I have been reluctant to admit I watch The Oprah Winfrey Show and her OWN channel, so that I could maintain the reclusive coolness factor I never had.
Like an addict at her bottom, I must fully surrender my remote and accept Oprah's good programming as my higher power. Yes, Oprah has won me over. However, it has nothing to do with her generosity, loving intentions, or inspirational spirit. No, I enjoy watching because she is both deeply removed from reality and deeply connected to it at the same time.
For years, I have been mocking channels like Lifetime: Television for Women. Portraying women as damsels in distress when they are battered and betrayed by their own terrible decisions is not exactly what I call empowering. You can bet that next week when, I imagine, Meredith Baxter-minus-the-Birney will try to avenge her daughter's math score in "Calculated Slumber", I will not be watching. Yet, last month, when MB-minus-the-B went on The Oprah Winfrey Show to cry about her life, I was glued to the television.
Worth billions, she is both surprisingly normal and entertainingly bizarre.
She almost crumbles when producers initially tell her they cannot get the iPad for her "Favorite Things" audience. When the iPad is featured on the show, she barks, claps, and circles it as it hangs suspended from the rafters. Watch it
Besides the mania created by gift-giving, Oprah is usually self-aware in front of her audiences, but self-obsessed behind the scenes. Narrating OWN's Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes, she speaks of spiritual enlightenment and how she doesn’t allow fame to destroy her sense of self. Three seconds later, she expresses genuine confusion and insult that she was never asked to be a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Keep in mind the distinction here: she is not saying she wants to be a guest; she focuses on why she has never been asked to be a guest. She obsesses the entire show and repeatedly confronts Stewart about it. It's fantastic.
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On Season 25
Wake up with Oprah in her high-rise Chicago apartment.
I like to imagine her sitting under the tree in her living room -- for shade I presume -- thinking about all of Maya Angelou’s boring wisdom.
It annoys me that I know Angelou said “when you know better, you do better” in much the same way I’m annoyed that I know who Leighton Meester is.
Watch while she packs her lunch and plays scrabble on the treadmill, all without makeup and mostly in pajamas.
Follow her as she sneaks into a show meeting looped on painkillers (taken for a Colonoscopy) and sipping a smoothie. Enjoy the real Oprah when she high-fives her staff over how great narcotics make you feel.
Focus on the reactions of her over-worked, sleep-deprived producers who neglect their families and comfort their stresses with iced coffees and fatty foods (my kind of people) as they listen to her complain about how her Los Angeles hotel room television service did not provide OWN. (Her solution: buy a home in L.A.)
Listen to her express behind-the-scenes disgust over quasi-guest, Joe Jackson. And watch her boldly confront him on abuse allegations.
Fact is, she really is as true to herself as she knows how to be. If you can sit through a short commercial, watch her keep herself in check as she discusses gay-talk etiquette.
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