The Ricki Lake Show

It was fun to watch for Ricki's fluctuating weight and different levels of fat!

Every summer during the Sixties and Seventies, my parents, four brothers and I enjoyed a relaxing, leisurely vacation on Ricki Lake.

Who is she? Who was she? Who does she hope to be?

The theme music always got me to watch the show. For some reason, this and Jenny Jones were the shows I always watched. Why, I don't know. How many makeovers can one watch. I guess my subconscious already knew I was gay back then.

She really almost beat Oprah?

R5, I do not recall that.

She monopolized the fat frau demographic for a while. The show was hugely successful. She must be incredibly wealthy.

She was, of course, the original (and best) Tracy Turnblad.

Solid #2 for a minute...

I watched aaaalllll the talk shows back in the pre-internet days. Ricki's show was really the most entertaining for a younger audience. I wish I could see all those episodes again.

Ricki's was the first talk show I watched as a kid. Great for learning English. And she was such a natural, no wonder the show ran for as long as it did.

I wish Nosey would air reruns of this.

Did she ever do a tribute to Divine?

It was fun because she was younger than the other talk show hosts. She was more hip and relatable.

Yes as a child. I used to pretend to be sick but was really trying to avoid bullying. I used to watch all of them. Starting with jerry in the morning, Jenny Jones in the afternoon then montell then Ricky. They we’re great. Ricki could be a smug or sanctimonious at times. Her guests were absolute characters. Sometimes a wig would get pulled off. Or they do would do a fat baby episode

I remember some guy I met years ago, a casual bar acquaintance...he and his friends had made like 5K between Springer and Ricki in a year and a half. They were kinda well known for doing that.

Both shows would fly him and his friends to the shows and pay them, so they were like, fuck it, let's pretend! They would make up weird stories. The guy I knew was passable when he dressed up, and went on to one of them to fight with someone - if I remember right two other friends played his sister and her husband and he played the slut who slept w/the husband.

R4 Jenny Jones had two male guests. One admitted he was in love with his straight friend. When they went back home, the straight guy murdered him.

r16 thinks this is brand new information. Bless.

Classic episode. Moments like 3:18 is why I loved watching the Ricki Lake show.

She was the most likeable and the least mean one among the daytime talk show hosts during their heyday. If she ever felt disdain for any of her guests, she never showed it.

Two planes hit the Twin Towers in 2001.

Ricki had the funniest show titles.

Ricki made "Talk to the hand" and "All that and a bag of chips" and "Don't go there" iconic.

She was a horrible host. She would watch the chaos happening on stage with a big dumb look on her face, and wait for the producers to feed her a question. She was never in control of the circus happening in front of her. The demographics were teen and college age girls (and I guess, baby gays)

She once had a show called “You Used To Be Fat! Now You Think You’re All That!”

Yes, it was people complaining that their former doormat friend suddenly grew a spine after shedding extra pounds.

There was a LOT going on in that episode.

The Richard Bey Show probably fed he that inspiration, as they had a "Miss Fat All That" competition.

I liked Ricki but her show wasn't the train wreck that Sally's show became in its few final years.

Tyra Banks was the new Ricki Lake. Her shows were a hot mess. I loved the episode "My Boyfriend does Gay Porn, but says he's Straight"! and it features a young Dean Coxxx and a couple of other recognizable G4P players.

ELEVEN YEARS??? Good God!

[quote]At one point it almost overtook Oprah in terms of ratings.

Ricki Lake was also hugely popular with black people who left Oprah in the dust to watch all the messiness on Ricky Lake.

By the late 90s Oprah was making a huge effort to reconnect with her black audience by having Patti Labelle on 100 times and bringing Iyanla Vanzant to the show.

My cousin was a cameraman on the show so I would go to a taping anytime I would go visit him in NYC. It wasn’t very interesting to be an audience member but he would always make sure I got a closeup when they would show audience reactions. I was in the target demographic for the show but it never appealed to me. Met Ricki once and she was very kind.

I watch Sally on Nosey. Hilarious! Still love that show.

OP, all these years later and I still remember that ridiculously catchy theme song..

R7 Ricki said years ago, she quit the show after a visit to her accountants office when he told her she had cash approaching nearly $400 million dollars.

She said she wanted to end the show while she was still young to enjoy her $$ and raise her children since with that kind of $$ she would be independently wealthy for the rest of her life. Plus she had already been doing the show for 11 years and was ready to move on from it.

Rosie O'Donnell said something similar which is why she ended her talk show too.

r21, "show titties" WTF

r21 You're drunk. No harm, no foul.

This R27

R18, snatched wigs within 4 minutes of the show? Oprah or Ellen could never.

I can't believe Ricki made $400 million off of this trashy show!

The Jane show and Ricki Lake were my trashy go tos in the early 90s!

Ricki made $400MM? Wow!

Go Ricki! Go Ricki! Go Ricki

LOL @ Ricki ever having $400 million. And then she woke up!

Trash generates big $$. Ask the Kardashians, kylie inparticular. So I could absolutely believe it. She was #2 in the ratings right behind Oprah, so its not really that far fetched to believe she walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars from a talk show.

This is America after all.

WHAT-evah! WHAT-evah! You don't know me!

TALK TO THE HAND

R17, it was a recollection. Not everyone here is old enough to have seen "The Jenny Jones Show."

She actually wasn't bad. Somewhere between Jenny Jones and Oprah. But without Oprah's gravitas and connections, she could only go so far.

Fashion has changed!

The Ricki Lake show was one of the first talk shows to cater to the young urban audience. (I say urban because while there were a lot of black and latino kids, there were a lot of young hip hop white kids never seen before Eminem) And it was the first show to bring the ratchet.

Yeah Ricki Lake was pivotal to the reality-ratchet TV culture that took off after her show went off the air. Ricki loves her gays too!

And what about ME?

when I would accidentally see her show on tv, I had to grab the puke bucket, her face/voice cause many to retch..

What was the show hosted by the actress who waist "Foxes" with Jody Foster?

She never made $400 million.

What’s the Jane Show?

There was a huge trend of trashy talk shows in the early 90s. Oprah had overtaken Donahue with a salacious format that most forget about after her new age earth mother transformation later that decade. Jerry Springer was an early entry in the trend, along with Sally Jessey Raphael and Jenny Jones. All of these spawned multiple imitators. I think Ricki might have been the first (or one of the first) daytime talk show hosts who crossed over from entertainment. Tempest fucking Bledsoe got a talk show at this time! Fricking Vanessa from the Cosby show! It was really out of hand for a while.

I spent a few years in the UK in the 90s and Ricki's show actually replaced Oprah on one of the networks. Oprah ended up on a cable channel. Ricki was really popular there and is about to be on Celebrity X Factor in the UK.

Richard Bey always had hot men running around in speedos and G-strings. But the scuttlebutt on Bey is that he was gayer than a goose.

OMG, there's a bunch of her episodes on YouTube. I'm regressing, watching one now, imaging it's the mid-90s and I'm home from school dozing off to the hysterical, sophmoric arguments.

R58, if you want to watch others like Sally, Jerry, Geraldo, etc, get Nosey.

Insiders called the show Ricki Fake because the producers would run ads the trades looking for actors to portray people on the show.

Every weekday at 4pm! I didn't miss it for anything. I still remember at the end of each show they'd announce "Join Ricky on America Online..." and I'd think to myself, "What the hell is America Online?"

Sometimes the funniest parts were when the audience members got to stand up and make comments to the guests on the panel. They would really go at it and start hurling ridiculous comments like "you so cheap...look at those Payless shoes!".

R18 was a classic moment. Not just a wig snatching, but a DOUBLE wig snatching where the wig cap also got snatched!

[quote] Not everyone here is old enough to have seen "The Jenny Jones Show."

Honey--most people here are old enough to have seen the SPIKE Jones Show.

[quote] Not everyone here is old enough to have seen "The Jenny Jones Show."

Honey--most people here are old enough to have seen the SPIKE Jones Show.

Does anyone remember Artie the flamer?

She won a Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Talk Show Host.

LICKI RAKE

Those were the days.

I could not understand the appeal of either Ricki Lake or Jenny Jones. Jenny Jones was really passive-aggressive with her big smile. Ricki Lake was nicer but boring, IMO.

Ricki had a dumb show, but she was really sweet. I loved her smile and laugh and when she would occasionally get indignant. She has a lovely speaking voice too. She didn't really earn all that money but she's a nice girl. Good for her.

Of all the talk show hosts, Lake is named the most in pop songs.

It's a lot easier to find a rhyme for "Lake" than it is to find one for "Oprah."

Ricki- I'm gay, you're gay but you give gays a bad name.

I like Ricki, but she was a terrible host. As someone said earlier, she was never really in control of what was happening, and she didn’t listen well enough to ask good questions or to follow up.

Instead, guest after guest was trotted on — because Ricki couldn’t hold a conversation with anybody.

I enjoyed it as trainwreck television.

Didn't they all get overtaken by Jerry Springer when he outtrashed and outghettoed them all?

Ricki- I love him but he's gay.

I love how judgemental talk show audiences are (often black women) like their lives are perfect and not as messy as the guests. Always "you need to blah, blah, blah ... " Shut up!

I think Jodie Foster bought Ricki's apt. in the West Village about a decade ago

You can spot the fake shows where the guests are actors following a script, because it's not the host who moves the plot forward but the guests themselves. Ricky didn't really move the plot forward with her questions. Of course back then, people were a lot more naive and got pulled in with the drama unfolding.

R18 is classic. But the wig snatcher needed her own ugly wig ripped off. That was tragic.

R76 Is a classic DL racist.

I hated her then and still feel the same.

I remember the commercial bumpers that recruited guests. "Are you sleeping with your best friend's dad, and you're tired of keeping it a secret? You can be a guest!"

In the clip at R75, those audience members are homophobic af. Ricki corrects them ("a gay man is a man", "there's nothing wrong with being gay") again and again.

I agree R27. Ricki Lake was the prototype for Tyra Banks and Wendy Williams' shows - youth-oriented with a urban and pop-culture vibe.

Talk show success seems like such a crapshoot. It's so random to me that Ricki Lake found an audience and lasted for over a decade but bigger stars like Roseanne, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Queen Latifah, among others, couldn't duplicate that success.

She blew it with her new show, catering it only to women and trying to make it more highbrow. That's not what we want, Ricki.

But your despicable middle class is dead!

Ricki Lake's show and subsequent shows like Springer also gave people ideas that you can make a living being on talk shows thrn eventually reality shows and the worse you act the better. That's where it started.

Ricki had the guy on who played her love interest in Hairspray. She was in tears because he made her feel pretty when she was so fat.

Buncha "characters" on that show, if ya get my meaning.

Ricki started her talk show when she was 23/24 I believe. So she was really young.

I wonder how she'd fit in on "The View" or "The Talk?"

R89, Do you mean Michael St. Gerard? We had a thread on him several years ago. He left acting to go into Christian ministry. I met him in NYC when I was volunteering at his church. He was a really nice man and very committed to his new life. Don't know if he and Ricki keep in touch.

r24, Thats how trashy talk shows were int he 90s. Fat people knew their place and former fatties should be humble. Shit like that could never rock today or even find an audience thats how PC how culture has become.

Anything went on tv back then. I'm surprised the Jerry Springer show only just ended recently. He's one of the last to go off the air out of all of those trashy early 90s talk shows that actually lasted nearly 20 years into the new mellinnium.

My Maury is still on the air!

He is R96? That's hilarious. Is every episode a DNA reveal?

It's MY hot body and I'll do WHAT I WANT!

[quote]new mellinnium.

Oh, DEAR!

[quote]Ricki made "Talk to the hand" and "All that and a bag of chips" and "Don't go there" iconic.

Don't forget "Kick him to the curb" and "Drop that zero and get yourself a hero!"

You think YOU "all that and a bag of chips"? Well bitch, I am ALL THAT and a 5 pound bag of skittles, so taste my rainbow, bitch! *3 snaps in a Z formation*

Maury has two show topics and the set up is always the same with those on there for DNA results running to a screen and screaming how the baby daddy looks just like the kid. How anyone watches that show with the same script is beyond me. Steve Wilkos is a tad more upscale in that the topics are serious and there’s no chair throwing.