The Rosie Show premiered on OWN last night, and her first guest was Russell Brand. I thought the show had its funny moments, like her opening monologue: “People in Chicago are a lot nicer than people in New York… I’ve been here three months and nobody has given me the middle finger yet. Six months ago I was in Macy’s and a guy came over to me and said, ‘Excuse me, I don’t want to insult you, but you look like Rosie O’Donnell.’”
The reviews were mixed, with Variety calling the debut episode “curiously flat and understated.” The Los Angeles Times reviewed it as a “not-bad, pretty good, kinda funny, sort of smart debut,” while the Chicago Sun-Times noted that Rosie was back to her “jovial Queen of Nice, not the angry O’Donnell whose claws used to come out with Elisabeth Hasselbeck.”
I loved Rosie’s claws and hope she keeps them sharp. I thought that on The View she was a brave, outspoken and necessary voice. She wasn’t as nice, but she was right. With the game-show segment and humour on her new show, it did seem that Rosie was trying to bring it back to her happy place.
Of course, at the end of the show Oprah made a little cameo because, you know, she has to be on every single program aired on OWN or the network will have even lower viewership than Discovery Health. Oh, wait…
All in all, it’s good to have you back, Ro!
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