Launching a new daytime talk show is a tricky thing. Every year, all sorts of semi-celebrities, from washed-up actors to self-help gurus, attempt to horn in on the territory dominated by Oprah Winfrey on one end of the spectrum and Jerry Springer on the other, and every year, most of them fail. The biggest recent successes have been Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen Degeneres, who've sidestepped the genre by mounting late night-style shows during the day, and Dr. Phil, who came rubber-stamped with an endorsement by Winfrey herself.
Into the fray this season leap two notable personalities, Tyra Banks and Martha Stewart. Banks, whose The Tyra Banks Show airs locally weekdays at 3 and 11 p.m. on KTUD Channel 14 and repeats at midnight and 7 a.m. on Oxygen, is angling to become the next Oprah, with her patronizing homilies about loving yourself for who you are and self-serving segments offering "makeovers for life" to blubbering Tyra fans. Stewart, on the other hand, is offering a variation on her old Martha Stewart Living crafts show with Martha, which airs locally weekdays at 9 a.m. on KVVU Channel 5 and repeats at 6 p.m. on the Learning Channel.
Banks, a supermodel and the host of America's Next Top Model, takes herself so seriously that her show is painful to watch. Although she's a rail-thin supermodel, Banks is obsessed with the idea that the media is promoting negative body images for women, and spends much of her time berating viewers and guests for not embracing the fabulousness of their average bodies. She spends the rest of the time offering fluffy segments on fashion and makeovers, which tend to undermine her message of anti-standardized beauty.
Banks, who was actually a "youth correspondent" on Winfrey's show in 1986, is trying so hard to be Oprah that the strain is evident in every moment of the nakedly desperate show. In the first four minutes of her first episode, Banks teared up twice and her first guest was her mom. Stewart, on the other hand, does not cry and her first guest was her dog, brought out less as an emotional anchor than a material one. Stewart, fresh off of her stint in jail, is trying just as hard as Banks to convince her audience of something, but in her case it's that she's fun and likable and not the ice queen that she's been painted as by the media.
What's great about Stewart's show, which mixes cooking and crafts segments with celebrity interviews, is the host's endearing awkwardness, which manifests itself in her pained but earnest interviews with stars and average people alike. The show is full of goofy gimmicks that don't quite work, including an entire episode dedicated to other people named Martha Stewart and an appearance by rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs, in which he teaches Stewart to rap and she teaches him to wrap presents. Any show so gleefully punny can't help but be a little charming.
The awkwardness is not always endearing, though, and the show's producers need to learn they can't build an entire hour around only one or two guests. Banks' show is structured much more like a traditional talk show, with lip service to how different it is while including such tired, Maury Povich-style bits as the couple who want a break from each other and the woman who wants her boyfriend to stop harassing her about her weight. Both Banks and Stewart are massively insincere, but Banks' insincerity seems to come from her pathological need to be loved and admired, while Stewart's insincerity is just the way she is, and watching her attempt to overcome it is both strangely heartwarming and surprisingly entertaining.