If anybody missed this mess, consider it the best Thanksgiving gift you could have given yourself.
Mind you, I sort of like Rosie, but…
Rosie Live! (At Radio City Music Hall in NYC)
It was not funny.
The “skits” and “bits” were horrible.
The music was lame, at best.
The only people who would possibly have liked this show was the audience, who seemed to have been gifted quite nicely with product.
I think a variety show, ala Carol Burnett, might be sort of cool to see on television again, but Rosie just ruined any chance of any network daring to try it again.
It was funny back then. It sucks now because it’s outdated, and like like the booze swilling boorish bigoted relative who is always right and can’t shut up at the holiday gathering, we know her for what she is. Rosie O’Donnel can do only one thing to make most people happy and that is to go into seclusion.
OK, so the Carol Burnett show was fine, back in its day. I saw an episode of the Sid Caesar show once, and it was actually good. I liked the old Donny and Marie show, but it was dubbed into Spanish when I saw it, and I was a little kid who didn’t know any better. Have there been any variety shows from the 70’s onward that were any good?
Let’s not knock the variety show, folks. At the risk of being ridiculed, I thought that Donny and Marie was quite entertaining, despite the frequently cornball humor. Some episodes of Tony Orlando and Dawn were also quite brilliant. Even The Wayne Brady Show, a more recent production, did a pretty good job of blending music and comedy.
Having said that, this format has much more limited appeal nowadays, and few people can carry it well.
O’Donnel has gone from a reasonably amusing comedian to a boorish, braying jackass whose continued presence in ANY medium is a complete mystery to me. She’s sort of a white Whoopi Goldberg, only more annoying.
Cedric the Entertainer had a short-lived variety show a few years ago. I thought it was awesome. He played this lunch-lady in a cafeteria that just killed me. I was kind of surprised when I couldn’t find it anymore, I thought it had great potential.
That being said, Thank God for Youtube so I can watch Carol Burnett…Tim Conway ad-libbing almost makes me wet myself. I love it when the actors are trying not to crack up!
Oh, yeah, I forgot about Sabado Gigante. My folks can always be found in front of the TV on Saturday night, enjoying Don Francisco and his cast of models. The jokes are mostly sex jokes and double entendres. I’ve noticed over the past few years they’ve added a weekly “who’s my baby daddy” segment and a “Forgive and forget” segment (someone confesses a past misdeed and then opens a door to see whether or not the victim is there to forgive him or her.)
Ed sullivan was able to do a very successful variety show by picking the right talent and then just introducing them. In other words, staying out of the way. If only Rosie O’Donnell could do likewise.
Ellen Degeneres will also be doing a variety special. I suspect it will be more successful.
We caught part of it - Rosie doing a number with Liza Minnelli. Holy crap, that was bad. Liza may indeed be some kind of icon, but what we saw was just awful, awful, awful. Dear God, make it stop awful.
I saw a small piece of it, just making sure that Life wasn’t coming on. Rosie was singing with Gloria Estefan? Seemed less than inspired, but I didn’t really care enough to pay much attention.
Yeah, that it was bad is no great surprise. Does anyone in Hollywood know how to do variety anymore? Is Rosie O’D really a good person to try to do it?
It was spectacularly bad. I was hoping for an Ed Sullivan type show, too. Her jokes were lame, and she can’t sing! We don’t want to be entertained by her, we want to see the supposed talent that is showcased. I didn’t see much of that, either.
I remember watching Sonny & Cher’s show every week, but I don’t remember if it was good. This was in pre-cable days, so there were just four channels to choose from.
Does Hee-Haw count as a variety show? That was some good corny fun. Sa-LUTE!
