Arts: And YOU Get a Talk Show, And YOU Get a Talk Show!

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Television And YOU Get a Talk Show, And YOU Get a Talk Show! The Revolution is a next-generation Oprah that's all about you. By Troy Patterson Posted Friday, Jan 20, 2012, at 09:13 PM ET As the world turns, daytime television ceases to spin on the axis of the soap opera. Almost precisely 40 years ago, Renata Adler opened a television column in The New Yorker by gaping at the "extremes of hatred and loneliness" played out on The Doctors, a racy alternative to General Hospital then working through a plot line about "an educated man so bitter that he kills himself solely to frame another man for murder." The noonday demon frolicked, and the show, Adler wrote, was "an epic of despair." That sort of death no longer has a place in the afternoon. The TV Doctors on call in 2012 is a syndicated Dr. Phil spinoff where physicians and psychologists wearing scrubs or lab coats mix smoothies that promise to improve your orgasm. Such is the atmosphere that The Revolution (ABC, weekdays at 2 p.m. ET) entered when it debuted on Monday, replacing One Life To Live and seeking to fill an Oprah-shaped void (though without delving too deeply into trauma or cracking open so many novels). On ABC's schedule, the show immediately follows The Chew, which replaced All My Children in September. On The Chew, a gang including Mario Batali, Top Chef graduate Carla Hall, and second-generation self-help guru Daphne Oz convenes for a big-tent cooking show whisking together celebrity chat, game-show gamboling, makeover magic, and many encouraging shoulder rubs. The food is a pretense and almost a fig leaf for the show's attempts at refreshing Oprah's self-help ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Weigel: Rick Perry's Shambling Last Day on the Campaign Trail If You Want People To Ride the Subway, Do You Make It Cozy or Do You Make It Efficient? Ralph Fiennes Turns Coriolanus Into a Taut Action Thriller	Advertisement
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