TALKING TRASH

By Richard Zoglin

"He's mine; she has to deal with that now," said Tasha on the Ricki Lake show last week. Tasha, married to Ed, was railing against Becky, Ed's ex-girlfriend, who she claimed was trying to come between them. After Tasha and Ed told their story, Becky came onstage, and things really went wild.

"Well, to begin with, they done nothin' but lie since they been up here," she said, launching into a tale about one time when she went to Ed's house to pick up their daughter. "He started callin' me a nasty little bitch and everything else!" Becky was saying when Tasha leaped to her feet. With the studio audience roaring, the two women began screaming at each other, standing nose to nose, fingers jabbing the air, the bleep machine struggling to keep up. The last decipherable exchange: "Shut up!" "You shut up!"

By this time, Ricki was onstage, trying to restore order with the self-satisfied authority of a second-grade teacher. "Excuse me, excuse me," she broke in. "We don't say shut up to anyone. This is an open arena. We will all be heard, and we won't use the bad language, O.K.?"

O.K., Ricki, but without uproars like these, you wouldn't have the hottest show on daytime television. Ricki Lake, now syndicated on 212 stations across the country, has more than doubled its ratings in the past year, moving up to second place among all the gabfests, trailing only the still dominant (but slightly weakening) Oprah. Ricki has succeeded by putting a fresh twist on the overworked format: catering to teens and young adults with shows about screwed-up relationships, and juicing up the hour with high-decibel confrontations that draw hoots and cheers from the studio audience. The emotional circus really has come to town, and Lake-the once obese co-star of John Waters movies and the TV series China Beach-is the pudgy, sleepy-eyed ringmaster.

Her impact on TV has been enormous. Such competitors as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones and Montel Williams have gravitated toward her subject matter and her high-pitched style-and have seen their ratings jump. Their shows cannot match Lake's youthful demographics, but several Ricki clones being introduced this week at the annual convention of the National Association of Television Program Executives are getting ready to try. Among them are Carnie Wilson, formerly of the singing group Wilson Phillips, another talk-show neophyte who has to watch her weight; former Cosby Show kid Tempestt Bledsoe; ex-Partridge Family cast member Danny Bonaduce; and Mark Walberg, whose publicity pitch begins, "If Donahue were 30 years younger, [and] Ricki were a man ." Rick Jacobson, president of Tribune Syndication, which has just launched the Charles Perez show, hosted by a hunky former Ricki Lake staff member, admits the influence. "Obviously," he says, "you look at the success of a Ricki Lake and you say, 'Boy, we should be doing that.' "

What Ricki is doing is not just turning up the volume and turning on kids. Her show has pioneered a new approach to TV talk. Gone, for the most part, are the wacky transvestites, the bizarre tales of incest, the tearful aids victims. The stories Ricki and her imitators go for concern painful relationship problems, the kind everyone can relate to: guys who won't commit, women whose boyfriends cheat, couples who argue over in-laws, girlfriends who fight over men.

The cutesy segment titles signal the everyday roots and the antagonistic tone: "Get Real, Honey, Your Boyfriend Is a Dog"; "Pack Your Bags or You'll Wish You Were Dead"; "I Want to Tell My Cheating Boyfriend It's Now or Never"; "You're the Rudest Thing Alive . And I'm Sick of Your Attitude." For that last, a fired McDonald's employee got into a shouting match with a customer over who dissed whom at the drive-up window. These are guests who come out of the vast expanse of anonymous Middle America, from trailer parks to ghettos, that TV has rarely shown so unvarnished.

Lake and her top producers declined to talk with Time, but other hosts eagerly defend the genre. "The closer you get on live, unscripted TV to reality and its raw emotions," says Springer, "the rougher it's going to be . Maybe our show can help people learn to tolerate differences. And maybe we can learn that everybody is capable of pain." Phil Donahue, a 27-year veteran of the talk-show wars, doesn't want to bash the Ricki influence either (even though it has contributed to a decline in his ratings). "I do think there's an awful lot of heavy breathing out there on the part of the so-called mainstream media," he says. "What is all the hand wringing about? Yes, there is an entertainment feature to this. But why should the producers apologize for that? They'd better be entertaining, or nobody's going to watch."

Only Oprah has taken a stand against these talk-show donnybrooks, rejecting Ricki-like confrontations and stressing more upbeat, inspirational programs. "Oprah's purpose is to lift people up, to help them move on in their lives," says executive producer Dianne Atkinson Hudson. The show is still capable of sensational moments, such as Winfrey's on-air confession two weeks ago that she had used cocaine. But most of her recent topics-couples with credit problems, people who have had bad experiences calling 911-would seem hopelessly staid to her voyeuristic competitors.

Producers for the newer talk shows insist they too are trying to be helpful, not exploitative. Usually, however, the uplift consists of simply a few bromides from the host ("Do two wrongs make a right?" Ricki likes to say) and some facile advice from a psychologist or other "expert" brought on for a few minutes at the end of the show.

One woman who appeared as an expert on Ricki Lake describes it as a disturbing experience. Before the show, she found herself in the green room with several of the guests-teens with gripes about a friend's mate. "A producer came in and gave them a pep talk," the woman recalls, "whipping them into a frenzy. She'd say, 'This is your chance to go out and tell the world your side of the story. No physical violence, but yell as much as you want. You won't make points by talking in an even-handed manner.' It seemed very clear that these were the people the producers had labeled 'wrong'-and that they were going to be cast to the wolves."

After almost an hour of emotional outbursts, the expert came on for five minutes (after rejecting a fake-leather binder offered to her by a staff member "to make you look more authoritative"). As soon as the show ended, guards whisked all the participants offstage and out of the building. "There was no chance for them to decompress or come back into the real world after what was an emotional experience," the guest recalls. "There was a real assembly-line quality. It was ruthless."

So why do people appear on these shows? Jerry Springer is as baffled as anyone. He tells of a segment involving a woman who came home and found her husband in bed with her aunt. "It was bad enough that it happened," Springer says, "but they were all there talking about it on national TV! It's hard to see why people do this, but they do." The shows find their guests with newspaper and magazine ads and toll-free numbers flashed onscreen. There is even a National Talk Show Guest Registry, a data base used by many talk shows that lists 2,400 people who have stories or problems they think would make good talk-show fodder. Apparently the chance for a moment of TV fame (and a free trip to New York City or Chicago) outweighs the prospect of embarrassing yourself in front of millions. Maybe, too, talking out your problems in front of a TV audience is a way of validating emotions your friends and family tend to ignore.

Barbara Tucker, 36, of Alexander City, Alabama, has been on three talk shows to berate her "bitch" of a sister-in-law. She regrets the last time, when she went on Springer's show with several other family members. "We shouldn't have gone on. I got upset on that show. [Afterward] my mother didn't speak to my brother for a long time." Still, she wants to do more: "I like to get out there and priss." Michelle Van Buren, 31, of Olivette, Missouri, went on Geraldo and talked about men who lie and cheat. She admits that the talk shows "exploit people," but she doesn't much care. "I've always been a homebody," she says. "I never wanted to talk. But it's like I broke out of my shell. I just love it. And they put on great makeup."

-Reported by Hannah Bloch and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by HANNAH BLOCH AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK