Dr. Joyce Brothers, TV's Most Prolific Psychologist
Television has featured many famous mental health professionals — Bob Newhart's Robert Hartley, the Crane brothers, Frasier and Niles and The Soprano's Dr. Jennifer Melfi among them — but one of our favorites was an actual psychologist: Dr. Joyce Brothers, who passed away Monday at the age of 85. Brothers owed her TV career to a successful appearance on the game show The $64,000 Question, where she won the top prize by answering questions about boxing. She went on to make appearances on dozens of TV shows, including Happy Days, The Simpsons, Felicity, The Larry Sanders Show, Baywatch, Married with Children, Ellery Queen, CHiPS, Charlie's Angels, Melrose Place, Dream On, Frasier, The Hollywood Squares, Moonlighting, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson — and the list goes on. While we like this clip of her appearance on Taxi, and this clip of a 2010 visit to Late Night with Conan O'Brien, we decided to highlight Brothers' appearance on an episode of the quirky satire, America 2Night (which began life in 1977 as Fernwood 2-Night, a Norman Lear-created summer replacement for Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman starring Martin Mull and Fred Willard).