Sarah Palin Show Reviews: 'Canned,' 'Tame'

The reviews are in for Sarah Palin's "Real American Stories," which debuted -- minus LL Cool J -- Thursday night on Fox News. Widely expected to be terrible, it turned out to be merely boring.

"Sarah Palin didn't reload, she retreated into canned television formula," Alessandra Stanley wrote in the New York Times. "Fans who thought that having her own Fox News program would allow the former Alaska governor to be her true spontaneous and unfettered self had to feel let down by the debut of "Real American Stories" on Thursday night." Stanley's colleague Anahad O'Connor pronounced the show "relatively tame."

"Letdown" was also the word from the Washington Post, whose Hank Stuever deemed the Palin special "infotainment" -- "like one of those shows that's on when nothing's on and yet there is air to fill." The show, slated to air 'periodically,' was "innocuous, flat and political in only the most coded of ways," Stuever wrote. "It's like a Barbara Walters special for that particular media consumer who always complains that they never report any good news." Barbara Walters was also the point of reference for Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker.

And those coded messages? Corporate charity and success without obvious government help are common themes, as Mary McNamara noted in the L.A. Times. "But taken as a whole, the show has no over-arching point beyond the one sketchily provided by Palin's intro -- that Americans are a courageous and ingenious bunch and this is a country where anything is possible," McNamara said. "As a host, Palin brings little besides her name and all that it has come to mean," she added, with an unfavorable nod to the former governor's "frozen smiles and rhetoric."

Richard Huff of the New York Daily News was typically bullish on the host. "For Palin, this is a key step in her ascension in the TV world," Huff wrote. "A better production would help, and so, too, would having her do the field interviews." We can only hope.

Comments

[josaid]

02:37 AM on 04/10/2010

She certainly has retreated and reloaded. Now that her wounds are healed from the election, she's showing America that she can use her good looks and copied rhetoric to make big dollars. For those of you who support her, she's got you fooled. She certainly fooled me when I voted for her as
Governor of Alaska. She's like salmon that swim up stream only to be caught in the end. For the time being, she's found her rightful place.......along side Limbaugh and Beck. Congratulations Sarah! As the saying goes, "It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool ALL OF THE PEOPLE all the time.

[DevonTexas]

02:33 PM on 04/09/2010

she managed to be a part-timer on her own show! Good for you, Sista Sarah!

[rocketman19]

12:35 PM on 04/06/2010

She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile. ( lyrics from an old song)

[daultman463]

02:23 PM on 04/06/2010

Kinda like to see her on her belly rocket,OOPS!

[DannyGee]

12:02 PM on 04/06/2010

In other news, the Washington Post and the NYT panned Sara Palin's recent walk across the street. "Too fast" quipped the NYT. "Didn't look both ways" added the Washington Post.

[dmsdzinr]

11:27 AM on 04/06/2010

The ONLY successful TV show based on NOTHING was already done "SEINFELD" Sarah Palin doesn't come close, although SHE is based on NOTHING too.

[cincinnati]

01:06 AM on 04/06/2010

Is that deer-in-the-headlights look permanent ?

How can a supposed "news" channel hire a dingbat that they admitted didn't even know Africa was a continent and not a country !?!

[JenInOhio]

11:55 AM on 04/06/2010

Boy, she looks like that a lot now, doesn't she? Yikes!

[lmab]

12:16 AM on 04/06/2010

I have a lamp post in my front yard that is smarter than this Palin m0r0n. America...what a country!

[haval2]

07:13 PM on 04/05/2010

In a word...."stinks."

[JanSP1971]

02:56 PM on 04/05/2010

How can someone use the name Barbara Walters as a tv reporter and interviewer in the same sentence as Sister Palin? Come on people..... Palin is a no talent, no brain, no class media hog. If it weren't for far right wingers and Fixed News there would be no platform for Palin to spew to or from. Enough of Sister Sarah PLEASE!!!!!

[panamarine]

01:53 PM on 04/05/2010

The producers must be saying to themselves: "Nah, this (show) is going nowhere, she's out of her element here. Let's try something else before it's too late (read, her star fading). Let's try : 'Sarah explores Tea Bagger ' s Nation--an inside look at Tea Baggers inside out'. If that doesn't work, then a standup comedy tour. Something's got to work!"
In addition, I say that the title : "Real American Stories" seems to imply that ONLY stories they choose are of "Real Americans",,, that any other is not of "real" Americans.....get it, see the code? Only Sarah Palin's world is in the real America. But I say, isn't any story originating within the 50 States an American Story?

[iconoclast6]

05:21 PM on 04/05/2010

And that Disney-on-moonshine, small town "real America" that Moosie is always crowing about, never did exist. Small towns have been losing population since the 80s, many of them becoming virtually abandoned. And ironically, it is the policies of Ronnie_Depends, continued and amplified by Bush and Shrub, that made it that way.

[heidihaspaws]

12:30 PM on 04/05/2010

Sarah.......I need you to do something stupid, again. This story is old and I need a good laugh today.

[papau]

12:08 PM on 04/05/2010

Palin doing intro's to segments that are uplifting, albeit mostly prior recorded, interviews is not heavy lifting - indeed it is missing the B. Walters occasionally interesting Q&A .

But uplifting - for this lefty - is always a good.

And it hard to get worked up about unless one is offended by the rich and corporate finding a way to get her a few million dollars so as to control her future activities.

[PinkOne]

10:52 AM on 04/05/2010

faux interviews on a faux news show by a faux christian ... who incites violence against our elected govt officals ... and her fellow americans who voted for obama .... who wants to talk about someone taking away our Freedom .. and I m not taking about Faux Freedom like Palin!

[dapop]

10:45 AM on 04/05/2010

All politics aside, I would chew my own arm off to escape the trap of listening to her voice. One of the most irritating sounds ever heard.

[Tubelicious]

11:24 AM on 04/05/2010

Sounds like a new reality show--What would you do to avoid listening to Sarah Palin's voice?....

[mimix3]

01:30 PM on 04/05/2010

Thank you for that comment. That is the best one I have heard and really got a good chuckle out of me. :))

[ttyy]

10:36 AM on 04/05/2010

The Idiocracy has arrived.