by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
As someone born in the 1990s, my memory of Jerry Springer and The Jerry Springer Show is largely relegated to the meme it became, with no real appreciation of the true juggernaut it was in its day — for better or for worse. So when Netflix released a new limited series chronicling one of the biggest talk shows of all time, with Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action, I was intrigued to learn more.
Largely told through a collection of interviews with producers, a local media critic, and archival footage from interviews and episodes (Springer himself obviously doesn’t appear after passing away in 2023), the two-part documentary covers both how the show became the phenomenon that it was by leaning into violence, controversy, and closing gap on Oprah,before tragedy struck and it eventually became a shell of its former self.
After the roughly hour-and-a-half runtime, I found myself with some (perhaps fittingly) complicated feelings.
Those feelings start with Springer himself, who I have gotten a more complex picture of in recent years. As a consistent listener to Chicago sports radio (where Springer was filmed), I’ve heard multiple times that Springer was perhaps surprisingly lovely (whereas other, perhaps more supposedly “family” friendly, mustachioed hosts were not). That comes through in the documentary. Despite the problematic atmosphere for producers and Springer’s own controversy, it’s clear that he’s still beloved by his former producers, and that he’s obviously smarter than the show he’s famous for. It’s easy to see how the cult of personality around Springer developed, though he’s not immune to criticism to what the show became and the impact it had.
What the documentary really hammered home for me was how huge the impact executive producer Richard Dominick had on everything. Coming from the world of tabloids, he was brought in to produce a show on the verge of cancelation, and breathe new life into it by pushing the envelope for what’s allowed on TV. To a point, I think there was some value to what the show was doing. Springer, the son of Holocaust survivors, brought on KKK members and did not hide his disdain for them, for a conversation between them and members of the Jewish Defense League. However, the fight that ensued laid the groundwork for the problematic path the show would eventually take. Fighting became the norm. It was the daytime TV version of the TV news saying, “If it bleeds it leads.”
As someone who rolls his eyes every time politicians grandstand in the aftermath of some horrific act wailing, “What about the music/video games/TV people are consuming?!”, this might be the rare exception where that argument holds water. Seeing how producers, though not technically getting guests to “fake things,” would coach or pressure guests to get what they wanted out of them seems at the very least exploitative. Particularly given the usually lower-class status of many of the guests, how they felt they were actually coming on to get their problems solved and the tragic result of one appearance, it feels dirty. I also couldn’t escape the fact that looking at the show’s heyday nearly 20 years in the future, the negative impact it had on television and what gets fed to the public seems frighteningly clear.
As fascinating as the discussion was, the show’s really let down by its technical aspects. There are moments where the editing really shines — particularly with jump cuts of dissenting opinions. Sure, I suppose it’s also technically well shot, but there’s an overreliance on reenactments — one of my documentary pet peeves. It’s not just the usual fare either. It’s clearly staged reenactments with modern shots of the actual producers being interviewed, pretending they’re pounding the phones like they were in the show’s heyday. It’s completely baffling.
On a lesser scale, allow me to get on my soap box, yell at clouds, whatever you want to call it, before we call it a wrap. A two-episode “series” with a total run time under two hours should not be split up. I get that you had what you felt was a natural breaking point, but it’s not like that can’t work in one piece. Especially when you’re not crafting something to air on TV split between two weeks or two nights, it’s completely pointless. And if you are going to stretch things into nominally calling it a series, I would have like to have seen things not rush as much when it came to chronicling the end of the show.
Fittingly, I feel as conflicted about the documentary as I did about the show it went behind the scenes of. However, I think the bang for the buck you get looking behind the scenes of a unique phenomenon that was The Jerry Springer Show outweighs some of the shortfalls of how the project comes together.
Rating: Liked It
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action! is currently streaming on Netflix
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd