An Honest Review of Dr. Phil: Inside Stuyvesant

Since the conclusion of “Game of Thrones” (GoT), HBO had been desperate to find a show that could deliver exorbitant ratings. After burning through a small loan of a million dollars, HBO was sadly unable to find a worthy successor to GoT. Seizing this opportunity, renowned TV psychiatrist Dr. Phillip C. McGraw, colloquially known as Dr. Phil, decided to take this challenge for himself.

“I looked at this school in Downtown Manhattan—Stivvysent, I think it was called—and they appeared to be in need of my special talents,” Dr. Phil said. “And besides, none of them have foreheads that come even close to mine, so I think I’ll be able to shame them with my chad powers.”

His newest show, “Dr. Phil: Inside Stuyvesant,” looks at the complicated mental states of many deranged Stuyvesant High School students and faculty members, who are brought onto the show by their concerned guidance counselors or fellow faculty members. So far, five episodes have been recorded, but unfortunately, five episodes are really all the poor viewers can take. According to experts, some side effects of watching the show include erectile dysfunction and permanent and irreversible brain damage. Being the extremely professional journalists that we are, we’ve taken a peek into the world of “Dr: Phil: Inside Stuyvesant” for a consecutive 20 hours so that you, our beloved audience, don’t have to.

Why did five episodes take 20 hours? Primarily because of the strange tendencies exhibited by many of the show’s guests: “dipping” mid-interview to Juul backstage, falling asleep while Dr. Phil was trying to preach to them, and repeatedly shouting “oK bOoMeR” at him whenever they disagreed with whatever point he was making. In addition, because the funds HBO allocated were not enough to pay for a decent video editor, all five episodes have the same quality as 2010 YouTube content, minus the Bandicam.com watermark at the top. If you are a professional video editor, we highly recommend you to not watch this series, so as to avoid tearing out all your hair.

Despite these flaws, here are some of the episodes we would recommend:

Episode 1 - Stuy and Drown

The series starts off with the cameraman getting pummeled by a large crowd of 5’2” students before the start of first period on the Tribeca Bridge. The cries of mercy and the retorts of savage high schoolers give a flavorful start to the series.

It quickly becomes evident that the show is being hosted in the Hudson staircase, thanks to more of those HBO budget cuts. The sounds of students “macking” can be heard from outside the set during the tense moments.

Dr. Phil’s first guest is an Asian Baby Girl (ABG) senior who has failed swim gym for the past six semesters in a row. Her reason? She claims that her “physical conditions” keep her from being able to swim properly: physical conditions as in her voluminous fake lashes and thousand-dollar rave outfits. You wouldn’t know it from her Gucci slides and AirPods Pro, but she actually can’t afford to re-dye her brown roots, so she steers clear of the chlorine pool water. She whines that she can’t swim because her 37 piercings would get rusty, and other students in her class complain about how whenever her face touches the water it becomes impossible to swim, as a roiling cloud of foundation and eyeshadow fills the pool. In addition, several incidents of near-fatal asphyxiation have occurred around her when students try to come up for air and end up inhaling the Giorgio Armani perfume that surrounds her in a noxious gas cloud. Indeed, she’s recently started bottling her bath water to sell it, and unlike Belle Delphine’s bath water, you can immediately tell it’s hers because of the biohazard label slapped on each lid.

That’s right: Dr. Phil attempts to fix an ABG’s lifestyle on his show. Nobler men have died in the attempt. Naturally, she comes in with a 64-ounce plastic cup of taro bubble tea, which she chucks at Dr. Phil when he shows a picture of her face without makeup (see also: chemical burns from the trenches of World War II). She then storms out in her nine-inch Louboutin heels, which make her an imposing five feet tall, and the sound of her phone’s Instagram notifications going off at full volume fades into the distance.

Episode 3 - Meme Man Mark and His Facebook Addiction

In this episode, Dr. Phil talks to Mark Muckermerg, a Stuy freshman who has become obsessed with posting what he considers to be “dank memes” all over the “WE HAVE ADVICE” groups on Facebook. His memes tend to get a lot of angry reacts, or what the English department prefers to call “constructive criticism,” but Muckermerg lets Dr. Phil know that he’s not letting the haters get to him and that their negativity will never corrupt his 1000 percent legit swagger.

Besides being a story stolen from the Humor editor application, this episode drags on, particularly because Muckermerg keeps on pulling out his phone to check whether his memes have gotten likes. At one point, when a “cool” senior who runs Stuy Confessions accidentally likes one of his memes, Muckermerg starts shouting incoherently before flinging his phone into the air and collapsing on the floor. As the episode ends, EMTs begin rushing onto the stage, even as Dr. Phil says, “I think you only have one reasonable choice… to ask your guidance counselor to transfer you to the Turnabout Ranch.” As the camera pans out, you can still see videos of kids riding horses and taking the AP Turnabout test to try and transfer out. To this day, we still don’t know if Muckermerg has ever been rehabilitated.

Episode 5 - THESE CHILDREN ARE INSANE, SEND HELP ASD; FJKL

First, the title seems like a cut-off thought that was extremely cheap and not very well thought out. Perhaps this is because of their low budget, but nevertheless, it was a huge turn-off when we loaded it onto our Brooklyn Public Library computer. This episode is extremely uneventful, with Stuy students primarily being defensive about their caffeine addictions and Dr. Phil yelling at them. Or at least, that’s what we think happened, because we were almost brain dead by the end of Episode 4, so it’s a miracle that we have even gotten this far. We have taken a piece of the transcript for our readers to judge because we certainly can’t at this point.

SENIOR PERSON: I DON’T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS.
DR. PHIL: Do you not see yourself???
SENIOR PERSON: yES of course; can’t post cute profile pics without seeing yourself, can you?
DR. PHIL: You’re in denial!!
SENIOR PERSON: This is clearly New York, old man, now shut up, I gotta go pick up my Starbucks order.
DR. PHIL: STOP TRYING TO MAKE EXCUSES.
SENIOR PERSON: [incoherent screeching]
DR. PHIL: YOU NEED SERIOUS HELP.

[A fight ensues, with the SENIOR and DR. PHIL locking arms in what looks to be an aggressive waltz.]

Generally speaking, this new HBO series is only worth your time if you truly would like permanent brain damage or just want something relatable to watch. Either way, don’t expect any more episodes of this edition of Dr. Phil to be released, because Dr. Phil has officially sent himself to Turnabout Ranch, saying that he “needs a vacation.” All we can say is that he may not have been the hero Stuyvesant needed or deserved, but he has definitely provided us with something that’s definitely never been seen at Stuyvesant before: teen drama and JUUL addiction jokes.