Gawker
While we here at Defamer are perfectly happy recognizing Oprah Winfrey as the supreme deity that she is, her rare missteps (if you want to call Beloved a misstep—but personally, we loved it, O exalted one!) obviously part of some Bigger Oprah Picture that has yet to reveal itself to us, not all are as worshipful. In reviewing her 8-episode Oprah's Big Give reality show for ABC, THR's Ray Richmond gives Winfrey a knee-capping sure to cause a torrent of hellfire and substandard panini presses to rain down upon their offices. Some of the most sacrilegious highlights:
[T]here is nary a single genuine giving moment to be found during the opening hour.
It is instead a profoundly hyperkinetic and unwieldy adventure in product placement, in Oprah-as-Messiah hype and, ultimately, in what's so utterly fake and insidious about "reality" television itself. [...]Shallow as a birdbath, the program would appear to exist less as a true philanthropic exercise than yet another self-aggrandizing vehicle in Oprah's divine quest to become synonymous with all that is virtuous and good on Earth.
We bid the reviewer a fond farewell, who's likely moments away from being snatched from his desk by her army of Ugg-booted flying Harpo monkeys and dropped into the nearest active volcano. THR, meanwhile, will shortly thereafter find itself absorbed into the talk show host's ever-expanding empire, reconfigured into RÖM, the official in-flight magazine of Oprah Airways.
- Oprah's Big Give [THR]
