'THR' Review Takes Oprah's Name In Vain

While we here at Defamer are perfectly happy recognizing Oprah Winfrey as the supreme deity that she is, her rare missteps (if you want to call Beloved a misstep—but personally, we loved it, O exalted one!) obviously part of some Bigger Oprah Picture that has yet to reveal itself to us, not all are as worshipful. In reviewing her 8-episode Oprah's Big Give reality show for ABC, THR's Ray Richmond gives Winfrey a knee-capping sure to cause a torrent of hellfire and substandard panini presses to rain down upon their offices. Some of the most sacrilegious highlights:

[T]here is nary a single genuine giving moment to be found during the opening hour.

It is instead a profoundly hyperkinetic and unwieldy adventure in product placement, in Oprah-as-Messiah hype and, ultimately, in what's so utterly fake and insidious about "reality" television itself. [...]

Shallow as a birdbath, the program would appear to exist less as a true philanthropic exercise than yet another self-aggrandizing vehicle in Oprah's divine quest to become synonymous with all that is virtuous and good on Earth.

We bid the reviewer a fond farewell, who's likely moments away from being snatched from his desk by her army of Ugg-booted flying Harpo monkeys and dropped into the nearest active volcano. THR, meanwhile, will shortly thereafter find itself absorbed into the talk show host's ever-expanding empire, reconfigured into RÖM, the official in-flight magazine of Oprah Airways.

• Oprah's Big Give [THR]

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