The View just hit a milestone almost no daytime talk show reaches: 30 seasons on the air. The new season kicked off with everything you’d expect, surprises, giveaways and, yes, breaking news. But halfway through the premiere, one question wouldn’t stop nagging at me: what is wrong with The View?
Thirty years is a big deal, and for nearly 20 of those years there’s been one person in the moderator’s chair: Whoopi Goldberg. She was always an unconventional pick, handpicked by creator Barbara Walters, and for a long stretch she was the right one. She brought her singular wit to that table, a perspective on politics and parenting and everything in-between that nobody else in daytime could touch.
But watch Goldberg lately, and you’d be forgiven for thinking she’d rather be anywhere else. And for someone who has loved The View since the beginning (I skipped school for the debut 30 years ago), it’s sad to watch and even sadder to see where Goldberg’s legacy has landed. She looks bothered to be there, seemingly annoyed by her co-hosts’ banter, checked out the second she’s forced to read off the teleprompter.
When a celebrity guest stops by, her go-to sign-off, “come back anytime,” lands less like an invitation and more like a distress signal, like she’s begging them to stay so she doesn’t have to do the show with co-hosts she apparently doesn’t want to be around. And this is seriously hard to write, because Goldberg is undeniably a legend. Only the second Black woman to win an acting Academy Award, Goldberg has achieved EGOT status over the course of her illustrious career.
She’s broken barriers for countless generations to follow her and is without doubt a singular talent. That’s what makes this painful to write. Do we expect her to be “on” every second of the day?
But do we expect her to even pretend to enjoy being there? Yes, and that’s not a lot to ask. Maybe hosting The View was always beneath Goldberg’s talents, and we’ve just taken her for granted.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
