For Good

Reflecting on something as gargantuan as The Oprah Winfrey Show is not an easy task. I don't even know how to begin.

Maybe I'll just start with the ending. A very good place to start. The finale aired yesterday, and I was there right at four o'clock, and watched the whole thing, commercials and all. It was funny how many commercials were made specifically for the finale. Even Pixar cut a trailer for Cars that catered to the Oprah audience ("You get new Cars, you get new Cars..."). So, apparently this was a pretty big deal.

Here's the thing, though: as finales go, it sucked. Kind of hardcore.

Certainly, it's not easy to wrap up the previous 4,560 shows during the 4,561st episode. There's a lot to cover. But that's what the show had already been attempting to do this entire season, with all the clip shows and follow-ups and "ultimate" everything. I guess Oprah decided that, after all that hoopla, it made sense for her to take her last hour and just talk to the audience directly, without any distractions.

This show has always been based on Oprah's connection to her audience, so in theory, this wasn't a terrible idea. But it ended up just feeling like a weird commencement address. Now, I didn't go to the big NYU graduation in 2001, but now I feel like I didn't miss a thing. Because Oprah gave me all her life lessons, and now I feel prepared to go out there and grab this world by the horns!



When it wasn't feeling like a commencement address, it had the distinct feeling of a sermon. Especially about halfway through, when Oprah went on and on about the grace of god and the power of Jesus. I'm not going to get into my atheist views and all that. I know Oprah has worked incredibly hard and has achieved a lot of success, which was probably not expected of her when she was born in the back woods of Mississippi. Oprah is the very definition of a self-made woman. I guess it's fine if she wants to believe that there is a higher power guiding her, but just like I don't believe there's a god that gave my friend Lindsay cancer, and then took her from the world at 22, I  don't believe that god had a damn thing to do with the amazing success Oprah has found. Am I supposed to think god just liked Oprah more, so he gave her a bunch of money and let millions of people worldwide starve to death during the 25 years Oprah was on the air, simply because he really liked those "Favorite Things" episodes?

And I'm glad that Oprah found her "calling," as she puts it. But I don't like being told that all I have to do is "listen" and I'll find mine, too. No one out there is chanting my calling, waiting for me to hear it.

All of the above is why I am certain the show should have ended on Tuesday, at the United Center, instead of on Wednesday at Harpo Studios.

If it had ended then, you would have been reading a different post; that first half full of negativity wouldn't have existed. Because guess who watched Tuesday's episode, which was the second half of the United Center hootenanny, and cried like a baby? This blogger, that's who.

I wasn't really into the first, I don't know, hour and a half of the two-hour extravaganza. It was nice to see all the celebrities who came out to say goodbye to Oprah, but I didn't really understand her constant surprise. Oprah, you're Oprah. Has that not sunk in yet? If Jamie Foxx showed up at my house and started singing (please don't ever let that happen to me), I would have a reason to be surprised. Your reactions, while sometimes adorable, were a little odd.

So, the first day of this affair was really kind of boring and ho-hum. And frankly, the second hour would have been more of the same, if not for a tiny golden nugget of sunshine by the name of Kristin Chenoweth.

Don't you want to just take Kristin Chenoweth and put her in your pocket? And maybe bring her out every now and then to sing "Eternal Flame" in your living room? Or, perhaps better yet, "For Good" from Wicked?

The latter is what they brought her out to sing on the penultimate episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. And may lightning strike me dead if that wasn't the most glorious decision ever made in the history of daytime television. Sorry, Passions. You're now in second place.

Yes, the segment began with Tyler Perry, but it ended so damn well that I refuse to acknowledge his participation. The gist of it is, there is an Oprah Winfrey scholarship at Morehouse College, paid for by Oprah Winfrey herself, and over the years she has helped to educate more than 400 men. And after a video package with some interviews from some of those men, Kristin Chenoweth came out and starting singing her teeny tiny heart out. And as she did, a whole bunch of black men streamed through the audience and on to the stage, holding (probably fake) candles. Though it wasn't explicitly stated, presumably these were the men whose education Oprah has funded.

Oprah was clearly moved throughout this segment, and watching her face as she looked around in disbelief was kind of amazing. There was no artifice there; it was simply a woman realizing that this entire spectacle was staged for her. And maybe she was also feeling the weight of this being the end of it all, too.

You want to know where I lost it? It wasn't so much the Morehouse men, though that was pretty awesome stuff. It was more about the unbelievably appropriate lyrics of "For Good," which seemed to have been written solely for this occasion.

Chenoweth herself is always enough to make me get a little choked up, but when we got to this part of the song, I basically started sobbing:

"It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you."

I had to pause it. And then I told Katie that I didn't give a crap about writing anything negative about Oprah anymore, because look at what she's done for the world. And then I pulled out my phone and typed the following paragraphs:

I don't care if Oprah is self-righteous. I don't care if she interrupts people during interviews. I don't care if she sometimes affects a gay lisp when she's speaking about something particularly fabulous. I don't care if she is, at times, unbelievably corny.

Look at the people whose lives she has changed. Tell me what they would be today without her. Pomp, circumstance, and celebrity aside, she has used her life for something. For something GOOD.

I'm not claiming to know the meaning of life, but it sure as hell seems to me like Oprah has figured it all out.

I think that's what I've learned this season. I make fun of Oprah non-stop, but there is no denying the good she has done for this world.  I don't know why else people are put on this planet other than to help others and to try to be a force for change, which makes Oprah the queen of the universe.

You didn't have to go on the show and have Oprah give you a car or a trip for you to feel her influence. It's everywhere. And though I know we have not heard the last of her, I think that it's important to acknowledge that this show -- the one that premiered when I was five years and 71 days old, and ended when I was 30 years and 330 days old -- was a big deal. So when Chenoweth sang about this possibly being the last time we'll see Oprah, even though I knew that can't be entirely true, it still struck a nerve.

Even without being an Oprah fan, even without watching more than a handful of episodes over the years, I have learned from this woman. She didn't teach me that it all comes down to love, but she did a bang-up job of illustrating that point during close to 5,000 episodes of television. She didn't teach me that the world is a scary place, but I've always remembered that episode she did two decades ago that taught kids to never let a kidnapper take them to a second location.

I am 100% certain that I am not done rolling my eyes at something Oprah says or does. The cynic in me won't be able to resist. But I'm now more inclined to give her a little slack, given that I've seen her help so very many people in the last 25 years.

Which I guess means Oprah has officially changed me, for good.

It's been 98 posts. I think it's been 132 episodes. And I'm done. For good.