audience going Down Under
No, she did not announce that cable TV's Oprah Winfrey Network coventure with Discovery was all just a bad dream and that she would not be quitting her talk show after all at the end of this, its 25th season, to focus on that new network and would instead continue her reign over the kingdom of daytime.
Instead, Oprah announced, on The First Episode of Her Final Season, that she would take the entire, 300strong, carefully picked "Oprah" superfans who were in the studio audience, to Sydney for an eightday visit in December.
Did she make this confettidropping announcement to make sure she gets a warm studio welcome when she tapes a couple 2013 black friday uggs of episodes Down Under for this, her last season, before turning all her attention to her cable network coventure with Silver Springbased Discovery?
We're not sure what was the other heartpounding, headspinning surprise. It might have been John Travolta coming out onstage at the top of the show, which had the Oprah Uber Fans on their feet, screaming and gasping and clasping their hands to their mouths and chests. Travolta, Oprah explained, was voted the show's alltime favorite guest he has put in 11 appearances over the years.
"If I may be so bold as to speak for the public, speak for the black friday uggs world, Oprah, there's only one of you and there will never be another," Travolta gushed.
"Oh, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!" Oprah emoted.
(Travolta, Oprah told her audience, is a pilot with Qantas, which is among the sponsors footing the bill for the Sydney trip.)
The other surprise might have been the six fans from Boston who were sent by Oprah's BFF Gayle King on a road trip to Chicago to attend the season debut, but were "tricked" into driving right onto the stage after being told the debut would happen the next day.
"This isn't what I was going to wear!" wailed one of the Boston Oprah diehards.
We're pretty sure it wasn't Don Johnson's walkon, which allegedly came as a surprise to Oprah, while she was reminding her fans how she failed to land the nowsemiwashedup, thenveryhot "Miami Vice" star as a guest on the first episode of her show.
"Ho, they didn't! No, they, no, no, no, no! Didn't! No, they didn't!" Oprah screeched about her staff pulling a fast one.
"Oh, no! No! No!" she added for good measure.
And if it reminded Johnson how far he'd fallen relative to how far she'd climbed, so much the better. Johnson insisted he'd wanted to be Oprah's guest that very first day, but owing to "Vice's" 1820 houraday shooting schedule, "they wouldn't let me come."
On the other hand, the second surprise might have been what Oprah's staff had prepared for Monday's Very Last Season Debut, in which Paul Simon came out onstage to play an updated version of a song, the audience was told, he wrote for Oprah 15 years ago for her 10th anniversary show.
It definitely came as a heartpounding, headspinning surprise to us that Simon was in a place, 15 years ago, in which he thought writing ditties for Oprah's syndicated talk show was a good career move.
Why won't "The BIG O" go "down under" to her home state of Miss? Why not do her last show down near her roots and deal with some of the real "black and white" human issues there? Glad she is leavingone big distractionbut we all know that "The BIG O" isn't going anywhere. She'll continue to "dance with the ones what brung her," and continue her folly of relevancy. I never understood why folks loved O so much except that white folks viewed her as their Exhibit A, for "why can't all black folks be like Oprah" and somehow escape oppression and repression, a la don't have any black kids and don't marry a black mantheir shining example of a "purified" black woman. I never saw O as an example of much of anything worth emulating. Her wealth was quite accidental, nothing she did on her own, just right place, right time, good advisors who handled every nuance of her life. What I remember most is that early on Shirley McClaine told Oprah that she needed to keep her show mostly about white causes and that is precisely what she did to stay vital to Hollywood. I'm a black woman and I have never "hated" O. I have found her to be quite phony and rather shallow. So, she taking a bunch of suckups down under? What I really want to know is why she has such tightlipped controls over her former employees? What is that all about? What big secrets do they harbor? I say Big Ojust go away. There are so many other worthy causes! I lost interest in Oprah years ago. She holds herself out as a paragon of morality when she has been living out of wedlock with Stedman for more than 25 years.