“Lifetime Live”
Noon daily on Lifetime
1/2
NO one did crafts. No one promoted a new movie. No one cooked. No one got made over.
No one tipped the scales at a cool 600 pounds and declared their unbridled lust for their sibling. No one made cosmetics from tree bark and crushed cucumbers.
No psychic phone lines or ambulance-chasing law firms bought airtime.
And best of all, not one member of “Fosse” or “Riverdance” showed up to do an upsetting musical number.
For this incredible show of restraint alone, yesterday’s premiere of “Lifetime Live,” hosted by Deborah Roberts and Dana Reeve, gets an extra star.
Unfortunately, someone did cry, so I had to take the star back. But, hey — that’s showbiz.
For the premiere of their new chat show, which is produced by ABC News, Roberts and Reeve nailed Hillary Clinton and Melissa Etheridge as guests. And yes, they did ask Hillary if she thought that perhaps the reason she isn’t as popular among women voters as she should be has anything to do with her private life.
Private? At this point, the world knows so much about Hillary’s husband that his privates have been renamed his “publics.”
There’s a reason no one will ever hire me as the host of a chat show.
Hillary answered the question directly by talking about health care. Or something. The other reason I would never get hired to chat up celebrities is that I would have immediately asked Melissa Etheridge the question everyone really wants to know — why in hell did she and Julie Cypher choose fatso David Crosby to father their child?
I mean, the gene pool is too scary for words. The man has a criminal record, has been around more drugs than Eli Lilly, has horrible health problems, and admits he didn’t maintain contact with his first son until the son himself came a-calling as a fully formed adult.
Instead Reeve asked Etheridge if her children would be teased by other kids for having two mommies. Teased? Kids who only have one mommy are the the weirdos these days. With divorce rate so high, most kids have more mothers, fathers, relatives and extended family members than Adam and Eve.
But make no mistake, the discussion with neither guest was dumb, cloying or boring, and Etheridge was adorable.
I’m told that the hosts of the new chat show (when did talk shows start being called chat shows like they’re on the BBC or something by the way?) are the wives of Al Roker and Christopher Reeve, respectively. I don’t know why I needed to know this since these women are accomplished outside the glow of their hubbies.
In fact, Roberts is an award-winning journalist and reporter for “20/20,” and Reeve is a singer and actress who’s been on Broadway and in loads of TV shows.
The show is broken down into several segments. The first one is a medical segment, which uses first-person horror-to-triumph stories, and yesterday anyway, there were two interviews and a decent news segment hosted by Rebecca Gomez.
The real problem is that the show is sorely in need of some laughs. Hey — it’s OK, we don’t need to be taken seriously every minute anymore.
Were the hosts nervous? You bet. Were the questions too scripted? Without a doubt. But on the upside, “Lifetime Live” seems to be trying to round up an audience of women who may, in fact, have more on their minds than making pine cone wreaths or watching dysfunctional people hit each other with chairs.
Now just get some wise-ass women guests on the show, and start to have some fun.