A Washington Post critic obliterated NBC’s latest “experiment”, Megyn Kelly’s new morning show. He called Kelly a “Bride of Frankenstein” which he says is “meant to be the multimillion dollar transmogrification from steely Fox News host to a mushy, hugs-for-everybody” host.” “It’s far from successful,” Hank Stuever wrote.
The network, he says, assembled a “Bride of Frankenstein using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa, and whatever else they could find.”
She “moved stiffly and waved her arms around in broad gestures in a bizarre attempt to generate excitement from an audience that was already standing and cheering.”
It devolved into a hall of mirrors “inviting the audience to admire Kelly as much as Kelly admires Kelly,” he explained.
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He mocked her attempts to warm up to people by recounting her youthful experiences and her father’s early death. Her husband came up to the stage at one point to bring her roses and the critic wrote, “They hugged each other woodenly, as if they’d just met.”
Several guests, actors on ‘Will & Grace’, who are known for their anti-Trump shows and personal feelings, heard her say she didn’t want to talk politics so the interview flopped in the critics’ eyes.
Her questions were “dopey”, he wrote, and one in particular infuriated guest and anti-Trumper Debra Messing. Kelly joked with a guest who was a “superfan” of the original ‘Will & Grace’, asking him if he “became a lawyer and became gay” from watching the show.
She was kidding but the NBC crowd hated it because they think everyone from Fox hates everyone, especially gays. They weren’t sure if she was joking. Debra Messing was beside herself and wouldn’t have gone on the show if she knew Kelly was hosting, she said afterwards.
At one point, the critic described the pre-dawn filming with the “delightful” Kathie Lee Gifford and suggested Kelly is “a naive and extra-squeaky mouse”. Everyone in the pre-dawn filming were invited to Kelly’s stage “to drink mimosas and bask in the NBC-ness of it all.”
Steuver said the hour, which is really 35 minutes with 25 minutes of commercials, “crawled” by.
The “warning” that she will be back on Tuesday didn’t light him up. The audience was given “fair warning”, he said when she concluded: “My mom has something she wants to share with you.” Rest assured, Stuever wrote, “‘something’ has to do with the wonderful, hopeful, shallow world of being Megyn Kelly.”
There were nearly 1700 comments on WaPo last I looked and they were all negative with the exception of two who said to give her a chance. There were a lot of hate Fox comments and accusations against Kelly as an alleged racist. They referred to an exchange she had with a nutty guest one time who insisted Jesus was black.. The commenters think she said black children can’t envision a black Jesus.
Some claimed she’s not pretty any longer and too middle-aged.
Kelly had 2.932 million viewers for her first show and as far as ratings, she got a so-so .5 rating. She was down in the 25-54 demographic by 11 percent and down 15 percent among women in that demographic comparing her to the same time slot in September 2016.
Other critics weren’t thrilled either.
CNN’s Brian Lowry allowed that it’s too soon to tell but, “After tepid marks for her prime time newsmagazine and now her addition to ‘Today,’ it’s worth considering that NBC News brass leapt at the opportunity to snag a high-profile news star without having fully thought through how best to deploy her.”
Jezebel mocked the show, saying Kelly looked like “a HomeGoods catalog brought to life” and Newsweek was critical, as well.
Twitter hated her and the show too.
NBC gave her an $18 million contract so if she bombs, it’s an expensive “experiment”.
If the commenters on the WaPo article are any reflection of the NBC audience she’s trying to capture, it’s not going to get any better reception – ever. They hate Fox and only see her as a conservative Fox host who is mean-spirited, anti-LGBT and bigoted. While the last two are definitely not true, perception is everything. We’re not sure she isn’t mean-spirited at times.
I watched her show Wednesday so you don’t have to. She began by answering a question about the NFL and gave an acceptable NBC answer: “Those players have every right to take a knee.”
She interviewed traitor Jane Fonda and her comrade Robert Redford as they discussed their new Netflix movie, ‘Our Souls at Night’, a movie which makes root canal sound inviting.
The audience loved these two leftists and Kelly pandered as much as she could. Fonda was somewhat uncomfortable and diverted from the question of plastic surgery and how good she [Fonda] looks.
Towards the end of the show, Kelly conducted a phone interview with one of the Menendez brothers, Lyle. They murdered their parents twenty years ago, claiming their father abused them and their mother knew. The prosecution said they did it our of greed. Both murderers are married, Eric for the second time, though there are no conjugal visits. They are not expected to ever be released from prison.
As far as I could see, she was fine for a daytime host. Kelly seemed comfortable, not wooden or overly emotive. She is a little phony but so is everyone else hosting these shows as are many of the narcissist actors they interview. In fact, she was more real than the Hood & Scott duo that followed her. The show was as boring as any other daytime show, but no more no less than any of the silly morning shows.
At least Fox & Friends has news.
I’m no fan of Megyn Kelly – at all – but these reviews are just anti-Fox tirades. At least the LATimes said it was only the first show and lots of stars didn’t do well the first day. However, the NBC might have made up their minds and they are rigid statists.
