr. Phil McGraw to rotate his gravity toward me for a moment in time and sew me back together, insist I exist.

It is in this state of woozy early-stage-covid catatonia at four a.m. that I, freely and of my own mostlyhinged volition, surrounded by the lavender walls and beady-eyed stuffed animals of my childhood, tap “go on dr phil” into the search bar on my phone. The show’s webpage is easy to navigate. Beneath “Contact Dr. Phil,” I find the hyperlink I seek. “Be Part of the / Audience,” it advertises. “Now,” says a graphic when the next screen loads, “you don’t have to leave your home to be a part of the Dr. Phil studio audience.” Huzzah.

REMEMBER HOW I AM DOING PRACTICE DR. PHIL TOMORROW? I say to my roommates eighty times the day before my producer-mandated “technical test.” (I have, by this point, relocated from my childhood home into a Brooklyn apartment.) I AM DOING PRACTICE DR. PHIL TOMORROW! I say. TOMORROW IS MY DR. PHIL PRACTICE, DID EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT THAT? My roommates make impressed noises. I know that I am very cool to them already, and that this undertaking has only made me cooler.

In the months since I first contacted Dr. Phil’s producers, my obsession has intensified, to the point of dubious rationality. I acknowledge this and do not care. Why should I? It is now mid-Fall; everything is batshit.

The technical test, I am informed via email, ensures Phil’s virtual audience members have adequate computer setup. The technicalities of my Dr. Phil audience experience beyond this are not yet clear, but as far as I can tell, there appear to be a finite number of slots on the large screens situated behind Phil’s

head, upon which the “audience” is projected. I have deduced this because in the YouTube segments posted after the show switched to its digital crowd, the configuration of faces appears to rotate between clips taken from the same episode. I figure that they — whoever controls the screens — feature the faces of those fans who appear most engaged, most moved by the action onstage. I am comfortable with this premise. I am good at getting teachers to call on me; I have gaunt Semitic features that emote easily. The Dr. Phil overlords will love me, I am certain.

Unfortunately, the night before my technical test, my usual insomnia is exacerbated by the team of child gymnasts that has moved into the apartment above mine, or else someone is having appallingly thumpy sex, or possibly getting murdered and then self-reviving and then getting murdered again. As a result, I remain awake until early morning and nearly sleep through my allotted practice time. I am apoplectic when I see the clock; I scramble out of bed to brush my teeth, put on pants, choke down coffee, etc., and at one minute past my designated slot, I am waiting patiently on the online portal. The email detailing requirements for the test specified a blank background, so I have somewhat hunched beneath my desk and created a makeshift underdesk-desk via a cardboard box propped on my lap which digs unpleasantly into my thighs, a sensation which I ignore. I freeze every muscle I have conscious control over so as not to nudge the screen. If I move my camera a millimeter in either direction, furniture will pop into the frame, which I know would be unacceptable. I have read the rules provided in the Dr. Phil Virtual Audience Setup Guide religiously.

After five minutes of complete silence facing a blank screen, my headphones explode with a frantic mush of noise, followed shortly by a louder, clearer, disembodied speaker who tells me I am connected and that she (Faceless Voice) will be with me in a moment. Faceless Voice begins to say something else, but she and the frantic background noise cut out. I understand that this is, objectively, a creepy sequence, what with the blank screen and abrupt, unattributed audio, but I am unbothered, because I know that it is the Dr. Phil show, a magical utopian realm where everything is so deranged that nothing can actually go wrong. I love it here. I wait patiently for the return of Faceless Voice. I cannot wait to meet more of my friends.

Faceless Voice reappears ten minutes later to tell me that my setup is excellent. I beam. I am so pleased. I love doing a good job at things. I wonder how long she has been watching me and hope my face has appeared sufficiently dramatic. I want the Dr. Phil overlords to see how well I can emote so that they will feature my face on the show, so that Phil will look into my eyes and fill me with light. Faceless Voice details the hours I am required to attend for the show’s airing the following Monday, of which I am well aware, as I have memorized the materials they sent me. I nod in a way that demonstrates both that I am listening and that I already knew all this.

Faceless Voice tells me the show I will be attending centers around motherhood, or something; she doesn’t really get it but is supposed to ask if I myself am a mother. I hesitate. I consider lying, but I know Dr. Phil in his righteous glory would sense my duplicitousness.

I clear my throat. I’m not, but. Do they... are they trying to get, like... only moms? in the audience? on Monday? My voice is squeaky.

Faceless Voice doesn’t really know. Obviously, I’ve been booked on this show for a while, she says, and then trails off. But they’re supposed to ask who in the audience is a Mom. So.

My heart sinks. The implications of this exchange are clear. Obviously, the main characters in the show I am to witness are mothers. This means the Dr. Phil overlords will want to feature the reactions of people whose outrage is demonstrably, palpably personal. They’ll want moms sympathizing with the obligatory selflessness of motherhood; not me, face of the narcissistic youth. I know already that the video screen containing my pixelated face will not be featured on the Dr. Phil show.

Faceless Voice says goodbye. My technical test appears to have ended. I remain hunched beneath my desk for a bit, feeling droopy.

The next few days are a rollercoaster of Dr. Phil- related emotion. I prepare for my appearance in what features in my head as one of those sports movie montages of hot people getting hotter at the gym. I sit across from my computer watching archival clips and practice stretching my jaw, this is shock, furrowing my brows, this is distrust, making my eyes go big, this is alarm. I try to see if it is possible to convey visually an expression that says, this is disgust toward one party’s statement but feverish support for the thing the other person is saying, that other person being my savior, Dr. Phillip, I love him.

I am rehearsing my feelings in our living room when my roommate passes by. He peers over my shoulder at my screen and points to the faces hovering behind Phillip, faces of inferior audience members who are less good than I am at expressing emotion. Will I be one of those people? He asks.

I am solemn. I am guaranteed nothing, I say. I must earn my spot. I must claw my way over the insufficiently-aghast moms, proving my mettle. I will stop at nothing to crush my enemies in my quest for glory; I will keep my face frozen in an expression so terrifying the overlords have no choice but to feature me on the screen behind Phil’s head. The doctor will see me, heal me, make me whole.

Cool, he says.

All morning the day of my Performance the following Monday I am thinking about babies. As a rule, I love thinking about babies, but today’s fixation is tactical. My hope is to goad my body into giving off a maternal aura, an ineffable momness that will be palpable even across two layers of screen. Moms, I know from my experience as a former child, exude a sort of generosity, a softness in the eyes. Fortunately for me, I have been told I have nice girl energy, which is similar to momness. In reality, nice girl energy is really just when you aren’t actually nice but you’re definitely not hot and since you can really only be one they’ve lumped you into the first category; but for the purposes of the Dr. Phil show, I have decided that I can transfer my regular persona into mom vibes if I try hard enough.

The morning, in dutiful imitation of my practice day, does not go well. My oatmeal explodes in the microwave and the coffee I am making spills everywhere and it takes me one million years to clean off the placemats and as I am scrubbing, I get a call from an unknown number which I assume is Dr. Phil’s people who said they would call me if I did not log on. Oh god, I am saying very loudly, to both my roommates’ great annoyance. I am sweating. Fuck. I cannot disappoint Phillip. I worry if I do not log in immediately that the overlords will scratch me from the show; I sprint around overturning more food and drink items, arrive huffily back at my under-desk position, bumping my head on the way down, and log on, finally, to the Dr. Phil virtual audience portal.

The login portal greets me with a montage of Dr. Phil scored to Corinne Bailey Ray telling me to just go ahead, let your hair down! I massage my scalp. The reel transitions blithely between clips of

Phil pulled from appearances around the television universe: Dr. Phil is laughing with various guests on the Dr. Phil soundstage, Dr. Phil is making famous people laugh, Dr. Phil is visiting late-night television hosts, Dr. Phil is being the kind of conspicuously good man who plainly worships his wife, Robin, who frankly gives me weird vibes but maybe I’m just being sexist. Fifteen minutes go by. Why are they showing me this? Did I log on too late, and they’ve kicked me off the livestream, offered this as a consolation? Where are my peers? Did they move the Moms to a separate, superior Zoom room? The montage continues, underscored now by a disturbingly quiet rendition of “Hey Ya!” My blood pressure is steadily increasing and OutKast is singing about Thank God for Mom and Dad for sticking two together like we—when a new, gravelly Faceless Voice welcomes me to the show, tells me to return in thirty minutes, and disappears. I watch myself on the screen for a bit, feeling slightly dazed.

Half an hour later, finally, the montage is replaced by a live feed of the empty Dr. Phil soundstage. It’s — us! Me and assorted others smile up from the screens, cheering together for an empty stage. (The crowd is somewhat varied, but does exude a definitively maternal energy. In my head, they remain a conglomeration of Moms.) I monitor my face every time the cameras pan wide enough to capture the entire virtual audience, ensuring it is sufficiently animated. Soon an object for our applause materializes: A crewman tasked with warming up the crowd trundles out and begins making jokes. I am amused; I find it touching that the Dr. Phil entourage decided a virtual audience should or even could benefit from such cultivation. Then I listen to the words coming out of the warmup guy’s mouth, and I feel a tug of irritation. Warmup guy is sort of pathetic, actually. In fact what the words he is saying are worse than any standup comedy I have ever watched. This man, who clearly did ketamine prior to walking onstage at 9:00 am pacific time, claims he has “goosebumps” due to “excitement.” The majority of his punchlines center around his weight. None are funny. I try to make my face look receptive and generous, freezing in a smile. But as warmup guy continues to speak, I grow offended by the fat jokes and profound lack of comedic timing, and can see this registering on my tiny projected face.

I check the other faces, hoping to share my disdain toward this man with my colleagues. They seem unfazed. Most are chortling, apparently captivated. Warmup guy is approaching various miniature faces — some situated near his knees, others above his head — with whom he attempts banter. My peers are laughing so hard I am worried they will die. I try to manufacture a similar zeal, but warmup guy’s patent idiocy — underscored by the sycophantic response of the audience to it — has curdled my insides. Warmup guy is saying that we are the chosen ones, that we are show enhancers, that we will “take for the rest of our lives the ability to enhance” from this experience. I hate him. I hate the Moms, too. I am embarrassed to watch; humiliated, suddenly, by the idiocy of this venture. He is telling us how special we are, but in the presence of the happy clappy Moms, I don’t believe him, and I resent him for saying this thing that I would like to be true in a way that so obviously clarifies it isn’t.

Finally, warmup guy announces Robin’s entrance. He says something like: “And now, the bastion of light and goodness, sweetness and loveliness incarnate” — something that isn’t exactly that but is about as gendered as you can get in trying to describe the feminized analog for Phil: if he does the thinking and the confrontation, she does the smiling and the emotional buoyancy. (Robin, I learn later, has a podcast that Phil promotes, the premise of which is essentially “girls telling secrets.”) Robin enters. Phil follows shortly after, striding to the center of the stage, where he beams at the camera. I join grudgingly in the

applause. I am mad at Phil for hoodwinking me into this. I see on my screen that I am pouting and allow a wan smile, but I do not let it reach my eyes.

Phil begins speaking. He is making jokes; not awful manufactured ones, but spontaneous, charming asides. I hear myself chuckle. A graphic on the screen instructs us to continue applauding. The Moms clap and holler as the camera pans across the stage, blurring us into a mass of flushed grins and shrill cheers. I feel a warmth spread from my gut. I am clapping with them, although it isn’t for Phil, I don’t think. I had forgotten the way it feels, this experience of emotion magnified, siphoned through others and then returned, electric, to oneself. I feel a bloom of gratitude toward the Moms. I wish I hadn’t rolled my eyes at them earlier. It is nice, so nice, to clap together.

Phil is still center stage, feet solidly planted, looking into the camera. There’s a glimmer of something like need in his eyes. We continue to clap, though our arms are tired; we will not stop. What a sad little child he would appear without our noise, stood obediently on his mark with no one to cheer for him. We would never abandon him to silence. We are combining our gaze to confer personhood on this man who does not matter. We are happy to do this. We will clap as long as we are asked.

Phi finishes speaking and turns around, just once, to sweep his eyes over the screens. Some of the Moms wave. I am very still. I find, to my surprise, that I do not want him to notice me. For him I am a coagulation of pixels on a screen, indistinguishable from yesterday’s fans, from tomorrow’s. I find I would like to remain that way.

It occurs to me that what I forgot, in my drive toward attracting Dr. Phil’s salutary gaze, was the other half of the network of appraisals that I once relied on to feel like a person. There is a second component to those looks, those cobwebby strings that knit together a society, and in this way shore up the external shell of each member. There is being looked at — this itself is powerful, edifying — but there is also, crucially, looking back. To bear witness confers being on another, and in doing so, endows the looker herself with a power that feels like a simple reminder of existence. And isn’t that all the act of spectatorship asks? Sit in an audience, clap so you are heard. Active perception feeds the perceiver as much as the perceived. I forgot about looking. It is nice to look.

The Dr. Phil virtual audience experience is, it turns out, pretty dull. Such frenzied, careening shifts in feeling as comprised my morning have left me with a shallow emotional reservoir. Once the initial exhilaration wears off, I struggle to focus. I am bored by Dr. Phil’s advice, by the guests’ problems, by their feverish cattiness. (And the show, I am disappointed to find, isn’t even particularly mom-centric.) I try to make the facial expressions I practiced, but I’ve lost the pressure I once felt to perform, and after a few hours, the muscles in my cheeks grow too weary to emote. I can see myself on the screen behind Phil’s head, but I can’t tell if the overlords have the ability to replace me if I underperform. I find that the prospect of my exclusion is unpleasant, but not lethally so, as it had once seemed. We film an episode, take a break, film a second. The show is over.

Weeks later, I am trawling Dr. Phil’s YouTube page and see that one of the episodes we filmed has been uploaded. I sift through the clips. Every so often, the camera pans out, and I catch my face, just identifiable, projected from my under-desk desk in Brooklyn onto the swath of screens behind Dr. Phil. I watch with a pang as my tiny eyes stare dully ahead, or at my lap, where I am probably texting, scrolling,

reading. I worry that the producers played back the tape and noticed me and said, fuck that girl, she isn’t even watching. I worry they talked about me but not in a glowing way. I had wanted so badly to impress the overlords.

But my face, really, is tiny, so far away and subsumed by the other faces who are doing a better job of emoting than I. Probably you would not even notice my face if you weren’t searching for it. I play back the clip, I allow the pixels that comprise me to dissipate into spots of color. My face fades into the rest. It feels good, like breath, like motion. I watch the clip again and again. Eventually I’m not there at all.

Meltdown

Michael Paramo