ABCKelly Ripa may no longer be mad as hell, but it has become quickly apparent that she's not going to take it anymore.
The week of her "return" to Live! With Kelly and Michael is now behind her and today's installment of Masterbeef Theater further confirmed that Ripa has no intention of letting Michael Strahan off the hook before he leaves the show for good in two weeks.
And why should she?
Long gone are the days when a talk show host has to sit back and pretend that life is perfect on set, that the backstage wheeling and dealing has no effect on what occurs in front of the camera. More than ever, what's going on in real life is spilling over into TV land.
Of course, that isn't exactly a new phenomenon. David Letterman famously spilled his guts about an affair and a subsequent extortion attempt during his monologue in what proved to be a brilliant bit of damage control. And Conan O'Brien didn't stay silent when he was caught up in an unexpected game of late-night musical chairs.
But those are a couple of funnymen who had been hosting their own shows for years!
Kelly Ripa has only...
Hmm. She's "only" been co-hosting Live! for 15 years, the last four of them as the lead name in the Live! With tandem. She easily qualifies to compete annually in the "America's Sweetheart" sweepstakes, and she has proved to be the consummate pro.
And yet to this day, despite her being one of the highest-paid TV personalities in the business, the fact that she is acknowledging on the air what went down behind the scenes is still a marvel.
Her candor, her anger, her resilience and her pointed jabs have been applauded and welcomed with open arms to the ringing sounds of "you go, girl!" and "let 'em have it!" (And then there are those who think that she signed away the right to get angry because she makes a lot of money, but that's just silly.)
But despite the support she's getting or controversy she's generating, Kelly's honest reaction is still surprising people. Because while we laughed with Dave and Conan, we're really not all that used to women refusing to come to work in their suits of armor, pretending that nothing gets to them.
Because if they did, it's be more noticeable that they're...women? People who aren't men who also run the gamut of feelings? Men certainly get to sound pissed off all the time on TV, the angrier the better on some shows.
And we admit that we were among the pleasantly surprised when Kelly frankly addressed that she got screwed over (using much more family-show-appropriate language, of course) when she returned to Live! on Tuesday after a few days off, her planned vacation happening to coincide with Michael announcing that he'd be leaving the show to join Good Morning America full-time.
An announcement that was made just moments after Kelly was apprised of the decision, a joint blindside brought to her by Michael and network executives (who reportedly apologized to the both of them for bungling the transaction).
We're used to most of our morning talk being pleasant and uncontroversial, the only real-seeming arguments happening over at The View. But there's safety in numbers there, and if two want to swipe at each other, there are three other hosts to change the subject.
And even if you enjoy a good feud, those aren't the hosts you're trying to win a cruise from.
But it turns out we still want our cruises from Kelly and, for the next two weeks, Michael.
Kelly Ripa has proven once and for all that honest outrage, in all shapes and forms, is better than any canned forgive-and-forget package we've gotten so used to seeing.
We sense that she's not a bully, that she hasn't been teasing Michael Strahan on the daily about his divorce or gleefully bringing up uncomfortable subject matter just to watch him squirm (though in the ongoing game of he-said, she-said, one side is still saying that yes, this is exactly what he's been dealing with for years).
We'd like to think that we would've sussed her out as an evil genius at some point over the past decade, but pending a re-examination of every episode of Live! ever... What we do know is that animosity is a two-way street, so this is not a one-sided story, no matter who gets the other's goat more often.
Regardless, this past week in pop culture, which was fairly incomparable in terms of major female stars letting it all hang out while still carefully managing the brand they've been painstakingly building for years (we're still talking business here), has helped sound the death knell for perky passiveness.
That is not what the people want anymore, even if they hadn't realized they were over it.
No one watching Live! With Kelly and Michael or listening to Beyoncé's Lemonade is unfamiliar with what it feels like to be wronged. And it's so much more gratifying when the women we look up to don't completely B.S. us, but rather let us in on just how hard it gets sometimes.
That no matter how perfect their lives seem, they're dealing with some all-too-real issues, be it infidelity or being discounted in the very work place that you've helped define for the last 15 years.
While it temporarily makes for great TV, no one should want Kelly Ripa to feel uncomfortable around the people she has to see every day, her family away from home. Just as no one wants to think of Beyoncé being miserable while she's bringing others so much joy.
But both ladies proved this week that, even when the overarching mission is to entertain, there are truths that need to be spoken, anger that needs to be aired and wrongs that need to be addressed. The world is ready for honesty. There's just no other way to do it anymore.