Rosie O'Donnell, Refreshingly, Refuses To Play It Safe on New OWN Show

Rosie O'Donnell may not end up saving the Oprah Winfrey Network, a tall order even for, say, Oprah Winfrey. And that fancy house O'Donnell bought in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood may be back on the market soon enough.

But if "The Rosie Show," her new, nightly talk show taping in Winfrey's former Chicago studio, does not find ratings success, it won't be because O'Donnell allowed anybody to put Baby in a corner.

Unbowed by her flameout on "The View," her flailing NBC variety show or the fizzling of her mainstream popularity following the rapid rise of her late-1990s daytime talk show, O'Donnell is again serving TV audiences concentrated doses of Rosie, this time hosting the new-season flagship on Winfrey's troubled, first-year cable venture.

And it is, in the vigorously market-researched realm of the American talk show, a breath of funky, refreshing air (at 7 EDT weeknights).

With her mixture of self-deprecating wit, take-me-as-I-am bravado, rabid pop-culture fandom and unapologetic liberal politics, O'Donnell is making a talk show that is entirely her, both big-time and willing to show its unfinished seams, like the night she came out in Prada heels only to talk about how, really, "Mommy wears Crocs."

She is, in the process, reminding us why people once thought she might be compelling enough to have, like Oprah, a magazine named after her.

In the first two-plus weeks of the show, we have learned:

-- Rosie is in menopause and has slept with bags of frozen peas packed around her body to counteract the hot flashes.

-- Rosie didn't think she was talking about being a lesbian as much as somebody on Twitter told her she was, but then she reviewed the videotape (and played proof that her Twitter correspondent was right for the audience).

-- Rosie was moved to tears by (and had on the show) an Iraq War veteran seen on YouTube challenging the "honor" of New York cops who would beat up Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

But she is also moved ! by her k ids -- Rosie's teenage son recently scored five touchdowns in a flag football game, don't you know -- and is actually interested in yours, whether you are a celebrity guest or one of the audience members she so regularly and sincerely involves in the proceedings.

Her "BFF" is Gloria Estefan, but she also loves Valerie Harper and Fran Drescher and Russell Brand and Wanda Sykes and Roseanne Barr, all early guests on this pointedly female-targeted program. She was so disappointed at not landing the "Price Is Right" hosting gig that she's doing her own little game show to close every "Rosie" episode.

And in addition to replaying some of the mistakes she has made, she has read reviews of her show aloud on the air, even performing a musical tribute to Time TV critic James Poniewozik, substituting his last name for the title word in Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Not all of this is great TV. Like Garrison Keillor on public radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," O'Donnell exercises the host's prerogative to sing more often than she ought to, and coaxing something besides great music out of bandleader Katreese Barnes, ex- "Saturday Night Live" musical director, has been a challenge.

The game shows have been, mostly, flat, with O'Donnell spoiling the contests by tipping her frighteningly perky contestants to answers and, lately, by having celebrity guests play. Do Kelly and Sharon Osbourne really need to defeat regular folk and win cookware?

O'Donnell's opening segment has been all over the place, from a stand-up comedy monologue against a closed-curtain, nightclub-style backdrop to a Skype interview with liberal author Naomi Wolf about Wolf's arrest in conjunction with Occupy Wall Street.

But almost all of it has been, at base, interesting TV, and that is a hard enough thing to find.

For all her obvious doting on her kids, O'Donnell retains the comedian's knowledge that she has to actually say something with punch to hold her crowd. Of the 8-year-old daughter she showed danci! ng in a long video, O'Donnell said, "She took two hip-hop classes, and now I'm gonna have to try to keep her off the pole." Of her kids attending one of the Chicago area's Waldorf schools, she said, "I don't know how well they're going to do in life, but they can knit and do yoga."

She actually coaxed hints of a thoughtful conversation from Brand, who is often so "on" that it's off-putting. On celebrity, he said, "People need the spectacle of fame to keep us trapped in a certain mindset so we don't think, 'Hold on a minute, society's not fair.'"

It may not be C-SPAN, but "The Rosie Show" is not afraid of entertaining an idea or two. Give the show credit, too, for bringing on people because they might be interesting, not just because they have a book, movie or TV show to sell.

And though the Wolf interview set a record for discussion of the vagaries of parade-permit law on a primarily pop TV show, who else is interviewing Naomi Wolf? And who else -- after that conversation, and the host reminding us that "it's a participation sport, democracy" -- would blithely transition to: "When we get back, Nancy Grace'll be here from 'Dancing With the Stars'! Don't go away."

In the rest of the nation, this show may be viewed as the comeback attempt from the 49-year-old O'Donnell, that loud-mouthed New Yorker renowned for coming out and for feuding with Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Donald Trump. (One of the behind-the-scenes shows, which air Friday nights, sees Trump Tower Chicago pointed out to O'Donnell. "Yech," she says.)

But here in Chicago, this program is as much "The Oprah Winfrey Show" replacement, the thing that is keeping jobs, major show business and celebrity visitation alive on the Near West Side.

And it is, in the early going, much more Chicago-centered than Winfrey's show, which, by the end, had mostly turned here into an Anyplace, USA. "Rosie" viewers have seen O'Donnell go on about her thoughtful neighbors, our food and friendliness, the way we all talk a little like Carol Chan! ning, wi th our facial muscles crazily involved. (This is acceptable, as long as she doesn't say we sing like Carol Channing.)

The ratings have not been great. A big, initial tune-in quickly returned to earth, but O'Donnell and Winfrey have both said they will be patient, give audiences a chance to find not only "Rosie" but to solve the greater problem OWN has had: having viewers discover the ratings-challenged channel itself.

Viewers, too, should be patient. The television listings are full of hosts who are smooth and lean, and soon enough reveal themselves to have nothing to say. They wear Prada and like it, or at least pretend to. Rosie, yearning to get out of the jewelry they put her in and into a pair of Crocs, offers a point of view and, like her namesake flower, a thorn or two.