11/15/10 -- The Color Purple Reunion

During my last semester of college at NYU, I scheduled every one of my classes to fall on a Thursday. This meant I had no classes any other day of the week. Of course, it also meant I had classes all day Thursday, from about eight in the morning until nine in the evening, so that really sucked. The final class began around eight p.m., and I can still remember the feeling of dread I had walking up to the building for this class every week. It was Global Women's Writing, which featured an annoying teacher and fifteen other chicks who all seemed to want to be there to read the kind of "I am woman, hear me roar as I write bad beat poetry and/or prose" stuff we were required to read.

The only author I can remember from that awful class is Alice Walker. Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple. We didn't read that one in class, and I have in fact never read the book, but that doesn't matter. I associate Alice Walker with the worst class I have ever taken, and Alice Walker wrote this book. So by extension, I hate the book and everything associated with it.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I've seen The Color Purple one time, and I remember virtually nothing. I guess I thought it was a little melodramatic, and that I could take it or leave it.

So, I guess you've gotten the impression that I wasn't exactly excited about this reunion episode. I was mostly indifferent, and just looking to get through it. I watched it last night, and took notes, and then stayed up until 3:30 a.m., coughing my brains out because my cold has moved into my lungs. So, writing about Whoopi and Oprah reconciling over a non-existent fight was not high on my to-do list.



Whoopi was the first one invited out on stage, and she was wearing a black suit and some really weird shoes. They had a heel, and a ribbon that tied on top, and I guess you could describe them as purple. That reaches the limit of my ability to tell you about these shoes. Oprah told the story of how she and Whoopi ran into each other at Tyler Perry's house (of course) this past summer. Each of them had thought the other was mad at them for the last 25 years, and Whoopi finally asked Oprah about it at this party. Each woman acknowledged that she wasn't mad at the other, and they kissed and made up. Tyler Perry brings people together, y'all.

During the interview, Whoopi picked up a glass to drink some water, and found that the straw in the glass was made of metal. Oprah said they do it "so [they] save on plastic." Funny. I save on plastic by not buying straws at all.

Whoopi let Oprah's crew into her house to show off her fancy, fancy master bathroom and all of her "negro-bilia." Her word, not mine.

Danny Glover came out next, but he didn't get nearly the attention that Whoopi did. I didn't even write down a single note about him. Sorry, Danny.

Want to know the benefit of having your own show? You can talk about how a dinner scene in a particular movie is the best part of the movie, then claim you're going to show us a clip of that scene, and then show the part that predominantly features you. And then, when the clip is over, you can brag about how you ad-libbed most of it.

Willard Pugh played Oprah's husband, whose name was Harpo. At the end of the episode, Pugh pointed out that he's "the only husband [Oprah] ever had."

They showed a taped interview with Steven Spielberg, who directed the film, in which he showed off the couch Oprah and Willard were sitting on when he told them they got the part. 25 years ago. Time to get a new couch, Steven. I believe you can afford it.

The rest of the cast came out, too, and Oprah had them recount their favorite lines from the movie. When it got to be Whoopi's term, she did a hand gesture that's supposed to be what her character does in the film. Except what Whoopi did was completely wrong. She did a "hook 'em horns" hand gesture, and the gesture her character does in the film involves pointing her index and middle finger. And even though Whoopi did it incorrectly, the show ran a clip of the character doing it, despite the two not matching at all.

Oprah showed a clip from an episode in 1998, in which a guy in the audience admitted to having seen The Color Purple 55 times. Then he did a performance of one of Oprah's monologues. Dude was weird. Cut back to the present day, where Oprah pointed out that the guy was in the audience. She acknowledged him, people applauded, and that's it. You think it was worth the guy making the trip for those three seconds?


Tuesday: Barbra Streisand