It might seem complicated to decide which is the worst television show of all time. Every country has its own. But in the United States, the famous television news magazine TV Guide he had it clear: The Jerry Springer Show, which premiered on NBC in the early 1990s. It's considered one of the most prolific seeds of trash TV, and on Netflix you'll find a documentary that will take you deeper into the misery of this show. It does so through its ideologue and executive producer, Richard Dominick, an unscrupulous professional who pulled the strings of what the audience saw on screen. Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action! These are two fifty-minute episodes that, once again, excessively dilate a story that could be explained in little more than an hour. But they're worth watching to understand the mechanisms of audience capture, the medium's capacity to become a bonfire of the vanities, and the legacy left behind by this type of trashy television.
Jerry Springer died in 2023, but the documentary uses his show's creator, Richard Dominick, as a shadowy character who confronts his own content. As he explains the circumstances of the show, he watches archival footage and displays the same arrogance and cynicism that made him successful. He managed to drag Springer from the world of news to that of the most lamentable showbiz, and he turned a mediocre, residual late-night talk show into a firm competitor to Oprah Winfrey, the most successful format on American television. But he didn't do it at any price. From the most extreme obscenity to the most unsuspected cruelty, Dominick exploited women's bodies, denigrating them and turning them into objects to be humiliated live on air. He sought out the most sordid life circumstances, the most lamentable and primal conflicts, transforming them into an unprecedented outbreak of violence where fascism, homophobia, machismo, and transphobia were the usual bait. The documentary features three program staffers who were dedicated to recruiting guests and manipulating them to ensure they would guarantee the drama. They lied to them and threatened them to make them deliver the most absurdity on screen. The documentary also includes television reviews from the time and the perspectives of executives and experts, portraying the hypocrisy that often surrounds good television results: the data supported the unjustifiable. Meanwhile, Springer's role is analyzed, a puppet settled in fame who remained indifferent and oblivious to the filth he presented with the excuse that "it's just television." But at the beginning of the second episode, a story unfolds that demonstrates he was much more than that.
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action! It focuses on a specific case, but serves as a source of reflection on all the trash TV that has triumphed on television. It demonstrates how the medium works and the excuses that, even today, surround the perpetuation of this content.
