Fox's "Five" Should Take Five

After two-and-a-half years of dominating the early-evening leadoff on FoxNews, Glenn Beck bid a typically tearful farewell his audience in June, following a messy public divorce with Fox due to irreconcilable differences.  While the cancellation of Beck's show is surely the greatest loss to American culture since the day they stopped making My Mother the Car, its FoxNews parent is bravely soldiering on with a new series called The FIVE, airing (when else?) at 5pm EST (2pm Pacific), and featuring a panel of five Fox regulars as the series stars.  The program debuted on Monday, following Beck's farewell performance and a (perhaps faintly oxymoronic) "Best of Glenn Beck" marathon the following week, while the new show ramped up.

Any self-respecting political TV junkie can see that whatever resemblance The FIVE might have to the legendary and long-running weeklyThe McLaughlin Group is completely intentional.  Yet it's equally obvious that the two other shows that FoxNews had their eye on when they created this format were ABC's long-running hit The View and CBS's more recent and equally successful homage, The Talk -- both of which feature panels of newswomen, comediennes, and actresses dishing and discussing the events of the day.  (And the format is spreading -- after ABC ankled All My Children and One Life to Live, one of the shows set to replace it is a food show actually titled -- I'm not making this up -- The Chew.

As The FIVE wraps up its first block of five, here are the bullet-points that splintered across the windmills of my mind, as I watched opening week in your service:  (Noah Kristula-Green, previewed the opening night strong>here<.)

** In its industry press release, The FIVE promised to have relatively A-level contributors like Geraldo, Juan Williams, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Monica Crowley.  However, opening week mostly saw a significantly less star-powered group, including Greg Gutfeld, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, and token liberal Bob Beckel. Didn't the ghosts of Hearst and Cronkite (if not Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan) teach them anything?  You always start off with the "grabber" acts, the top-name guests, to pack 'em in and hold 'em there.  Leading off with the B-team isn't exactly a good sign, although Red Eye's Gutfeld is a brash breath of funky air, and sincerely seems to be having a good time.  And the show did have its headline moment -- though not what it likely intended -- when Eric Bolling said that he couldn't think of any terror attacks that happened on the Bush Administration's watch. His less-than-tactful on-air apology, blaming the "pettiness of liberals" who brought the gaffe to his attention, didn't help much either.  (Bolling was also earlier under fire for racially questionable comments he made last month about President Obama.)

** In Noah's look at Monday's premiere, he felt that it came across more as a temporary time-filler than something "with legs" (as they say in industry parlance) to last.  In the grand dueling-critic tradition of At the Movies, on this I must disagree.  While The FIVE as executed needs some kinks worked out of it (and fast), I think this show may be built for the long haul, as FoxNews' way of keeping from putting all of their eggs in one brand-name star's basket.  In the past six months, not only did FoxNews say goodbye to Beck, but MSNBC gave their former flagship Keith Olbermann his final countdown, and CNN emptied Eliot out the Spitzer valve.  At least with five hosts (more, if the other new faces rotate in over the coming weeks), the network doesn't have to worry about any one star getting too big for their britches, or staying on well after they've reached their sell-by date.  If the show is anything approaching a hit (which is a big 'if' at this point), it can also be used as a test-piloting ground for new personalities to see if they have the right stuff for a show of their own -- before offering them that multi-million, multi-year contract.

** FoxNews' target demographic is overwhelmingly older-male, and while I don't have full statistics at hand, I'd venture a very educated guess that even its female authority figures like Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren play to a mainly male audience.  It's funny and campy to see as feminine a format as that of The View and The Talk reworked with mainly Y-chromosomes on the panel.  But they do need to add more ladies more often to the mix -- especially given that the right wing's two most powerful (and possibly Presidential) figures are fundamentalist women.  And if Fox wants to stay true to its brand of "fair and balanced" (even in the FoxNews sense of the phrase) that's not the only diversity day this show needs.  While Juan Williams is one of the scheduled upcoming panelists,The View and The Talk went out of their way to present an ethnically diverse panel.

** Part of the fun (if those shows are your idea of fun) of watching The View and The Talk is watching the regular panelists have fun with an outside guest thrown into the mix (a formula that goes back to the very beginning of TV talk -- remember What's My Line and To Tell the Truth?) The Talk and View gals will fawn over one guest like a visiting royal, and then treat another like a cat toy.  The FIVE's press release also promised "politicians, sports figures, and key newsmakers", but Week 1 was notably short on all of the above. As a Brooklyn waitress would say, I want "one order 'a politicians, sports figures, and key newsmakers, Roger -- stat!"

Of course, the success or failure of The FIVE is small potatoes compared to the other headaches afflicting the News Corporation's news these days.  And Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon long ago cornered the market on "so lame it's funny" post-postmodern shtick, and have the home court advantage.  But as dreadful as the news seems to be these days, both inside and outside the Fox empire, one has to give props to FoxNews for coming up with something that tries for a witty and light touch.  It's a welcome contrast to the overwrought recovering-addict arias and "Lonesome Rhodes" preaching from the program's predecessor.

And if FoxNews plays its cards right -- and other egotistical solo-show hosts and stars keep flaming out into more liabilities than assets -- The FIVE might find itself the wave of the cable future.