Montel Williams is quitting his talk show.

Montel has announced that The Montel Williams Show will come to an end this season, leaving the world's troubled in the capable hands of Dr Phil. Well, capable insomuch that's he's basically just a big shouting bear with alopecia. But you get the idea.

You're only human, so chances are that you define good television by the frequency that it reunites real-life victims of sexual assaults with their attackers, or by how many dangerously anorexic girls it can parade in front of you all sad faced. And if that's the case, you'd better suck up as much of Montel as you can, because he's going away soon, and he won't be coming back.

After 17 years spent listening to the problems of people who think they'll get better help because they're on TV – and 17 years of responding with the same furrowed-brow 'your pain is my pain too' facial expression – Montel Williams has decided to hang up his, um, sofa? His funny little beard? Well, look, Montel is hanging up whatever the thing is that defines his show most. We think it's his sad eyes. Montel's hanging up his sad eyes. Reuters reports:

"The Montel Williams Show" will end its run at the end of this season after 17 years on the air. CBS Television Distribution, the syndicated show's producer and distributor, is offering the compilation series "Best of Montel" for fall, which includes 52 weeks of highlight episodes from the show. "We have been honored to have Montel as a part of our family for the past 17 years, and we're very excited that Montel will live on through these 'best of' episodes," said John Nogawski, president and COO of CBS TV Distribution.

It seems strange that Montel should want to quit his TV show now, when the writers' strike means that it needs all the exploitative, cheaply-made formulaic real-life cack it can get. Far from leaving, Montel should be bumped up to prime time, where all of his guests can expose their frailties and failings to the wider world. At least until Two And A Half Men comes back on TV. Oh Charlie Sheen, will you ever grow up? 

But why now? Why has Montel decided to quit his show now? After all, 17 doesn't seem like a particularly significant number of seasons to go out after. Perhaps Montel Williams is leaving his show to pursue his other interests, like threatening to blow up teenage girls. Or perhaps Montel Williams is no longer able to balance the stress of hosting his own TV show with his ongoing battle with Multiple Sclerosis. Or maybe Montel Williams just got sick of seeing a procession of unhappy attention seekers babble on about themselves relentlessly day in day out for 17 soul-sapping years.

Who can really say which one of these is true (coughthelastonecough). 

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It's A Wrap For Montel - Reuters 

That's where Montel Williams steps in, though. Although Montel Williams has plenty of his own niches already – like being the only highly-decorated military talk show host, and the only occasionally-suicidal multiple sclerosis-suffering talk show host – he's now also the only talk show host who, when asked interview questions he doesn't like by teenage newspaper interns, screams "I'm a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up!" at them, before realising he's made a bit of a fool out of himself and apologising, which he's just done. But at least it's a step up from Montel Williams' other niche – being the talk show host who looks most like Ming The Merciless.

2007 hasn't exactly been a golden year for the daytime television talk show. In Britain a judge likened The Jeremy Kyle Show to 'human bear baiting', while elsewhere Oprah Winfrey managed to successfully open a child abuse factory masquerading as a school for clever girls. And, whisper it, there's a chance that Jerry Springer might be the teensiest bit staged.

But Montel Williams has managed to keep his head above all the dirt by continuing to go about his business as usual; rescuing teen prostitutes, offering reasoned discussion about the emotional impact of being transgendered, violently threatening to blow up teenage newspaper interns just for asking him questions he didn't like the sound of, that sort of thing.

The last one of these happened in Savannah on Friday, when Montel Williams was promoting free prescriptions for the poor. However, Montel terminated an interview with Courtney Scott, a high school intern at the Savannah Morning News, after she innocently asked him if restricted profits would stop pharmaceutical companies from investing so heavily in research and development costs. At the time, Montel responded to question with this:

“I'm here as a patient advocate talking about the fact that medications available today are saving people's lives, that's what's saving mine and after that, this interview is done."

And then, later on, Montel Williams and Courtney Scott managed to bump into each other again at a hotel. Although Scott was there on an unrelated assignment, Montel thought she was trailing him, and got a little bit angry with her, her crew and pretty much the entire universe in general. According to a web content producer for the newspaper who was accompanying Courtney:

“As we were preparing to film, Montel walked up with his bodyguard and got in Courtney Scott's face pointing his finger telling her ‘Don't look at me like that. Do you know who I am? I'm a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up’. At this time he was randomly pointing at all of us.”

Such was the ferocity of Montel Williams' outburst that Courtney Scott later filed a police complaint about it. But at least Montel Williams now admits that he did wrong – not just for threatening to explode a teenage girl but also for making the factually-incorrect mistake of calling himself a big star, when really it's only the elderly and unemployed who know who is is with any degree of certainty. Montel has now put out a statement apologising for the incident:

“I mistakenly thought the reporter and photographer in question were at the hotel to confront me about some earlier comments. I was wrong, and I apologise for my overreaction.”

Not only that, but Montel has also invited Courtney Scott and her family onto his show to apologise to her publicly, as part of a special entitled I've Learned That Screaming Angry Terrorist-Style Threats About Blowing Up Teenage Girls Is Wrong. And, if the negative publicity persists after that, Montel Williams will check into a rehab facility for men who want to explode young girls and then apologise directly to Al Sharpton, just because he figured that's what everyone else does in this sort of situation.

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Montel Threatens To 'Blow Up' Teen Reporter – MSNBC