Ratings has it matching ABC's recently canceled "Pushing Daisies" as the night's lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.
LA Times asks "Rosie O'Donnell's 'Rosie Live': What was she thinking?'"
The show was so bad that the appearance of Liza Minnelli, Harry Connick Jr., Alec Baldwin, Conan O’Brien, Jane Krakowski, Clay Aiken, Rachel Ray, Kathy Griffin and Gloria Estefan making, couldn't even make it better.
One Rosie fan, the writer of the LA Times' piece, had a funny quote about it when they said "To be fair, not everything on the show fell as flat as a turkey at a Sarah Palin picnic, or whatever the line was—yes, there was a Sarah Palin joke but Rosie was in a policeman’s costume at this point and I had my fingers in my ears."
“Rosie Live” may enter the realm of unsolved mysteries, along with the fate of Amelia Earhart and the design team of the pyramids. O’Donnell was clearly attempting to recapture the uplifting unapologetic wonder of the big Broadway musical and the television variety show. But having a bunch of talented guests does not a terrific show make—you have to actually give them something interesting to do. Otherwise you're left with, well, a rubber turkey.
TV Guides' piece on the Rosie Live show calls it a "ghastly ego trip", which from all accounts, sounds about right.
If the TV variety format weren't already dead, the ghastly ego trip of NBC's Thanksgiving-eve turkey Rosie Live would surely have killed it. Like the pie Alec Baldwin predictably pushed into Conan O'Brien's face that fell to the floor without sticking, the entire hour landed with a sickening, sad, ill-conceived thud. It felt like an off night at America's Got Talent, bookended by wobbly appearances from Liza Minnelli and Gloria Estefan, each forced to perform with the caterwauling host, Rosie O'Donnell.
The low point? There were so many. I ran to the kitchen to see how our sweet-potato casserole was progressing so I could escape Jane Krakowski's career-low stripper-ish ode to product placement, warbling new lyrics to Gypsy's "You Gotta Get a Gimmick" that listed all the giveaways the live audience would get, everything from a Vudu player to White Castle hamburgers and Crest Whitestrips (probably not a bad idea after gorging on those stomach bombs). But even that was a treat compared to Clay Aiken, arriving in his Spamalot costume, engaging in who-loves-who-more banter with Rosie, coyly dancing around the gay issue. "We're both Gayyy-briel Byrne fans," Rosie sorta joked.
Kathy Griffin bombed in a Nancy Grace-less impersonation. Rosie's opening monologue, larded with fat and boob jokes, stank of mothballs. Dancing boys wore food costumes and children were trotted out every so often in an attempt to make things appear wholesome. Harry Connick Jr., pitching his new Christmas CD in a Santa hat, didn't even get to complete a full number without Rosie intruding. And there were a handful of so-so novelty and musical acts, a la Ed Sullivan. But this wasn't a really big show. It was a really big bomb, an embarrassment and a pathetic eulogy for a form of TV that, like Rosie-the-eternal-fan, I grew up loving and still miss.
New York Times refers to it as "Hokey" and those are some of the better reviews.
More at The Live Feed.
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