CHICAGO — Rosie O’Donnell may not end up saving the
Oprah Winfrey Network, a tall order even for, say, Oprah Winfrey. And
that fancy house O’Donnell bought in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood
may be back on the market soon enough.
But if
“The Rosie Show,” her new, nightly talk show taping in Winfrey’s former
Chicago studio, does not find ratings success, it won’t be because
O’Donnell allowed anybody to put Baby in a corner.
Unbowed
by her flameout on “The View,” her flailing NBC variety show or the
fizzling of her mainstream popularity following the rapid rise of her
late-1990s daytime talk show, O’Donnell is again serving TV audiences
concentrated doses of Rosie, this time hosting the new-season flagship
on Winfrey’s troubled, first-year cable venture.
And
it is, in the vigorously market-researched realm of the American talk
show, a breath of funky, refreshing air (at 7 EDT weeknights).
With
her mixture of self-deprecating wit, take-me-as-I-am bravado, rabid
pop-culture fandom and unapologetic liberal politics, O’Donnell is
making a talk show that is entirely her, both big-time and willing to
show its unfinished seams, like the night she came out in Prada heels
only to talk about how, really, “Mommy wears Crocs.”
She
is, in the process, reminding us why people once thought she might be
compelling enough to have, like Oprah, a magazine named after her.
In the first two-plus weeks of the show, we have learned:
—Rosie is in menopause and has slept with bags of frozen peas packed around her body to counteract the hot flashes.
—Rosie
didn’t think she was talking about being a lesbian as much as somebody
on Twitter told her she was, but then she reviewed the videotape (and
played proof that her Twitter correspondent was right for the audience).
—Rosie
was moved to tears by (and had on the show) an Iraq War veteran seen on
YouTube challenging the “honor” of New York cops who would beat up
Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
But she is also
moved by her kids — Rosie’s teenage son recently scored five touchdowns
in a flag football game, don’t you know — and is actually interested in
yours, whether you are a celebrity guest or one of the audience members
she so regularly and sincerely involves in the proceedings.
Her
“BFF” is Gloria Estefan, but she also loves Valerie Harper and Fran
Drescher and Russell Brand and Wanda Sykes and Roseanne Barr, all early
guests on this pointedly female-targeted program. She was so
disappointed at not landing the “Price Is Right” hosting gig that she’s
doing her own little game show to close every “Rosie” episode.
And
in addition to replaying some of the mistakes she has made, she has
read reviews of her show aloud on the air, even performing a musical
tribute to Time TV critic James Poniewozik, substituting his last name
for the title word in Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Not
all of this is great TV. Like Garrison Keillor on public radio’s “A
Prairie Home Companion,” O’Donnell exercises the host’s prerogative to
sing more often than she ought to, and coaxing something besides great
music out of bandleader Katreese Barnes, ex- “Saturday Night Live”
musical director, has been a challenge.
The game
shows have been, mostly, flat, with O’Donnell spoiling the contests by
tipping her frighteningly perky contestants to answers and, lately, by
having celebrity guests play. Do Kelly and Sharon Osbourne really need
to defeat regular folk and win cookware?
O’Donnell’s
opening segment has been all over the place, from a stand-up comedy
monologue against a closed-curtain, nightclub-style backdrop to a Skype
interview with liberal author Naomi Wolf about Wolf’s arrest in
conjunction with Occupy Wall Street.
But almost all of it has been, at base, interesting TV, and that is a hard enough thing to find.
For
all her obvious doting on her kids, O’Donnell retains the comedian’s
knowledge that she has to actually say something with punch to hold her
crowd. Of the 8-year-old daughter she showed dancing in a long video,
O’Donnell said, “She took two hip-hop classes, and now I’m gonna have to
try to keep her off the pole.” Of her kids attending one of the Chicago
area’s Waldorf schools, she said, “I don’t know how well they’re going
to do in life, but they can knit and do yoga.”
She
actually coaxed hints of a thoughtful conversation from Brand, who is
often so “on” that it’s off-putting. On celebrity, he said, “People need
the spectacle of fame to keep us trapped in a certain mindset so we
don’t think, ‘Hold on a minute, society’s not fair.’”
It
may not be C-SPAN, but “The Rosie Show” is not afraid of entertaining
an idea or two. Give the show credit, too, for bringing on people
because they might be interesting, not just because they have a book,
movie or TV show to sell.
And though the Wolf
interview set a record for discussion of the vagaries of parade-permit
law on a primarily pop TV show, who else is interviewing Naomi Wolf? And
who else — after that conversation, and the host reminding us that
“it’s a participation sport, democracy” — would blithely transition to:
“When we get back, Nancy Grace’ll be here from ‘Dancing With the Stars’!
Don’t go away.”
In the rest of the nation, this
show may be viewed as the comeback attempt from the 49-year-old
O’Donnell, that loud-mouthed New Yorker renowned for coming out and for
feuding with Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Donald Trump. (One of the
behind-the-scenes shows, which air Friday nights, sees Trump Tower
Chicago pointed out to O’Donnell. “Yech,” she says.)
But
here in Chicago, this program is as much “The Oprah Winfrey Show”
replacement, the thing that is keeping jobs, major show business and
celebrity visitation alive on the Near West Side.
And
it is, in the early going, much more Chicago-centered than Winfrey’s
show, which, by the end, had mostly turned here into an Anyplace, USA.
“Rosie” viewers have seen O’Donnell go on about her thoughtful
neighbors, our food and friendliness, the way we all talk a little like
Carol Channing, with our facial muscles crazily involved. (This is
acceptable, as long as she doesn’t say we sing like Carol Channing.)
The
ratings have not been great. A big, initial tune-in quickly returned to
earth, but O’Donnell and Winfrey have both said they will be patient,
give audiences a chance to find not only “Rosie” but to solve the
greater problem OWN has had: having viewers discover the
ratings-challenged channel itself.
Viewers, too,
should be patient. The television listings are full of hosts who are
smooth and lean, and soon enough reveal themselves to have nothing to
say. They wear Prada and like it, or at least pretend to. Rosie,
yearning to get out of the jewelry they put her in and into a pair of
Crocs, offers a point of view and, like her namesake flower, a thorn or
two.
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©2011 the Chicago Tribune
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