Chelsea

"I'm finally getting to do the exact kind of show that I've always wanted to do.... What that show is, I have no idea." An unkind commentator might be tempted to second that thought, given "Chelsea's" first-night, new-colt wobbles, but it's pointless to be too hard on any talk show on its premiere, even when the host has a long track record. ... Overall, it was an appealing debut.

It was overstuffed with some awkward introductions and anxiety over first impressions, and because of that sometimes a little boring. ... The premiere is often very fun, especially when Handler’s eye-roll-driven plain-talking sense of humor slips in off the cuff. (At one point she laughs directly into Pitbull’s face.) But it didn’t probe in the way we’ve been sold, and still expect from future episodes.

Even though she’s been given a get-out-of-jail-free pass from Netflix, Handler still chooses the same conventional structure that everyone else has. There are pre-recorded bits. There are interviews. Handler plays games with guests and stages silly moments meant to create memes.

If Chelsea does anything new, it's the same new thing every show has been forced into, now that stars can skip talk shows and use social media to talk directly to fans.

Through its first three episodes, Chelsea is a pretty straight-forward talk show with occasional sparks of interest and needless shadings of self-dismissal.

Chelsea may be off to a shaky start, but for those who want to wait for the show to find its feet before checking out some episodes, there should be an interesting backlog of segments in a few weeks. It might not exactly overhaul the late-night format, but few shows are in a better position to do so.

There was no follow-up. There was no deeper layer. There was just an inexplicable musical guest, on stage talking over a few repeated chords rather than providing a full-out, artistic performance. Why? Well, "Chelsea" is still figuring that out.

Not that there’s anything wrong with talk, even if Chelsea wants to be seen as something different. Ms. Handler seemed more at ease chatting with her guests--and often interrupting them--than reading the show’s protesting-too-much mission statement.

Based only on the sample size of two episodes, Chelsea is remarkably unviral. The first episodes have a couple of pretaped sketches that are varying degrees of bad. ... Handler has a lot of celebrity friends, but even her interviews with them were flat.

Rather than humorously highlighting her attempts at education, the pre-taped bits that showed Handler learning about topics such as comic books and telenovelas came across as condescending at best and insulting at worst.

Perhaps some day Chelsea will inspire a fascinating intellectual discussion about the perils of noisily promising something new on the late-night scene, then delivering the TV equivalent of an ancient burlap grocery sack: a good idea in its infancy, perhaps, but now on the brink of everything imminently falling out of the bottom with a messy splat.

Unless it gets sharper and funnier or begins to offer something more than a puffy celebrity hang, it’s hard to make the case that it’s a necessary addition to the talk-show scene.