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Joy Behar invites her guests to talk about themselves and topics of the day. (Mark Hill/Hln) |
CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
Will the real Joy Behar please stand up?
Of all of the people who could host a nightly talk show, Joy Behar is a logical choice. As a panelist on ABC’s daytime gabfest “The View,’’ she’s an effective and likable liberal flame-thrower, able to mix a sense of righteous indignation with a comedian’s sense of timing. In her off-the-airwaves stand-up routine, she’s more political by far: profane, pointed, sometimes a little bit wicked.
But in her new show on HLN - that’s the hip way of saying Headline News - Behar so far is strangely and disappointingly subdued.
“The Joy Behar Show,’’ which airs weeknights at 9, debuted last week amid a shower of good will from Behar’s celebrity friends; Meredith Vieira, Matt Lauer, “Curb Your Enthusiasm’’ star Susie Essman and others appeared in a string of clips to wish her luck. It was a showbizzy move, and in this format, there’s something a little more showbiz about Behar, too, glowing beneath the lights and admitting to using Botox. She looks terrific, but she’s lost a bit of her everywoman edge. More importantly, she seems to have lost her ability to rant.
The format of her show is a bit like a “Hot Topics’’ panel on “The View,’’ with Behar playing moderator. Sitting at a desk, she invites a revolving door of mostly celebrity guests to talk - sometimes about themselves, sometimes about the topics of the day. Sarah Palin’s book got a fair amount of attention last week, as did Roman Polanski and Democratic US Representative Alan Grayson, who said on the floor of Congress that Republicans want the sick to “die quickly.’’
But instead of cheering Grayson on with blistering, Olbermann-style partisanship - or scolding her guests with well-placed barbs, as she sometimes does with Elisabeth Hasselbeck on “The View’’ - this evening model of Behar stays largely on the sidelines. Last week’s segment with Ann Coulter, potentially volcanic, turned out to be polite, a mutual declaration of love. Behar doesn’t hide her opinions or her pro-Obama stance, but she reins in the rhetoric, trying to solicit the best lines from her guests.
That’s an especially treacherous thing to do with random celebrities, not all of whom are qualified to talk about current affairs; last week, Behar had to school Bette Midler on the details of the First Amendment. More to the point, though, it’s not enlightening. To the extent that I want to hear Midler talk about anything, I want to hear her talk about Bette Midler, not the state of the American education system.
And if I’m watching Behar interview comedians, I want her to be funny. An interview with the acerbic Kathy Griffin should have been a riot, but Behar seemed almost schoolmarmish, steering Griffin quickly away from criticizing “The View’’ doyenne Barbara Walters, and scolding Griffin for making off-color jokes about Jesus at the Emmys: “Maybe some people don’t have the sense of humor that you have. So you have to watch that.’’
At other times, Behar assumes the defer-to-your-guests philosophy of CNN’s Larry King, for whom she sometimes subs as host. She wasn’t especially easy on Victoria Gotti, but she was awfully polite in the face of declarations like, “I’m not saying [joining the mob] was the right choice. I’m saying it was his choice.’’
The daytime Behar would have gotten in a good zinger. The stand-up Behar would have broken into a blistering song about gunshots. Here’s hoping that, in this new evening incarnation, Behar will soon relax enough to say exactly what she feels.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
