The Dr. Hil Show

I was a therapist for four straight married couples on a reality show lasting three months; I'd been hired to replace a famous tv therapist, Jill Sherman, who'd been hit by a car midway through the series, and was still in traction.

Jill and I had been good friends since high school and she recommended me despite my lack of psychological credentials; the studio hired me out of desperation, and because Jill had a lot of clout but probably at least in equal measure because someone in marketing realized that having a molecular biologist step in as a therapist would allow them to bill it as an even more lurid social experiment than group marital counseling.

I'd see each couple for fifteen minutes - seven minutes each person, more or less - then the next couple would come up on stage.  But all the couples watched each other from the audience, as did the camera, and there was a group discussion at the end where couples could comment on what had come up in the sessions they'd observed.

My dream was a single session long. The third couple consisted of a tall, dark-haired, mild-mannered man and his voluptuous, long-haired, sarcastic wife. I said I wanted to ask them each the same question and see where it went: what is the one thing bothering you most in your relationship. Though I wasn't supposed to harbor such feelings, I secretly disliked the woman, found her abrasive, and felt a little sorry for the guy.

I asked the woman first. She said it was that her husband gave her specific instructions for how to be seductive. This immediately sparked a heated argument, where he became defensive and said she misrepresented what he said. Predictably she expressed anger and derision, but I felt she was actually very hurt, so I calmed them both down and then went back to her.

I pressed the wife on how that made her feel. She turned into a small grey and white cat, with typewritten phrases on her white flanks like "insecure" and "armored". I stroked her, told her she was safe, and asked her again. The text changed to "lonely" and "I feel inadequate".

The husband, who I had been expecting to melt with tenderness at his wife's unaccustomed vulnerability, instead became aggressive and sarcastic, echoing the behaviour he'd always disparaged in his wife. It was shocking to see; I felt as if his true nature had been revealed and I was disgusted.

Luckily we had spent so much time on the cat transformation that there was no time for him; I said we had to move on. I put Christine, the catwife, up on a high shelf, and reassured everyone that I was a scientist and knew she would transition back to human form in about twenty minutes, when she began feeling safe again.

There are identifiable real events behind this dream reality show concept: I flew home yesterday from New York City and there were 31 channels of HDTV on demand, of which 28 were reality shows.

I saw three episodes of a show about compulsive hoarders on A&E, caught two seconds of at least sixteen cooking shows, watched weather forecasts, plaintiffs and defendants in three different TV court rooms, Teen Moms debating adoption and prom dresses, and last but by no means least, five different straight couples being shepherded through houses in Toronto by a squeaky-voiced Canadian agent - this show, called Property Virgins easily embodies the most eggregious use of a sexual term to lure viewers into watching people discuss dry paint, which is to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Before leaving New York, I had lunch with a friend who said I would make a great therapist;  I've been giving it a lot of thought since waking.  Most importantly, I'm wondering what the chances are that my clients would metamorphose into animals in the course of a session and whether it does only take twenty minutes to transition back.