And that The X-Files, Ally McBeal and other forays into personal and social failure have found their way into young viewers' hearts. That's a little too sweeping, of course. Certainly many people, of all generations, have not lost faith in their churches. And what we're seeing in TV now is reminiscent of the Roaring '20s when people partied away the disillusionment of World War I and the decadence of Prohibition. But where an earlier generation of television viewers might look at, say, the bickering couples on The Newlywed Game and feel glad not to be like them, Springer seems to attract an audience that celebrates every bleeped vulgarity.
Cheers erupt each time the show's panelists have to be physically separated.
And it happens a lot. In the aftermath of the 1995 Jenny Jones taping which did lead to one guest shooting another, you'd think a line like that would be edited out. Not on Springer, who has let his show get wilder to pick up viewers bored by the somewhat kinder and gentler Jenny and Sally and Ricki. Then, apparently, a world in which fulfillment doesn't count for much. Not that anyone knows what fulfillment is, or even what motivates another person.