After a couple of weeks of grueling viewing, it's clear to me that daytime TV talk falls into two categories: self-help and mild entertainment. Subcategories include humiliation, tough love and freak show.
If it's true that you are what you watch, you may want to consider how much time you spend with any one of these daylight genres.
Talk shows have evolved from the years of Jerry Springer meanness. These days, they tend to have more "aspirational" leanings, cheerleading their viewers on with self-actualizing pop therapies that echo the Army's "Be all you can be" -- and not just from Oprah Winfrey.
There are still the freak-show promulgators, Maury Povich and Steve Wilkos chief among them. They're big on tracking down baby daddies and cheating spouses. And Tyra Banks, though she can be likable and entertaining, veers toward being a sideshow barker. Tyra talks to people with unusual habits, including a person who eats his own toenails and a chronic nose picker.
Daytime talk isn't exactly commendable now, but its dark days of exploitative Ricki Lake and Sally Jesse Raphael shockers are diminished.
The tough-love and fitness disciplinarians Drs. Phil and Oz are competing on a higher plane. The performers turned interviewers, notably Ellen DeGeneres and Williams, admirably aim to offer both good advice and infotainment.
Still, together, the shows can play out like one very long commercial. On any given day in America, there are hundreds of high- and low-ranking celebrities selling new books and CDs, TV shows and movies.
TV talk provides the requisite hoops any enterprising author/artist must jump through en route to the best-seller lists. The segments are flimsy and fleeting -- this isn't English class, after all. We may not remember the book title, but we can picture the smiles all around, the empathetic responses and the audiences' coached cheers.
On any given day, it all amounts to happy company to the task of folding laundry. The voices are upbeat, the tone of conversation is warm -- even the bickering is gentle.
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