And you thought the The View could get crazy on-screen (Joy Behar and Meghan McCain, we’re looking at you). This pull-back-the-curtain story of almost two decades of the groundbreaking talk show delivers ... This is everything a behind-the-scenes book should be—dishy, surprising, and written with the unprecedented help of those who lived it.
With unprecedented access to nearly every host, Setoodeh paints a vivid and informative picture of the highs and lows of the past 20 years from several different perspectives ... With a random array of hosts and plenty of drama to go around, Setoodeh manages to peel back the composed facade viewers see on their screens in order to focus on raw feelings and teetering emotions of those closely involved with The View. Ladies Who Punch is an exciting read that proves there’s always a little soap opera even if a show presents itself as news.
No actual fists are thrown...but this behind-the-scenes takedown of the daytime juggernaut is determined to prove that heated words pack a wallop. Author Ramin Setoodeh, a veteran entertainment reporter and editor, gives Barbara Walters props for creating a multigenerational platform for women, but quickly glosses over that accomplishment, painting the legendary broadcaster as a terrorizing, hopelessly out-of-touch egomaniac who never got over not casting herself as the show’s moderator ... Setoodeh’s decades of covering the program pays off with the kind of details you normally don’t get from the hush-hush world of show business. But his obsession with deep-dish gossip overshadows any attempt to analyze what has made the show so popular and influential.
Ladies Who Punch is gleefully camp, dissolving at times into a bouillabaisse of cliché ... Ladies Who Punch is ultimately an indictment of what television and reality culture does to women—how it draws them in, chews them up, and unceremoniously spits them out. It’s less clear what it’s done to the rest of us.
The show treats politics like a soap opera, and blurs the lines between journalism and opinion ... But here’s another way to look at The View. While its daytime rivals peddled paternity-test brawls and soft-focus celebrity interviews, The View was the show that believed that the audience for daytime television—low-income mothers, mostly—could cultivate an interest in politics and policy ... Ladies Who Punch makes both cases, which is exactly right ... Ladies Who Punch is terrifically fun to read. Setoodeh has been reporting on the show for years, and he knows everyone. The book is studded with juicy little scoops, including firing stories, backstage drama[.]
