An Entirely Different View

The view is back for its eighteenth season, and following the departure of Barbara Walters, and the shows failed attempts to become more pop culture friendly and lightweight. The new show features a new set, which is cleaner and fresher, which feels more modern and less stuffy, and the hosts are now sat round a coffee table as opposed to the traditional desk and sofa format seen previously.

The new show also features three new hosts, with only Whoopi Goldberg returning, after Walters retired after working for over 50 years in broadcast journalism, hosting the view for seventeen. The View started as a politically driven, heavyweight talk shown featuring a group of intelligent female journalists and presenters discussing various political and current affairs issues. The show first took a dive following the appointment of Sherri Shepherd and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

Hasselbeck, who was appointed first was previously known only as a contestent on Survivor, a reality show, and her blind faith in the Bush Administration and the republican party won her few fans, and the show became more about argument than discussion. Sherri Shepherd was known as an actress before her time as co-host, and she caused a furor in her first appearance in which she said that she didn't know if the earth was flat, and that Christians were the first people on earth. Being a Jehovahs Witness she also claimed to never have voted, and was a huge blow for a show which claimed to be about politics.

In the shows seventeenth season, Jenny McCarthy was hired, known for her anti vaccination views and for appearing in playboy, she was a sign that the show was lost, and didn't know whether to be about politics or pop culture, and at the end of the season Jenny McCarthy and Sherri Shepherd were both fired. The show then looked to re-orientate the show back to being politically driven.

The first decision the show made was to rehire Rosie O'Donnell, who had previously quit the show in 2007 after a fight with Hasselbeck, O'Donnell is hugely politically active, and she added a sense of gravitas to the show, being a TV veteran. The other new hosts are Rosie Perez, an actress who seems to be blessed with more intelligence than either Shepherd or Hasselbeck, and Nicole Wallace, a former white house aide and political commentator who was previously communications chief during the Bush Presidency, yet who looks less biased and more objective than her biography gives her credit for.

So i ask my readers to give The View a second chance, the show is much more interesting, more diverse and more political than in previous seasons, and the co-hosts seem to be a group of intelligent and politically minded women, who actually have something to say about current affairs