Women on the Verge

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki.

This summer’s hottest TV show features connivers and megalomaniacs, fakery and freak-outs. It’s not Rockstar: Supernova or Project Runway or even Big Brother. It’s the daytime estrogen fest The View. Nowhere else has the sleazy, behind-the-scenes deal-making of the television industry been so blatantly revealed. No other show is so jaw-droppingly strange. Remember the long-standing feud between Jay Leno and David Letterman? Well, recent on-air hostilities at The View make that seem like a tussle between two Cottonelle kittens. But what’s most remarkable is that all this bitch-tastic lunacy, which might have sunk any other program, has made The View a must-see show for the first time in its nine-year run.

When the show premiered in 1997, it had a fresh, if a little gooey, premise: a self-consciously diverse, all-female kaffeeklatsch featuring discussions of the daily news and interviews with celebrities. It was the brainchild of Barbara Walters, the pioneering newswoman famous for snagging interviews with Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro and Monica Lewinsky. But Walters, it seems, had another kind of career dream. As she intoned over The View’s opening credits, she’d “always wanted to do a show” that featured women of different ages and backgrounds. There was “a working mom” (60 Minutes contributor Meredith Vieira); “a professional in her 30s” (lawyer and TV commentator Star Jones); “a woman who’s done almost everything and will say almost anything” (comedienne Joy Behar); and “a young woman just starting out” (the token twentysomething slot was originally filled by Debbie Matenopoulos, and is now occupied by Elizabeth Hasselbeck). Or, as Saturday Night Live was quick to parody: “a working mom, a sassy black woman like I’ve seen on TV and a total idiot.”

At its best, the show had a catty, caffeinated charm, with the hosts sniping and rolling their eyes at each other, while over and over again proclaiming their sisterly allegiance. It was like eavesdropping on a slumber party attended by all the girls you hated in high school. Occasionally, executive producer and part-time host Walters would show up, shot through a lens with more Vaseline on it than Diane Sawyer’s, playing a killjoy like Facts of Life’s Mrs. Garrett to an unruly Jo, Tootie, Natalie and Blair.

But soon, the show’s junk-food appeal became more guilty than pleasure. The Hot Topic segment, which had once been full of wisecracks and even, sometimes, insight, had ground into a stonewall of predictable points of view: Vieira’s lite-liberalism versus Behar’s contrarian kvetchiness squaring off against Jones’s ka-ching! consumerism. Even the addition of Hasselbeck — the Republican and former Survivor contestant brought in to shake up the conversation — backfired. Outmatched by her disdainful colleagues, Hasselbeck came across like a declawed Ann Coulter – self-righteous but without the deranged fury. Even now, Behar can barely stand to look in her direction.

Meanwhile, the formerly full-figured Jones all but disappeared in the last year following an aggressive diet plan leading up to her marriage to banker Al Reynolds. While never a warm or particularly likeable host, Jones was, at the very least, a fierce one — a shamelessly self-adoring former prosecutor who sprinkled her statements with phrases like “as a lawyer” and “allegedly.” But in the past year, she’d sunk all her sparkiness into a bridezilla frenzy, name-dropping products in exchange for wedding-day freebies.

The show’s interview format has never worked. Outnumbered at least four to one, celebrities cower on the couch surrounded by hosts who talk over each other and all but ignore the guest except to fawn (“You are a member of our family!” was a frequent Jones threat — er, compliment) or lob the occasional Nerf-ball question their way. (Hasselbeck once asked Robert Downey Jr. if he chose his own wedding outfit, or if his intended did it for him.) But on June 16 of this year, The View became downright surly. Comedienne Sandra Bernhard, always a difficult talk-show guest, infuriated Jones when she criticized Mariah Carey for exploiting her ethnic background — she claimed that Carey only identified as black when it helped her career. Bernhard then sent Hasselbeck into a tizzy when she smacked down First Lady Laura Bush (“I think she’s heavily medicated”). At one point, Behar, unable to get a word in edgewise, walked off the set.

The furious five: The View hosts (from left to right) Meredith Vieira, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Barbara Walters, Star Jones Reynolds and Joy Behar hosting the Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 2005. Photo Scott Gries/Getty Images.

But the show’s implosion began even earlier than that. Back in April, Vieira announced she would be leaving to take over Katie Couric’s position at the Today show. Soon, rumours were flying that Jones would depart as well. Rosie O’Donnell, who had criticized Jones for not being up front about the particulars of her dramatic weight loss, had been tapped as Vieira’s replacement — a choice that indicated the show wanted to up the tension even more.

It was soon revealed that Jones had in fact been fired months earlier; ABC said her obsession with her weight and her wedding had alienated viewers. Jones had apparently been given time to find a new gig before she announced her departure. But on June 27, she jumped the gun, pre-emptively telling viewers that she was leaving, while a gobsmacked Walters looked on. It was, by far, the year’s best what-the-heck? TV moment. (Behar didn’t even feign regret at the news. “Who am I going to fight with now?” she quipped.) By the end of the week, Jones had taken her beef with ABC to People magazine and Larry King, among others. Not to be outdissed, Walters shot back: “I love Star and I was trying to do everything I possibly could – up until [June 27], when I was betrayed – to protect her. I would have loved for Star to have left and not said, ‘I was fired,’ and not make it look like the program was somehow being cruel to her.”

And with that mrrrow heard round the world, it was bye-bye to The View’s cream cheese brand of feminism. Instead, the show had pulled back the curtain to reveal women at their stereotypical worst: backstabbing, two-faced and treacherous. A show intended to give a women’s take on the news of the day – albeit in a non-threatening, Kotex-ad kind of way – had degraded into a tacky, but admittedly entertaining, claws-out, hair-pulling brawl. When Behar refers to her co-hosts as “skinny bitches,” it’s clear she isn’t joking.

O’Donnell joins the group full-time in September. Until then, the and-then-there-were-three gang of Hasselbeck, Behar and Walters has been augmented by a shell-shocked rotation of guest hosts, including former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler and America’s Got Talent judge Brandy. All have had the panicky grin of someone who’s been dropped into the middle of a ladies-only production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Pity poor Lisa Loeb, guest host on Aug. 2, who appeared to be searching for an exit door when Hasselbeck launched into a weepy tirade against the emergency contraception pill Plan B. She was eventually silenced by a pinch-mouthed Walters, who told her to “calm down, dear.” (Behar looked on with an oh-no-she-di’int smirk.) At the close of the show, Hasselbeck sat cuddled up to Walters, crying – Babs can draw out tears like a cut onion. Walters gave Hasselbeck a patronizing pardon (“one of the things we love about you is your passion and the way you feel”), but warned her to rein it in.

It was a car-wreck moment: weird, inappropriate, embarrassing, exploitative and, yes, great TV. Just two days later, a newly emboldened Hasselbeck was at it again. This time she shared a story about encountering a careless babysitter out with her charges in New York. As Hasselbeck explained, first she screamed at the woman for her negligence, then she took down the woman’s description, which she proceeded to read aloud on air in the hope that her employers would recognize the girl and fire her.

See what demons a sob session with Walter can unleash? One can only speculate on the crazy vibe that Rosie O’Donnell, now liberated from her Queen of Nice persona, will bring to the show. Aaron Spelling himself couldn’t have done a better job casting this catfight. Now, if only The View would just drop the “current affairs” pretense altogether and celebrate what it’s become: television’s longest-running, all-woman soap opera.

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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