Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Change Is in the Air

Turns out, watching Oprah isn't all that easy when dealing with a 24-hour stomach flu (me and Katie), the sudden onset of the terrible twos (Merritt), and a 40-hour per week full-time job (me).  I have an alarm set for every day at 3:55, and getting myself to the television at that point in the day, even just four days into the new episodes of 2011, is a surprisingly difficult task.

Which is not to say that I've missed an episode (other than the one I already told you I missed), because I haven't. But I've had to do things a little differently, which means things will be changing a little bit around here.

Don't freak out. All I'm saying is that my style is going to have to adapt to my lifestyle. I can no longer have the "pleasure" of sitting down after Merritt has gone to bed, firing up the DVR, and taking copious notes on each new episode of Oprah.

All this means to you is that you'll probably get less of the recap stuff in the posts . Instead of details on the things Octomom said on Friday's episode, for instance, you're more likely to just get my general thoughts on the content. Which, in this case, would be the following:

Octomom is crazy.

Seriously insane. The whole episode was just an attempt to get her to stop being crazy and admit that maybe, just maybe, having eight kids (at once!) when you couldn't afford the first six you'd already had was a bit of a poor judgment call. Suze Orman, financial lesbian, was having none of Nadya Suleman's (that's Octomom's real name) bullshit, which was a good thing, I guess. But it just made for a really weird, awkward show, in which Suleman kept claiming that she agreed with everything Orman said, and she was really trying, and the one thing she'd always said was that she wasn't going to exploit her children for financial gain. Even if that financial gain would help her actually, you know, keep those children alive. Orman and Winfrey both thought Suleman was addicted to fame, until Suleman went on a crying rant about how all she's ever wanted is those mean, bullying girls from her school years (her metaphor for all women) to like her, and how they don't like her as a result of all this baby nonsense, so of course she doesn't like the fame she's gotten from this.



Or something like that. It was a load of malarkey, if you ask me. Orman told Suleman to just get an agent anyway, because she has to make money somehow. Suleman apparently signed with an agency, and the breaking news today is that she's found a completely wholesome, non-exploitative way to make some money to support her growing family.

Photo courtesy of TMZ.

I suppose she could make the argument that her children aren't in this video (the TMZ image is apparently a still from a fetish video), so she's not really exploiting them. But, come on. I'm fine with people making money in whatever way they can, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Suleman just needed to be up front about this. Sure, she admitted on Oprah that she was once addicted to babies, but she needed to come clean about more than that. Say that you are addicted to babies and to fame, and that being famous is all you ever wanted, and you would love nothing more than to be the star of the next Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Minus Jon, Plus Six Extra Kids.

Nobody who's ever heard of you has any respect for you anyway, Suleman. So what have you got to lose?


Monday, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Oprah was a clip show on race. Just a look back at 25 years of race-related shows. The lesson learned: we've progressed some in this country, but probably not enough, and we still have a lot of work to do.


Oh, but Tuesday. Tuesday, we finally started to see the payoff from that crazy season premiere. Oprah landed in Australia, aboard a private plane, and 302 of her "ultimate viewers" got there via Qantas. 

Oprah and Gayle held some koalas, then watched those koalas mate, took a helicopter tour over the Great Barrier Reef, surprised viewers at a giant beach barbecue, helped a dude pull off popping the question, and more. 

This was the first of four episodes about the trip to Australia, and, frankly, it was Oprah at her best. Surprising viewers, having a good time, maybe not taking herself too seriously--this is when I love Oprah. And Oprah. I choked up when a woman from St. Louis touched an ocean for the first time. I choked up again when one of the "road trip ladies" from the premiere cried her way through an interview about how great this experience was. 

Based on previews for the upcoming episodes, I'll be getting tears a few more times this week, if only over the sheer magnitude of this adventure. It's big, and these people in Australia were so excited. What's not to love about watching people experience that kind of joy?


Wednesday: part two of the Australian adventure.

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