MARTHA’S IDEAL FIT
Her daytime talk show has proven she’s no Oprah. But with her take on The Apprentice, Stewart could well turn out to be a far superior Donald COMMENT
Tonight, Martha Stewart finally goes supernova. She’s already famous, to be sure, but she has a particular kind of fame. If you’re really into pine-cone centrepieces, you’ve been a fan of her work for some time. If you follow the business news, you’ll recall she’s that recurring character in the financial pages who isn’t a pudgy white guy in a suit.
But if you mainly turn your TV on at night to be entertained, Stewart doesn’t matter to you. You’ll have missed her new daytime show. Based on news clips, bad impressions and Cybill Shepherd docudramas, you might very well know just these three things about her:
1) She often repeats the phrase “ It’s a good thing”;
2) She went to jail for something financial, complex and somewhat dubious;
3) This caused some people to wear ironic T- shirts that read, “ No Justice, No Quiche.”
But that all changes tonight to the tune of the Eurythmics’ When
begins, the show will finally get the woman it deserves.
I’ll admit the appeal of the original Apprentice was lost on me. People with MBAs running lemonade stands seems more like a bad business-school case study than actual entertainment. Also, why couldn’t they fix the dimmer switch in that boardroom? The big problem, though, was that Donald Trump seemed like a wholly unnecessary “Remember the ’80s” punchline. If we had to resurrect a pop- culture figure from that decade, why couldn’t it have been ALF? Or Mr. T? Or ALF and Mr. T together on the same show, travelling the countryside and helping ordinary Americans solve their domestic problems? The combination of implausible hair and ego would trump even Trump — and think of the cat jokes!
But if Trump is a bad fit for his own show, Martha’s daytime show is a bad fit for her. The format of Martha is straight from the Oprah School of Infotainment — non- stop, carefully planned, impromptu fun with the girls and a slew of zany guests. Look, here’s Diddy to tell us what black people mean when they say the word “ cheddar”! Hey, it’s David Spade in a Martha prison poncho! The ratings are good, but the backlash from her diehard fans has already begun.
“No one is going to buy you as a light, funny, funloving, warm fuzzy type with a sense of humour,” one writes on the fascinating Web site Save Martha. “That is not who you are or even who we want you to be.”
Demands another: “Gimme gimme gimme the previous Martha — poised, well-spoken and shimmering in perfect artificial light.”
And another fan goes so far as to say: “Being a Himalayan cat lover, I was somewhat disappointed that she did not have her cats on the opening show, but maybe next time.”