BY DC CUEVA
Two years ago, DCBLOG featured the man who possesses the top-rated daytime TV talk show, all part of a stable of highly-popular syndicated programming of what will soon be a teammate in the new Viacom/CBS alliance. And what happened there over a week ago was enough for us to bump The Challenge and Ex On The Beach off the front page into the week's big attraction for those who follow MTV Reality, and a perfect opportunity to introduce casual viewers to this world.
Dr. Phil McGraw has had quite a life in going from growing up in the Southwest to becoming a psychologist, and then to an extremely successful career in that field of offering medical and mental health advice to people of all ages. A partnership with Oprah Winfrey not only saw him partner with her both on her show and in counseling during a high-profile court case with the daytime queen, but landed him his own TV show. Dr. Phil began its 18th season last month amidst much attention when Jackass alum Bam Margera appeared on his show amidst the rehab drama surrounding the former MTV star, and would then celebrate its 3000th episode by inviting back its most memorable guests.
It was on two separate occasions in the summer of 2017 that we featured Dr. Phil for a unifying reason: two members of the same Are You The One? cast being featured on his show, but just as being members of the audience. Las Vegas native Brandon Tindel and San Diego dental assistant Jasmine Pendleton were paired in the fifth week's matchup ceremony on Season 2 of AYTO in fall 2014, a week after the show's very first blackout ever: no lights recorded in any nighttime light show to see if they have recorded any perfect matches in the quest to win $1 million and true love. And Brandon's brief cameo on Dr. Phil came a day after a clip of him quitting Rivals 3 that caused host TJ Lavin to go off the deep end appeared during a Challenge retrospective special.
When we featured Brandon and Jasmine back then, we never even thought that the day would come for people who were on any MTV reality show would become actual guests sitting next to Dr. Phil on set instead of watching it from the audience. But as we got to turn the calendar to October, this very item would come to pass, where the guy who made his Challenge debut the same season as Brandon joined America's favorite psychologist on set. And he was joined by a girl he met on an MTV show nearly a year earlier when they were on the second season of Ex On The Beach. So began a turbulent relationship with so many ups and downs, it was only a matter of time before it became worthy of it being covered not by a traditional end-of-season reunion, but by of all things, daytime TV.Officially, it is classified as the 3005th & 3006th episodes of a talk show that serves as America's window on relationships and mental health which, very recently, officially turned adult age. But for those who are used to watching all the drama that packs any hour of an MTV show, you might say that this may count as just another hour of it even though it airs on local, free-to-air TV instead of on anything goes cable. And those who got to see it were witness to an episode that might as well be called Angela & Nelson's Couples Therapy, starring Angela Babicz & Nelson Thomas.
