CLOSE “I’m so excited; I’m also a little nervous,” she admits as her new show, Megyn Kelly TODAY, premieres. She tells the live studio audience “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” talks about her family and describes events that have shaped her. NBC News’ Megyn Kelly TODAY 
 
 Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly prepares for her morning debut on NBC's 'Megyn Kelly Today.' (Photo: Peter Kramer, NBC) 
 
 Megyn Kelly is "done with politics for now." 
 
 The host opened Monday's inaugural episode of Megyn Kelly Today, the 9 a.m. hour of NBC's Today show, with that declarative statement. She noted that politics are everywhere, infused into every facet of our lives, and her new morning show would be far more focused on "fun." 
 
 It was a bit of necessary rebranding for the former Fox News anchor, who made her name diving into politics headfirst on the cable news channel, to enter the more lifestyle-focused world of morning TV. 
 
 Minus politics, Monday's premiere was a blend of personal stories from Kelly, an audience Q&A, celebrity interviews and an "inspirational" field piece to close out the hour. 
 
 More: 'Megyn Kelly Today': 'It's not going to be the Trump channel,' she promises 
 
 The combination is tricky, and the first episode was a bit awkward. Like any new series, Megyn has some growing pains, and that was apparent in missed cues, clumsy seating arrangements and some stiffness from Kelly, who, whether because of nervousness or her attempts to develop a new tone, speaks with a strange cadence. 
 
 And even an hour of the Today show cannot divorce itself from politics entirely. Her first guests were the cast and creators of NBC's returning Will & Grace, which, as Kelly repeatedly explained, was a groundbreaking show for LGBTQ representation on television. Kelly focused on the impact the series had on that community, except she only mentioned "gays and lesbians," and, in an ill-timed joke that didn't land, asked a superfan in the audience, "Is it true you became a lawyer and gay because of Will & Grace"? 
 
 Kelly also devoted a segment to an elderly nun working against gun violence on the south side of Chicago, an area that Kelly called "like a war zone." Chicago's gun violence is another issue that's been politicized, particularly by President Trump, but her focus is on the feel-good aspect of the nun's "Peace Garden," and her efforts to bring the mothers of violence victims and perpetrators together. While that serves its own purpose, it doesn't make the issue entirely apolitical. 
 
 That, perhaps, is the biggest hurdle. She can say that she's done with politics, but the subject is (by her own admission) everywhere, and side-stepping it won't make it go away. The show will get better at staging and timing as it goes on, but a purpose is something harder to refine. 
 
 There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues. Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance. 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2yoaoHg ||||| Megyn Kelly isn’t playing politics anymore – at least not on camera. 
 
 The former Fox News anchor vowed to put aside the hard-edged interviewing style that made her famous and turned her energy Monday full-bore into the launch of a new morning program, in one of the bigger bets NBC has made on a single talent since, perhaps, it named an unknown Conan O’Brien in 1993 to succeed David Letterman at the helm of its wee-hours “Late Night” franchise. 
 
 Kelly told a live studio audience in the opening moments of her new “Megyn Kelly Today” that “I’m kind of done with politics for now,” and said she hoped instead to help viewers “get yourself through the day, to have a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear – and maybe a little hope to start your day. Some fun! That’s what we want to be doing.” 
 
 The mission represents a marked change for the popular news host whose prosecutor-like style in Fox News Channel’s primetime made her a star. Kelly has no experience hosting a morning program of this sort, and just months ago was anchoring a Sunday-night newsmagazine program on NBC that at times proved polarizing. But she put all of that in the rear-view mirror Monday as she re-introduced herself to the audience, talking about her upstate New York roots and introducing her husband and mother to the in-studio crowd and the audience at home. It’s a technique that was put to good use by NBC colleague Jimmy Fallon in the opening moments of his run on the network’s late-night franchise “Tonight.” 
 
 Related NBC Touts Megyn Kelly’s Softer Side in Bid to Launch New Morning Show To Lure Ad Dollars, NBC Tied Megyn Kelly to ‘Today’ 
 
 NBC is packaging Kelly as part of its “Today” empire. She’s coming on after colleagues Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie deliver most of the headlines – and a lot of lighter fare, as well. And she’s on before Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford start sipping wine and delving into less serious topics. As the rest of the “Today” anchors came on set to toast her, Kelly offered the assemblage mimosas, meant to represent a transition between the wake-you-up coffee served on the show’s first two hours and the alcohol consumed in its last. But there was no talk of current events: No reference to the devastation in Puerto Rico, or the protests that took place over the weekend across the nation’s various NFL games. 
 
 Kelly has long harbored ambitions of filling in the space in the TV-news business once occupied by Barbara Walters or Oprah Winfrey. “Diane Sawyer left her anchor role. Oprah has moved to the OWN network and is doing a different thing now. So why not me?” she told Variety during an interview in 2015. 
 
 On Monday, she dove into the role, hosting a multi-segment visit with the cast of “Will & Grace,” the popular NBC sitcom that is getting a reboot this season. She bantered with the rest of the “Today” crew in a taped segment that had Kelly biking to work with Al Roker, and getting advice from Kathie Lee Gifford (“Be authentic!”) as she sat in the makeup chair. The show ended with a long field piece that had Kelly journey to the Windy City to meet a 77-year-old Chicago nun who was working diligently to improve a tough neighborhood. Sister Donna Liette and some of her supporters also joined Kelly in the studio. The title of the segment, “Settle For More,” is borrowed from Kelly’s recent memoir, and looks as if it might be a regular feature on the show about people trying to improve their situation in life. “If you want change, you must seek it,” Kelly told the crowd. 
 
 NBC managed to weave promotional support from advertisers into the opening program – much like Oprah Winfrey did over the years. And while there was no mass giveaway of new cars to the in-studio crowd, as Winfrey did in 2004 when she gave free Pontiacs to more than 250 audience members, Kelly was able to offer one man a free trip to California to see a “Will & Grace” taping, courtesy of United Airlines. Coldwell Banker and Ace Hardware coughed up checks on stage to help Sister Liette continue her work. Unilever and General Mills were among the sponsors running multiple commercials during Kelly’s debut. 
 
 Daytime TV is notoriously difficult, and reliable operatives including Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira have faced headwinds in their attempts to launch programs similar to Kelly’s. NBC is clearly hoping the force of her personality and an inspirational backstory lend the host an edge – not the polarizing kind – with a broader audience that it was reaching with the previous inhabitant of the 9 a.m. timeslot. 
 
 Will Kelly be able to maintain the lighter, inspirational tone of her debut in a swirling news cycle that seems utterly consumed with politics and cultural clashes? Will she want to bring her hard-news chops to bear now and again? The magic of a morning program is that it always has another broadcast waiting in the wings that might allow its host to try those ideas out. ||||| Megyn Kelly launched her daytime makeover on Monday with "Megyn Kelly Today," conspicuously trying to reintroduce herself in the mold of Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres -- complete with a caffeinated, cheering studio audience -- while establishing distance from her time as a Fox News anchor. 
 
 It's absurdly early, of course, to draw any conclusions about the efficacy of the Kelly experiment. Still, after tepid marks for her prime time newsmagazine and now her addition to "Today," it's worth considering that NBC News brass leapt at the opportunity to snag a high-profile news star without having fully thought through how best to deploy her. 
 
 Related: Megyn Kelly turns to daytime for a shot at her own 'Oprah effect' 
 
 Wasting no time, Kelly opened the show by essentially seeking to reintroduce herself in this new role, complete with a mission statement and biography, which included discussing the sudden death of her father when she was a teenager. 
 
 "The truth is I am kind of done with politics for now," she stated, citing the show's objective as providing the audience a place to share "a laugh with us, a smile, sometimes a tear, and maybe a little hope to start your day." 
 
 Given that she was best-known for combatively grilling guests (HBO's John Oliver provided a montage on Sunday) before her run-ins with then-candidate Donald Trump, hope is certainly a change for Kelly. But there she was mounting a charm offensive -- fielding questions from the audience, receiving flowers from her husband and warmly yukking it up with the cast and producers of "Will & Grace," in an interview that wouldn't have looked out of place on any other daytime talk show or "Access Hollywood." 
 
 Related: Megyn Kelly makes the case for Alex Jones interview 
 
 The same tone characterized a taped piece in which the "Today" team introduced Kelly to her new gig, which simply felt like a hurried attempt to soften the image of the franchise's newest host by adding her to NBC's morning family. 
 
 Kelly closed with "Settle for More," a segment designed to provide moments of hope and uplift -- the premiere's focus was a Chicago nun, who received some lovely gifts from sponsors -- but which simultaneously promotes her book. 
 
 Kelly told the New York Times that the morning program is "the show that I was born to do. This is what I was meant to do." That sense of mission, of purpose, would only seem to ratchet up the self-imposed pressure, as if much more was needed given NBC's high-stakes investment in her. 
 
 Kelly is a polished interviewer. Yet whatever her interests and concerns about psychic health, it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it. 
 
 In the aforementioned taped segment, which was followed by a welcoming toast from the "Today" crew, Kelly asked Kathie Lee Gifford for the secret to success in daytime. Her answer: "Being authentic." 
 
 Based on first impressions, Kelly is working awfully hard at being herself. And as they say in TV, if she can fake that, the rest should be easy. ||||| Kelly's much-anticipated new show, 'Megyn Kelly Today,' debuted Monday. 
 
 Megyn Kelly, in a series of prelaunch interviews, has been very clear about the show she wants to run every day at 9 a.m. on NBC — one that's light on politics but heavy on inspiration and fun. She followed through on that early vision with the Monday morning launch of Megyn Kelly Today, which replaces the 9 a.m. hour of Today. 
 
 "As you heard, we have the entire cast of Will & Grace live, along with the show creator," Kelly told her live studio audience. "And then we'll be dissecting the latest tweet from President Trump! Oh, wait! We will not be doing that. The truth is, I’m kind of done with politics for now. I know. You know why, right? We all felt it, it's everywhere. And it's just gotten so dark." 
 
 The first episode of the show felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly. 
 
 Her mother was in attendance, as was her husband, who came out from the audience and gave her a bouquet of roses. Kelly said her husband, unlike her, is "not a TV person" and "likes his privacy." 
 
 Kelly began the show by talking about her background and telling the story of losing her father to a heart attack at the age of 15. "We didn't have a lot of money, but we did have a lot of love and a ton of honesty," the former Fox News anchor said. 
 
 Kelly also received a very warm welcome from the entire Today show family. In a taped segment, she rode a tandem bike to work with Al Roker and cooked an omelet with Matt Lauer, who earnestly seemed excited to have Kelly as a colleague. "I wish you success, honey," 10 a.m. co-host Kathie Lee Gifford told her. "Mostly, I wish you joy." 
 
 Later, the cast of Today came out and held a mimosa toast to Kelly, who had said in a New York Times story last week that "if you had to put a drink on my show, it would be a mimosa." Lauer led the toast, and said, "Here's the newest addition to our family. Here's to many happy mornings. Here's to Megyn Kelly Today." 
 
 Kelly interviewed the entire cast of the rebooted NBC show Will & Grace, and, like a good morning show host, asked at many points, "What did that feel like?" In another dose of corporate synergy, Kelly will have the cast of This Is Us on Tuesday morning's show. ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE It looks like Megyn Kelly will go up against big dog '60 Minutes,' but it might not be as crazy as it sounds. Buzz60 
 
 Megyn Kelly moved from Fox News to NBC, where her debut will be as anchor of 'Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly,' a summer newsmagazine. (Photo: Brian Doben, NBC) 
 
 
 
 
 
 NBC poached Fox News star Megyn Kelly primarily for a new morning companion for the Today show, locked in a fierce ratings race against Good Morning America and the growing CBS This Morning. 
 
 But before the hour premieres this fall, Kelly will make her first appearance on NBC in a new summer newsmagazine, Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly, due June 4 (7 ET/PT). She'll anchor the show and report some of its three weekly segments, while others will be tackled by NBC News correspondents including Harry Smith, Kate Snow and Cynthia McFadden. 
 
 Kelly promises "a mix of hard-hitting pieces that are somewhat explosive and news-making with more inspirational longer-form profiles and stories," and says the combination represents "a new form of journalism for me." 
 
 She left Fox News (which fought to keep her) in January, and won't elaborate on the discussion in her book Settle for More on the network's late chief Roger Ailes, or the fallout from his ouster — and later Bill O'Reilly's — amid sexual harassment charges. 
 
 Kelly earned a reputation (and high ratings) there as the hard-charging host of The Kelly File: She confronted Karl Rove on election night 2012, when he claimed Barack Obama's re-election was uncertain, and sparred with Donald Trump in a 2015 presidential primary debate, leading him to call her a "lightweight" and remark "there was blood coming out of her wherever." But in May 2016, critics complained Kelly fawned over the candidate in a Fox broadcast-network special, seen as a template for a new role for which she viewed Oprah Winfrey as a model. 
 
 "In some interviews I’ll be hard-hitting," she said last week, "but I’ve been amazed at the number of times I’ve cried already in doing these sit-downs, and that's another form of me that I think people are less familiar with." 
 
 Kelly, 46, is in Russia moderating a Friday discussion with President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, portions of which will air June 4; another segment sends Smith to Kenya to explore a new effort to stop elephant poaching using anti-terrorist techniques. Also in early episodes are Kelly sit-downs with Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews and J.D. Vance, author of 2016 bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a chronicle of his white working-class Appalachian upbringing that echoed a core group of Donald Trump supporters. 
 
 Megyn Kelly, left, expects to do more "long-form" journalism at her new home on NBC, like this Fox News interview with Duggar family members in 2015. (Photo: AP) 
 
 Andrews, a former ESPN reporter and the victim of a stalker who secretly videotaped her nude through a hotel peephole, is "an amazing person with an incredible story," Kelly says. "I was amazed at the connection I felt with her by the time that thing was over, and uplifted by it because it’s rare in our jobs … that you feel something powerful" in an interview. And she called her conversation with Vance "an incredible exchange. He’s got his rap down; he knows what he wants to say about the Rust Belt and the working class, but this interview breaks through all that." 
 
 But Kelly says Sunday Night won't be celebrity focused, and David Corvo, senior executive producer of prime-time news, says Kelly's experience as an interviewer will differentiate the hour: "She has a distinctive style and rapport with the audience," he says. The format "was something she wanted; she felt like this was a kind of journalism she had not done in her career," apart from occasional profiles like the one she did of the Duggar family in 2015. 
 
 The newsmagazine, which joins the long-running Dateline NBC, will air for 10 weeks this summer, competing against reruns of 60 Minutes, until the NFL season begins in late August. NBC expects to return it to the schedule in March, after the Winter Olympics, though it "will be a challenge" juggling with the morning show, Corvo says. 
 
 And this fall will bring Kelly's new morning show, due at 9 a.m. ET/PT, that she's planning with her longtime Fox News producer Debra Murphy. Kelly describes it as an "empowering, inspiring, entertaining, informative mix that doesn’t take itself too seriously but also brings people the news they need to know." 
 
 Megyn Kelly readies for her June 4 debut on NBC, where she'll host newsmagazine 'Sunday Night,' and this fall, a morning show. (Photo: Brian Doben, NBC) 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2rnvFkv ||||| It isn’t that far from Fox News to NBC News—geographically, at least. The two kingdoms stand separated just by a hop and skip across the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan: Fox News on the west side of 47th and 48th streets, and on the east side there is Rockefeller Center, land of the Peacock. 
 
 It may as well be an ocean. Culturally and tonally the two could not be more divergent, which made Megyn Kelly’s vitriolic, spiteful, and vengeful attack against Jane Fonda on her NBC show on Monday a blast from a familiar past. 
 
 In her attack on Fonda, resulting from their uncomfortable on-screen encounter a few months back when Fonda declined to discuss her plastic surgery, the old Megyn Kelly, the Fox News Megyn Kelly, was suddenly back. The problem is, she sounds nothing like the rest of the Today show, and what the hell does NBC do about that? 
 
 Does it let Kelly carry on, operating as a rogue mean-girl state, or does it try to get her back to the new, warm, happy Kelly she sold us at the beginning of her time at NBC? 
 
 On Monday, taking vicious aim at Fonda, Kelly was spitting venom within the confines of a network and franchise that prizes “family” and smiles and easy laughter about viral videos (at 8:10 a.m.), exercise routines and easy casseroles above settling acrimonious scores. 
 
 On screen, at least. The Ann Curry dismissal, the Matt Lauer scandal, rumors of anchors at odds: All are fascinating because they are at such a variant to the images of amity on screen. But to viewers, every day, whatever is going on backstage is kept there. And hosts definitely do not turn on guests. 
 
 On Monday, Kelly said Fonda’s plastic surgery was “hard to ignore” and that the actress had discussed her surgery “pretty much everywhere” before coming on Megyn Kelly Today. 
 
 Kelly’s complaint, which was frankly embarrassing for a journalist to whine about publicly, was, stripped of its snarling: “Jane Fonda told all those folks about it. Why didn’t she tell me?” 
 
 Clearly, what she perceives as her own public humiliation, first on live TV at Fonda’s hands and now many weeks later with people still talking about it, rankles Kelly. 
 
 She said Fonda has talked about the kerfuffle in subsequent interviews. To be clear: Fonda has talked in the sparest terms about the incident, when asked. She hasn’t gone out of her way to do it. Every time she does, it looks like she has smelled skunk piss. 
 
 Last week, she joked about it on Today, in response to something her Grace and Frankie co-star Lily Tomlin said. 
 
 It is not, as Kelly maintained, Jane Fonda who has been unable to forget what Megyn Kelly said to her, it is Megyn Kelly, and so on Monday Kelly decided to attack her. 
 
 “ The viciousness really kicked in when Kelly trashed Fonda’s activities in Vietnam in the 1970s. ” 
 
 Kelly disingenuously dressed up Fonda’s brisk dismissal of her as Fonda having rejected Kelly’s oh-so-generous invitation to “empower other women.” 
 
 Please. Kelly wanted Fonda to dish on her plastic surgery to generate her own headlines, which—as Kelly might say—is “just fine too.” 
 
 The viciousness really kicked in when Kelly trashed Fonda’s activities in Vietnam in the 1970s. 
 
 A peeved journalist who didn’t get the scoop about an actress’ plastic surgery decided to attack the same actress for a controversy that is over 45 years old. It was hardly like for like, and Kelly’s attack seemed strange, overwrought and bizarrely nasty. The timing couldn’t have been worse, coming so soon after reports of backstage bullying and upset revealed by a former show writer last week. 
 
 It seems so long ago that Kelly was promising, on the first edition of Megyn Kelly Today last September, that she was “done with politics.” 
 
 “You know why,” she said to the audience. You know, she meant: all the Donald Trump stuff, the feud that took her beyond the bounds of Fox News anchor fame into another celebrity and wage-earning realm of cultural significance. 
 
 The Fox News Megyn Kelly, who had derided the idea of a black Santa, who had spoken, in racially charged terms, about the New Black Panthers, who had, as my colleague Asawin Suebsaeng catalogued, indulged in Muslim-baiting, and many other grubby dog-whistle controversy-generating moments—was now changed. 
 
 “It’s gotten so dark,” Megyn Kelly bemoaned of the current cultural climate in that first Megyn Kelly Today episode. Who was she to judge if you had a drink at night to chat about that day’s events that she would chew over, folksy-like, on the show. 
 
 Who was Megyn Kelly to judge? 
 
 “It’s inappropriate,” the all-new, non-judgey, NBC-smiling, and warm Megyn Kelly said. 
 
 With her new show, she assured us, you would “laugh and smile,” maybe cry a bit, and maybe there would be “a little hope.” 
 
 There would also be, she announced in that strange staccato way of hers, making the softest of words sound like the harshest command, “some fun.” 
 
 “For years I had dreamed of hosting a more uplifting show,” she told us. 
 
 Just imagine, she seemed to be saying: she was actually trapped at 1221 Avenue of the Americas, all those years of race-, liberal- and all other kinds of baiting not being her. She was simply the victim of the noxious Fox News ideological chemicals in the air. 
 
 Now, she told NBC viewers, she was settling for more time with her family—who had not been central to her Fox show at all—and “more joy in life.” 
 
 Megyn Kelly Today’s mission would be “to deliver hope and optimism and inspiration and empowerment…” And then that harsh command again: “And to have fun!” 
 
 That didn’t work out so well. Viewers watching the show since have watched a wild and transfixing daily ride of tabloid horrors and decorating tips, with the truly bizarre “Megyn’s Month of Merry” in December, which saw her giving pretty lame Christmas gifts away, with an in-studio train and elf. 
 
 At 8:30 a.m. every morning, when she appears with the rest of the Today crew to flag up what’s coming at 9 a.m. out on the plaza, her cries of “Megyn’s Month of Merry!” became their own joke. 
 
 But then her announcements of in-depth interviews with sex trafficking victims, or Matt Lauer sexual harassment accusers, sound wildly off-brand too. Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb beam as toothily as they can, and hand desperately over to Al Roker to do the weather. 
 
 “ The kinder, gentler Megyn Kelly has been substituted for the headline-hungry scandal hunter. ” 
 
 As I have written before, the #MeToo scandals flowing from Harvey Weinstein have given Kelly the focus her show needed. She enjoys this zone, she enjoys the scoop, she enjoys the crusade, she likes goodies and baddies. 
 
 But this vituperative arena isn’t the focus she sold for her show. It isn’t the focus that NBC imagined for the show. The kinder, gentler Megyn Kelly has been substituted for the headline-hungry scandal hunter. She does not seem part of the “Today show family,” as Guthrie calls it. When they all go to the Winter Olympics, she will stay in New York, serving up more dark tales of dysfunction and excellent home office decoration tips. 
 
 Today’s 9 a.m. hour under Kelly is now a true television curio: After whatever sexual abuse or trauma tale has been related at the top of the hour recedes, it’s like Frankenstein’s monster receives a bolt of electricity, and the rest of the show features heartwarming stories of personal redemption or success against the odds, travel tips, and food segments (which, Kelly, gratifyingly does not even pretend to care about). 
 
 Her attack on Jane Fonda was absolutely the Megyn Kelly her Fox viewers knew. But it may not be the Megyn Kelly her NBC viewers, and bosses, will care to know. She was roundly criticized on The View and The Talk; Twitter seems to think she acquitted herself badly. 
 
 The thing is, without the vicious attack, Megyn Kelly could have quite reasonably told viewers that she was just doing her job that morning. She’s a TV show host, she wants the scoop, she wants the tabloids to pick it up and give the show some publicity. Her guest had had plastic surgery. She wanted to ask about it. That’s OK. The problem began with an inelegant approach to the question—perhaps born of first week nerves. Second problem: The guest didn’t take the bait. Then Kelly’s critics leapt on it. 
 
 Result: humiliation. Secondary result all these weeks later: Kelly’s misconceived revenge from the ashes of that humiliation. 
 
 Celebrities and their agents will likely give Kelly a wide berth. What does NBC think of this mean outlier, this island of nasty, breaking up the 7 to 11 a.m. ocean of bonhomie? Incidents like the Fonda attack may bring headlines, but it will unlikely bring the viewers Kelly needs at 9 a.m. 
 
 “You’ll know who I am by the songs that I sing,” Kelly said in that first edition of Megyn Kelly Today, quoting John Denver’s song, “Today.” 
 
 For sure, and it turns out that for Megyn Kelly, they are some very old songs.
– Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly made her debut Monday as a morning-TV host, declaring that she's "kind of done with politics for now" and instead focusing on more lighthearted fare, reports Variety. (See video here.) Kelly is hosting the 9am slot of the Today show on NBC, and Monday's show included the cast of the rebooted Will & Grace and a feature on a nun fighting gun violence in Chicago. So how did show No. 1 go? A sampling of reviews: Warm and fuzzy: Episode No. 1 "felt like something of a coming-out party for the new, warmer Kelly," writes Jeremy Barr at the Hollywood Reporter. Especially when her husband emerged to give her flowers. Kelly also spoke emotionally about the death of her father when she was a teenager, notes People. Better balance? At USA Today, Kelly Lawler writes that the episode was a "bit awkward" as Kelly, who displayed "some stiffness" at times, transitioned into her new role. "There's a difference between choosing to focus on lifestyle and entertainment over political news, and ignoring the fact that politics exist in everyday issues," she writes. "Megyn Kelly Today would do well to strike a better balance." Questionable strategy: Brian Lowry at CNN also found the debut a little awkward. He cautions that it's too early to draw conclusions, but writes that it seems NBC landed Kelly without a clear sense of how to make use of her talents. What's more, "it's at best questionable to introduce a show that so consciously seeks to create space between itself and serious news at a moment when there's such an abundance of it." Harsh take: At the Washington Post, Hank Steuver delivers a particularly negative review. "The debut was like watching a network try to assemble its own Bride of Frankenstein, using parts of Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Ripa and whatever else it can find," he writes. Kelly "moved stiffly" and "interviewed people nervously and so awkwardly that they were cowed into giving monosyllabic answers. She also never missed an opportunity to talk about herself." Ouch.