I can't be the only one that loved this show! What are everyone's favorite (or least favorite) memories of it?

You're not the only one JakeyIsSusan! I really miss this show.

I know Rosie has said that it was very difficult for her to do this show at times because she felt that she had to be upbeat all the time.

I wish there was some kind of "Talk Show Channel" that shows reruns of old talk shows just so I can see some of the earlier episodes of this show! I haven't found another talk show that could even come close to comparing to it since it went off the air.

I know Rosie's not the most favourite person on TWOP, but boy, did I love her talk show. Yes, it went downhill in the last couple of seasons but I think after a few years break, she could return and it would be wonderful. I have never warmed up to Ellen, who I find cold, disinterested and uninformed.

I loved when Rosie talked about the tv shows she watched the prior night. I liked that she was a big fan of shows like ER, Party of Five and Survivor.

That was the best part of her show. Another TV addict discussing all the shows that I liked.

I kind of still miss the Rosie O'Donell Show. Although, in the later years, it became about her and her insisting on singing and self-promotion.(Look at me, Look at me-watch my reaction-nevermind the guest, put me on camera!)
I did love the first couple of years-it was refreshing, so fn funny and a joy to watch. I think that Ellen G. has watched too many of Rosie's shows and has started to pattern her show after it!

I loved that she always featured Broadway show performances. It gave a lot of press to unknown shows and performers, which no talk show seems to continue now.

I LOVED Rosie's show. I really miss it. There really is nothing like it on daytime anymore.

The one moment that I think I'll always remember was a certain Superkid that she had on after 9/11. The "Superkid" was a segment that she had each month during the last season or two of the show, and they would profile a kid who had overcome some kind of incredible odds to succeed in school and go off to college. Soon after 9/11 she had a girl on as a new Superkid, and when Rosie told her that Kellogg's was going to pay her entire college tuition, the girl immediately asked if the money could be donated to the victims of 9/11 instead. I remember her saying something about her still having arms and legs, and she'll be able to go on and make it for herself, but the victims of the attack wouldn't have the same opportunity. What that girl said struck Rosie to the point of not even being able to respond. You could tell she was in awe of what this girl had just done, much as I was as I watched at home. It was one of those incredible TV moments that will probably stick with me for a long, long time.

MC SammyD you just made me cry at work!!! I forgot about that...

I liked this show too. I also generally like Rosie herself.

In both cases, however, I can absolutely see how she and her style could be a little... much. Certain jokes and gimmicks were too cutesy and obnoxious (itsthelastjokehowdoiknowitsthelastjokeits... TAPED TO THE DESK, the obnoxiously gay stylist, Rosie's post-9/11 home movies of dubious quality) but a lot of the time, it was a really enjoyable show. What I remember most was her laugh. Rosie O'Donnell, in my opinion, has the most genuine and appealing laugh of any talk show host, past or present.

Does anyone else remember the poor NYC traffic cop who got noticed because he did a spastic dance while directing traffic? Rosie has him on (he brings her a personalized K-Mart vest and nametag because his daughter works there) and he does his dance. The mortifying thing was that the dance isn't very long. It was also set to weird disco music from the band. He finishes the dance itself but has to repeat it because the band keeps playing. It only ends after five or six times when Rosie spazes onto the stage, doing her own version of the dance. Awkward but hilarious and surreal at the same time.

I used to really like this show too but in the end it started to wear me out kind of.

For some reason, one of the moments I remember is when Jennifer Holliday came on to promote something and she gave out the website and she said (websitename).cum instead of ".com" and Rosie just gave this nervous look and you could hear people snickering in the audience and Rosie was just trying to gloss over it...hard to explain but it was funny.

I liked when she did the games in the audience (even though she gave everyone prizes....lame)


My favorite too (except her painful hosting of the Survivor reunion whatever season that was)

This was one show that was either really great, or really annoying. As the years went on, it veered more towards the annoying for me.
Granted, I was far from the target audience of the show, but Rosie drove me nuts sometimes with all the little toys, Koosh balls, etc. I forgot about the "taped to the desk" thing, what a memory jog.
But, I gotta say as far as daytime talk shows go, Rosie was pretty innovative compared to others shows on at the time. The opening was different, the music was different, having an audience member introduce Rosie was different.
The theme music is still burned into my memory, it was very catchy and fitting to the show.

I miss the Koosh Balls. And "What's-His-Name" Band Leader and the forced banter with the Hostess and mostly his cute lil giggle. I remember feeling so proud during the 1st season when Rosie read from the local paper of the station's city that carried the show. And also the fun,etc of the show when it was live. Dammit, I miss The Rosie O'Donnell Show!

John McD and the McDLTs!

/hangs head in shame for remembering

Most favorite moments: Craft and cooking segments (especially with Martha Stewart).

The kids she'd interview (not her interviewing style).

Least favorite moments: Grandstanding -- like when Tom Selleck came on and Rosie turned it into an argument about gun control.

All the Tom Cruise hype.

All the talk about what she ate, the diets, the snacks.

All the talk about broadway shows and the ones she was going to be a part of.

Her constant references to how big (in circumference) her head is.

Yeah, the gun control thing bugged me too. I agreed with her, but Tom Selleck was on to promote a movie, not to have a debate.

Things I liked? Not only would she give to charity, but she was creative in the ways she did it. Remember when Scope had that survey asking people about most and least kissable celebrities? Rosie ended up in the "least kissable" category. For a whole month, every time that a guest kissed Rosie, Cool Mint Listerine would donate $10, 000 to charity.

I liked that she was so real and open and honest. As someone mentioned the fact that she talked about what she watched on TV. A lot of entertainment people never seem to watch TV as if it was beneath them.

Liked it:

When she discovered a chin hair - she had close ups on it everyday and was even going to put a bead on it

When Whitney Houston cancelled at the last moment and the whole show was to promote the Cinderella movie she produced (starring Brandy). Rosie kept saying "I hope she's really sick" Now I realize she was probably referring to Whitney's drug use and wondering if that was the reason she cancelled. At the time, I didn't get it.

That she didn't always ask the celebrities the usual questions - they opened up to her (some anyway) in a way they didn't do on other talk shows

Hated it:
The interview with Barbra Streisand - I had to turn it off - I was embarrassed for her

The Tom Cruise stuff

The way every kid had to be called a cutie patootie

Strident Rosie

I loved her show too and I really miss it. Even the Tom Cruise hype (remember that? Creepy! LMFAO). I often wonder what she'd say about him now that he's become the joke of the decade.

And MC SammyD that girl was one of the best moments on tv ever. It was so sweet and endearing.

I loved this show. I loved her Tom Cruise stuff. I love that everytime she spoke about him, she would say I'm not in love with him but I wouldn't mind him mowing my lawn while I drink iced tea.

I loved how bleebleeblahblahboo knowledge she had. Imagine what the show would be like now with TIVO!?!?!

Seriously!! She'd probably be staging an intervention for Katie!

Ah, the return of the bleebleeblahblahboo bug (or the [much] tv bug)! How I've missed you!

We used to watch this show all the time when I lived in college residence. She had the best A list stars on, which was a change from most daytime talk shows. I'll always have a little, tiny bit of a warm feeling towards Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for the thank-you note they wrote Rosie after she had them on her show (she said no one ever wrote a thank-you). Her love of all things t.v. did make it a great show to watch.

By the end I just found her to be fake (and I guess that was since she felt so much pressure to be upbeat), which was a shame.

funny about the thank you note. That's the reason why Kevin Smith cast Ben Affleck in Chasing Amy, because in Mallrats he wrote him a thank you note everytime he would leave for a couple of days to "take meetings" for Good Will Hunting. That's how their friendship really began.

Back to Rosie, my favorite guests were her childhood idols who weren't as know in the mainstream as Babs and Bette.

what's the bleebleeblahblahboo bug?

I always loved hearing her talk about her favorite TV shows too. Especially Po5. Except towards the end she would really go crazy on Julia's boyfriend as if he was really an abuser. Remember when she had them all on for their finale and they did the Party of 5 quiz? I have that on VHS somewhere - I may have to dig it up.

OT Oh, but didn't the guy that played Julia's bf at the end of the show end up getting arrested or something? /OT

Like most talk shows, I only watched Rosie when she had a guest on I wanted to see. I am one those people who like it when celebs take a stand on issues, so I actually liked it when she talked about gun control, etc. I think that took guts. My opinion of her has improved drastically after reading her blog. She pulls no punches when it comes to castigating politicians and celebrities for bad behavior. Although she is no longer on TV, that takes guts too.

Her theme music is embedded in my brain too. And, her knowledge of popular culture trivia, especially TV, was scary. I think her show was far better than some of the stuff currently on daytime TV.

Rosie changing the set around for Barbra was embarassing.

The song that comes to me at the oddest times is the "Oh they'll think I'm crazy, I know they'll think I'm crazy..." that she sang. I never even saw the kid's show she got it from, but it was a running bit that cracked me up.

I got a Baby Bjorn jeopardy question correct the other day thanks to Rosie!

Wasn't there a finger puppet re-enactment of Party of Five? Her tv talk was my favourite part of the show.

Because the site was being spammed, Glark set it up so that any time you type "[much] tv" (without the []) it comes up bleebleeblahblahboo.

Topic? I think that ultimately Rosie did herself a disservice with the whole Tom Cruise thing becuase people (not me) felt that she was being deceitful. At the time though it was so funny. I remember how horrible Renee Zellweger was on the show when Tom made his first appearance and I've always hated her a little since.

I took my mom to see her show a month before it ended. She loaded the audience down with stuff...Broadway show tickets, athletic equipment, shirts...and I've been to Oprah twice--she didn't give away anything! And Rosie's staff and production were worlds nicer and kinder than Oprah's are. It seemed like a family atmosphere and everyone seemed to be having a great time. When the warmup guy was trying to get the audience all riled up before the show he was throwing those koosh balls at everyone. I mean, hundreds and hundreds of them. One of the production assistants noticed that my mom was having trouble getting one and ran and got her a huge pile of them.

I really had a hard time reconciling the peppy onscreen Rosie with the normal, not hyperactive woman who I saw on the set before and after the show. Because two of the segments was pre-taped before air time (the lady from Throughly Modern Millie and a Lisa Kudrow interview), she asked the audience if they'd like to watch the performance again and then the LK interview, or if we wanted her to come out and answer questions from the audience for 20 minutes. We chose the Q&A, of course, and she was extremely honest and down-to-earth and friendly. I liked the real Rosie a lot better than the TV Rosie.

Watching Rosie on her last 2 appearances on Martha reminded me of how much I enjoyed her talk show when it was on.

The only thing I can remember specifically is her mocking the cover of a magazine for calling her the "Queen of Nice" and then playing a clip of her yelling at someone during a commercial (regarding a loud noise that happened during the show). She always seemed puzzled by how she got that "nice" title.

I got my letter printed in Entertainment Weekly about a decade ago saying that while the magazine did a great job for their interview concerning Jerry Maguire, she just barely beat them out in terms of quality. (Of course now, my opinion about Cruise is COMPLELTY different.)


I liked her show a lot, but I felt it was a major misstep to battle Tom Selleck concerning gun control. I understand her passion for the cause, but it just screamed awkward.

At the end of her very last show, they showed a video of Tom Cruise mowing a lawn. He stopped the mower, walked to the camera with a glass, and said, "Rosie, I've mowed your lawn. Now, here's your iced tea."

I visited the Rosie website and she said there will be complete season DVD's coming out of her old talk show. I know I'll be buying a set to make me smile on a day like today when NOTHING is on....... I miss Rosie.

Complete season dvds? How many dvds for one season--75?!?!!

I can't imagine they'd release the full seasons on DVD. I think highlight discs of each season would be more likely.

That was Newsweek magazine. People don't realize how popular Rosie was back then. She was popular enough to make it to the cover of Newsweek, and named Entertainment Weekly's Entertainer of the Year. And, she did it without pulling some manipulative stunt (coming out, for eg). She was #2 behind Oprah in the ratings. No small task.....then, or now.

I knew that she was going to be HUGE when I found out she was going to have a talk show. I sent away for tickets after the third episode and it took 3 months to get tickets after that it was virtually impossible.

Another thing I loved was when she would have buttons on her desk that played music by the guests that were going to be appearing. The best was when Janet Jackson was appearing and Rosie played the part from "Nasty" that goes "It's Janet...Miss Jackson if you're nasty", then tried to sing "It's Rosie...O'Donnell if you're nasty."

Does anyone else remember the so-mean-it's-funny pasta lady from Italy? Rosie kept trying to get her to come to her show but she never did.

Holy crap! I saw this thread and thought they had finally succumbed and renamed "The View"! Ah well, a Rosie by any other name...

p.s. yup, I remember the pasta lady. Good times.

ETA:



Donny Osmond singing his apologetic "Puppy Love" in the full-body dog suit and them falling onto the ground when he went to dip her? One of my Top 10 Funniest Talk Show Moments of All Time. In fact, I was just recounting this whole saga to my mom when Donny was on The View a couple of weeks ago!

A Rosie thread!

I loved this show when it first came out. I remember she changed the intro slightly. I think it was during the third season. But it didn't work so she changed it back.

I too cringed when Babs came on. I was happy for Rosie, but then it got really weird. I think Babs was a bit scared.

Remember when she had that grudge against Donny Osmond for calling her fat?

In regards to the Barbara episode, I know it was kinda creepy the way everything was white and the champagne and candles and all that stuff, but knowing the backstory is what made it work for me. I think that once she, meaning Barbara, knew the reasoning for this obsession, it was okay, and I'm sure she was getting some flack for not appearing on the show after she was goaded from the very beginning to appear.

Yeah, you have a point. She was a connection to her dead mother. I always felt sad that Rosie's father wasn't good to her. She often poked fun of the situation, but I could tell she had a painful childhood.

This show is my favorite talk show of all time, daytime or late night. It was my afterschool ritual to watch it for many years; its kind of crazy to realize, now that I'm a half-decade out of high school, just how long ago it was. It's sad that Rosie couldn't keep it going for longer, like Oprah, but the show was clearly on a downward spiral after the Columbine stuff and the embarrassing Barbra debacle.

Rosie was just a natural chatter, about what ever pop-culture jumped into her head, and that always really appealed to me. In Rosie's first summer on, I think in the second or third week there was a big debate with viewers over the lyrics to the Claymation Frosty the Snowman special, and I think I knew then that I was going to be addicted to this show. I still remember many of the little running sketches she used to do, like the "Listen to Iman" bit, Fran Drescher's parents reviewing early bird specials, her battle with a viewer named Davina over Mary Tyler Moore trivia...

I could never watch her on The View now. I know a lot of people seem to enjoy her on there, but I never liked that show before, and it just wouldn't be the same for me as her first show.

For me the best part was before Donny came out, the first guest was Marie Osmond and her and Rosie were having way too much fun trying to paint Donny as a bad child, although the only thing Marie could come up with was Donny interrupting her during bedtime prayers.

Marie said Donny would run past her room while she said her prayers saying, "Goodnight poophead!".

Whew, so many memories of her show --I knew I really liked it at the time, but had forgotten how much. It was so unique at the time (and still would be today, I believe) I see some of her show copied on Ellen (the audience games, the give-aways, the "silly" pranks and 'fluffy' schtick) but there was so much that was totally unique to her show alone. And Rosie, though too much at times, is so uniquely Rosie.

I loved her discussions about 70's TV, songs, Pez/lunchboxes/toys, so many things I myself remember about my childhood. It was nice thinking back to such a different (kinder gentler) time. When she talked about ordinary people you really felt she gave a damn about them. I enjoyed hearing stories of her kids too, it was never like Kathie Lee (ugh Cody, not again!)

I think her show took a decidedly different turn around the time when her magazine appeared and the whole backlash that ensued. I like her on The View today and see a lot of the "old" Rosie (show) in her still. I'm so glad her show will be on DVD. I'm be looking forward seeing it.

I heard that when Rosie appointed Caroline Rhea as her replacement that was a downright trainwreck. Was that true? That the show went downhill when Caroline was sharing her wedding plans on the show and then her and her fiencee broke up?

It wasn't a trainwreck, but no one was interested in watching it, as it was quickly canceled at the end of its first season. (I believe it was replaced by Sharon Osbourne's talk show.) Caroline was mildly amusing, but she was too loud and talked about herself way too much. In other words, she was basically a blonde version of Rosie.

And one Rosie was already quite enough!

I thought Caroline Rhea wasn't even one-tenth as funny as Rosie, though. Her monologues were just so awkward sometimes.

I didn't like Caroline Rhea. She wasn't funny and without Rosie, the show missed something.