Toby Redeems Himself with Special Guest Mz. Stumpy

Toby Redeems Himself with Special Guest Mz. Stumpy by Roxanne McDonald

The bad boy of the baddest TV around, Toby finds a guest who brings back the Springer vibe.

Toby is demoted. He has disappointed his fellow producers and his supervisor, Executive Producer Richard, one too many times. So rather than have him removed from The Jerry Springer Show staff completely, the powers that be decide he should go down a few rungs on the ladder—to the position of AP, assistant/associate producer, to Nicole.

Toby pitches furries—people who dress in animal clothing and howl at the moon and shit. He also comes up with this guest who called, or who calls herself Mz. Stumpy—an amputee with no arms and only one leg who is abused by her caretaker.

Nicole tells Toby she needs him to book stories that an AP would book. We might not know what this means, but apparently Toby does, and takes off his shirt to reveal a rubbery bare chest.

Okayyy.
Toby pitches to Richard, then Nicole and I think Rachelle are talking in the hallway: Toby is crazy. Toby stays up all night. Toby smells.

Rachelle talks to Richard afterward, on something to do with canceling a shoot or show, and the next thing we know, Toby is calling Nicole and SCAREAMMMMING about how dare she go behind his back, send Rachelle to do the talking rather than go or call herself.

They all meet with Richard, who looks wiped out. He tells Toby he is very angry. (Good thing about this work on this show is that there is no problem with people expressing themselves.) Richard says he put Toby with Nicole for he thought Nicole could help Toby.

Richard tells Toby he needs to give Nicole an apology…RIGHT. NOW. Toby rolls his eyes and stays stubbornly silent. Therefore, Richard suggests, ahem, that Toby take a walk to let Richard cool down. “You gonna test me? No? Then get the f—k outta here.”

Toby tells us, “I am always going to be in trouble.”
Richard tells us, “I’ll always be mad at Toby.” “When the time comes,” he adds, “to put a bullet into him, that will be it.”

Violent metaphors much?

Toby apologizes.

In the same extended metaphor kind of talk, Toby tells us he had no choice: he could “lay there in the gutter bleeding or get up and do it all over again…come back swinging.”

Toby offers what Nicole says is the ugliest, gaudiest bouquet of flowers to apologize completely. He promises to never yell at her like that again. They giggle at each other nervously.

Nicole tells us that he is trying to help, trying to contribute to the show, and Rachelle says he’s making her feel confident for the first time since he’s been back.

Enter his proof of having changed: Mz. Stumpy. Though Toby insists this is “not a freak show. These are real human beings….”

Nicole adds that she was so great—not like a sad victim.

Chad, the caretaker, is made out to be but is also truly “evil”. He puts food in front of Cynthia and walks away. He tells the producers she can [makes the motion] face-down bob at the food to eat. “She’s alive, aint she?” he growls.

“I’m doing something right.” Yeah, screw quality of life and all that superfluous crap, Chad.
He practices with Toby and the others, reciting his theme of how “You’re a terrible human being…, you’re a genetic disaster, [and] you want me to brush your nasty teeth? Wipe your nasty ass?”

Nicole reminds him to be just as mean to the audience as he is to Cynthia. And though he is worried he is gonna get beat up, he does it.

“You could feel this surge…,” says Richard proudly, of “humanity [getting up], so angry they were.”

Nicole is also proud, exclaiming how Toby has been on his best behavior, and the camera cuts to Toby telling hair and makeup to make Cynthia’s hair really Goldilocks-like, with big loopy [innocent] curls and all.

The audience feels for her, absolutely, they say, and as they watch from backstage, Nicole gushes how the crowd was ready for blood…really wanting a piece of Chad. Toby agrees, crowing how they have never had a crowd so violently against a guest. [Well, I can think of a few times when this would be untrue—with the KKK kiddies telling Jerry he was nothing but a lousy Jew, for one—but let Toby have his moment.]

Toby has his moment. He is laughing and saying how this is the greatest feeling in the world: when there’s an out-of-control feeling to the show.

Richard is a proud papa, too. It was a great show, he says, and “at that point, I had Toby right where I wanted him to be.”

Nicole agrees, though is a bit more baffled or bummed? that somehow Toby “does come out okay somehow, and I don’t know how that keeps happening.”

He brings on people who are missing body parts, who cannot eat for themselves and have to push their faces into the spaghetti and have to roll around the floor to tip up a can of soda to drink. That’s what Toby does, Nic…, to keep his chin up and his job in tact.

Wow.

I wonder what those producers get paid. What’s the going rate for exploitation?

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