Busy Philipps said goodbye to her E! show Thursday night and it was bittersweet. (I’m sorry it took me a while to cover this but I am a lazy bitch.) We’ve known that E! has not renewed her show after one season, but there’s a lot of hope she’ll get picked up by a streaming service or another network. Busy is a wonderful talk show host who knew so many of her guests personally. She has such a warm down-to-earth style and she can get just about anyone to open up. Plus she’s funny, she tells it like it is, and she had the craziest, most entertaining skits. Her team would pore over guests’ social media and make cute gestures for them, like the time she sat on a bench with Josh Groban to feed ducks, or pretended to climb Mount Everest with Mandy Moore on a stepper. Oh and she did the White Chicks dance with her White Chicks costars! Busy is always herself and that’s what we love about her. She absolutely grew on me the more I watched her show. Busy is one of us. Also, Hecate lives in LA and attended two of her shows. She said they’re so fun.
I wanted to cover some of the segments on Busy’s last two shows, particularly some things she said that rang true to me. In a segment on Wednesday night, she played with that gender switch Snapchat filter everyone has been using lately. I’ve queued up the video below to this part. Her comments about that are hilarious and telling:
Here I am looking like a dude who would get a late night show for at least two years or maybe six. Or that guy gets that show until he calls it. Like 30 years later he’s like ‘I’m good, I have so many cars, I am rich.’ Then he leaves and he’s like ‘I want it again.’ They’re like ‘Please sir, come back, what can we do for you sir with your immense talent that is unparalleled by anyone of the opposite sex.’
Then just a moment later David Letterman calls her personally with a video message! (3:30 in the video above.) Her showrunner Caissie St. Onge used to be his assistant, but you can tell he means it when he says he loves her show, it’s too bad for E! and E! can suck it. Ditto. He also said he would be on her show when it moves. Also Dave said Oprah wouldn’t take his call! (Oprah also called Busy in December, did you see that?)
Busy’s last few guests on Thursday night were friends she’s worked with including her bestie Michelle Williams, Jennifer Carpenter, Linda Cardellini, Christa Miller, and Whitney Cummings. At 4:50 Busy asks Whitney Cummings, “You had a talk show. Would you ever do it again?”
“Not on E!” I actually yelled “Oooh!” out loud when she said that.
They all cried and complimented Busy in another segment and it got me. Linda Cardellini’s comments summed it up. “What people see is the real Busy, it’s the Busy that we all know and it’s not modified for television, it is just truly who you are.” I got choked up watching that part and it made me want to be a better friend.
Then Busy said “There are more men named Todd in the entertainment industry than there are women… I just made that up.” She brought out all the women who work on the show and there were so many!
In her send off message and song, the last she’ll do on that shit network, Busy talked about what she’d learned and gave some great quotes about being true to yourself.
We learned… That it is ok to be passionate about women’s rights but also care about face masks and Bradley Cooper’s bangs. That if you feel like no one gets you, just keep being yourself dude and you will find someone or maybe a lot of someones who do. That a bitch contains multitudes. Taking big risks won’t always pay off the way you think it’s going to, but it will pay off.
Busy we see you, we hear you, and we want more of your awesome show! Also to Hulu, Netflix, or any other network – pick up Busy and we’ll keep covering her interviews as we always do. She is our favorite talk show host by a large margin.
As an aside this show understood the role of writers and critics and they appreciated us. Busy has even retweeted and liked some of my tweets about it. (She did this well after I started enthusing about how awesome she is although of course this made me like her more.)
Anyway, a huge thank you to all the writers who found the show, watched every night & covered what we were doing & talking about over at Busy. We appreciated all the props & even some of the criticism which helped us creatively grow so quickly in such a short time.
— Caissie St.Onge (@Caissie) May 17, 2019
Yet E kept Chelsea Handler going for how long? Though I guess in her case didn’t hurt her BF was the network president,
We talk about that on the Podcast this week. Chelsea’s show lasted for 7 seasons.
I kid you not but a few movies have been shot where I work & I was absolutely astonished that the only women I saw in the crew were sub contracted security. All the crew were young white males. That was about 3 years ago. Total headscratcher tho.
Lol at “Bradley Cooper’s bangs.”
What a bummer for Busy and he show. I hope it gets grabbed up by someone else soon.
I only have one friend left who has cable. Everyone else I know (myself included) has Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc. If a streaming service picked up her show, a lot more people would see it IMO.
I totally agree. I haven’t watched anything on cable since the last time I stayed in a hotel and the WiFi went down.
Agree.
I never watched it on E but if someone else picks her up, I will check it out! Good luck to her and everyone who worked on it.
I love Busy. I think she is funny and genuine. She is like that popular girl in school you want to be friends with and not secretly hate. I wish some network would pick up her show. Or maybe she should try podcasting.
Why so much coverage of this lady? No one watches her show or really cares.
That’s sort of where I am with this woman. I’ve never heard of her Outside the coverage on this site and her sense of entitlement doesn’t sit well with me.
I found her interviewing skills to be really poor and stilted, actually. Lots of obvious teleprompter reading and such. Watching her show made me feel awkward on multiple levels. She seems like a cool person, though.
She may have made up that stat, but there actually ARE more men CEOs named John than there are women CEOs. Ugh.
Yes! I got shades of secondhand embarrassment watching, too! It often felt like she was talking to her friends off camera rather than connecting with the audience, much less the TV viewers. And I felt like many of her guests seemed uncomfortable, too. I think she would have gotten better with more time and I do feel bad for her, but I’m not that upset or surprised.
I tried to watch her show but found it irritating, or at least I found her irritating. Frankly, I thought the show was boring and I hated her singing. Busy had good guests though and it says a lot about her that she has so many women friends who clearly love her. She makes me want to be a better friend too.
Lol I misread the headline and was all, of course there are no women named Todd in entertainment! But then I reread it and her point stands.
I love Busy and EVERYONE loves her. She has such a great personality, and she’s funny! If anyone would have cared, I would have sat on her couch with her! Long Live Busy Tonight!! Please, someone else pick her show up?!?! Then give her whatever platform she wants and she can be a daring or sweet as she wishes. Ugh, we lost a great show. Been following her on insta from Day One for me(about a year and a half on insta). She’s a warrior for women’s heath and a great advocate for Anxiety and mental health.
Yeah, f the E network.
She’s not wrong. I can’t think of a single woman in entertainment named Todd.