Anderson's Love Life By The Door

The NYT Thinks Anderson Cooper Needs To Come Out Of The Closet

Glynnis MacNicol | Sep. 20, 2011, 9:39 AM

New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley reviewedAnderson Cooper's new daytime talk show for the paper this weekend, and while she doesn't go so far as to say it directly, it's hard to miss her point:

If Anderson wants to be successful on the confessional daytime line-up he is going to have to do some confessing of his own.

The coming out of the closet kind.

Certainly, Anderson is allowed to keep his personal life private, but it's increasingly difficult to see how he will accomplish this when in the first week alone he's (selectively) injected so much of it into the show: spray-tanning with Snooki, bedroom scenes with Kathy Griffin, a Real Housewives episode that revealed far more about his personal obsession with the show than it did about the show itself, and most recently a full hour with his mother Gloria Vanderbilt during which Anderson broke down while discussing his brother's suicide.

Stanley writes:

The one thing he hasn’t done yet — and the lacuna grows more obvious and awkward with each show — is talk about his love life. It’s hard to see how he can continue to leave that out selectively and preserve one particular zone of privacy while building a confessional talk show wrapped around his good looks, high spirits and glamorous adventures.

A cynic might suggest Cooper is waiting for October sweeps week for the big reveal. Regardless, it's hard to see how he avoids its absence the most talked-about aspect of the show.

In the meantime, it's worth noting that the show is actually getting better as it goes along and Anderson begins to settle in (helped somewhat by the frequent appearances of Kathy Griffin who appears to have the magic ability to take Cooper's guard down for him).