Oprah's World.(Television program review)

"Oprah's Big Give": it's the name of Oprah Winfrey's new Sunday-night prime-time show--a reality show in which contestants are challenged to give money away in creative ways--but, beyond that, it's a neat three-word summation of what Winfrey stands for, what she's achieved in her career, and the image of her in many people's minds. Let's start with the last of these words. "Give": that's what Winfrey does, though the way she usually puts it is that she "gives back." And, like so many of her common touches, it makes people love her even more, because they know that she wasn't given anything to begin with. Giving--whether it's love, money, hope, inspiration, shopping tips, or a car--is why she's here. (Winfrey is one of those people who are able to believe that they were put here for a reason.) "Big": what is there about Winfrey that isn't big? Her personality, her gestures, her voice, her dreams, her empire (she's worth two and a half billion dollars), her own solid physical self, her confidence, her talent--all very big. "Oprah's": You name it, she owns it, and her name is on it. It's hers. Among the possessive trademarks that Winfrey controls are Oprah & Friends, Oprah's Angel Network, Oprah's Book Club, Wildest Dreams with Oprah, The Oprah Store, Oprah Boutique, and Oprah's Favorite Things. The design of the letter "O" used in the title of her magazines, O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home, is trademarked. Leave it to Winfrey to have a trademark on the letter that's the symbol for the element oxygen; it's as if she owned the very air we breathe--not to mention that she was a co-founder of the TV network Oxygen, and that, it was announced two months ago, she is starting up a new venture called the Oprah Winfrey Network, whose acronym is OWN. Snap! Go to Oprah.com and sign up to join "Oprah's world," and stay on top of all her activities, which are taking place everywhere, all the time: on TV (her talk show is seen in more than a hundred countries), on the Internet, in movies, in bookstores, on Broadway, on newsstands, in South Africa at her school for young girls, in New Orleans reporting on Hurricane Katrina's devastation, in Des Moines endorsing Barack Obama. And yet nothing and no one is neglected: Winfrey is simultaneously celebrating those who came before her (such as the twenty-five notable African-American women she honored at a three-day gala a few years ago), those who will come after her (kids who get off their butts and do things), or perhaps--in her teahouse on her estate in California, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with her cocker spaniel Sophie--herself. Winfrey's reach does have its limits. As of this writing, she owns only one planet, and Chicago hasn't been renamed for her, but these are early days; she's only fifty-four years old.

Winfrey has been an occasional presence in prime time, producing and, sometimes, acting in TV movies. Those are one-shot deals; with "Oprah's Big Give," she's entered a competitive field, where even a show that's attempting to do good must also do well, though it's not as essential here as it might be for other shows. There are only eight episodes, and even if the ratings go down--which they did, to a not insignificant degree, in the second week--would you cancel Oprah's show if you were ABC? No, I didn't think so. But, even if the series ends after one go-round, Winfrey can rejigger the gimmick of people giving away money to strangers--and it is a gimmick, for better and for worse--for use on her talk show; it would not be uncharacteristic of her to repackage her mistakes as learning opportunities for viewers.

And mistakes there are. Surprisingly, given the generally seamless appearance of Oprah's manifold enterprises, in which a variety of pursuits and, often, divergent values (consumerism and altruism) are fused in the melting warmth of her generosity, "Oprah's Big Give" stands out as a weird, misbegotten creature that perhaps shouldn't have been taken out in public. Winfrey's idea was to spread the spirit of giving across the land--a spirit that through her numerous philanthropic undertakings she has embodied to an extraordinary degree, transforming, in ways both concrete and intangible, the lives of countless people. Winfrey rarely fails to live up to her inspirational image; when she does, it's news. Two years ago, it became known that James Frey, a writer whose memoir she had touted, had embellished and invented some facts in the book; Oprah made it clear that she felt betrayed. When Frey went on her show to apologize, the nation watched as Winfrey skinned, gutted, and filleted him, basted him with vitriol, and baked him in a 10,000* oven for one hour.

Frey's transgressions didn't fit Oprah's usual kind of story line, and it threw her off. Most of the time, viewers are left with little choice but to respond as the story has ordered them, whether it's to cry, buy, or reach for the sky. At the beginning of her talk show the Friday before the premiere of "Oprah's Big ...