‘Bethenny,’ talk, talk and more talk, talk

As the old song goes, you gotta get a gimmick if you want to succeed in show business. This is nowhere more true than in the world of daytime talk shows.

Every fall, a new group of celebrities whose best days are behind them or who never actually have had good days try to become the next Oprah. Among this year’s hopefuls is Bethenny Frankel, who has taken her fame from appearing on “The Real Housewives of New York” and used it to market a line of low-calorie cocktails and some self-help books.

The gimmick of her new syndicated show, “Bethenny,” is that she will share her marketing expertise with her viewers so that they can take their own interests or obsessions and turn them into money-making enterprises. But although the show frequently nods in that direction, its actual content is the usual daytime-talk filler: relationship advice, cooking demonstrations, fashion chat, and interviews with B-minus-list celebrities like Frankel herself.

Surprisingly, despite her lack of experience in front of an audience, Frankel is a glib and sometimes engaging host. Though her show will leave viewers no less empty-headed than when they started to watch, it’s not as boring as it could be.

Judging by three shows that aired last week, the glut of talk shows has caused a shortage of celebrity guests. The biggest stars to visit “Bethenny” were the actresses Tracee Ellis Ross and Rosie Perez.

Frankel’s conversation with Ross, on Wednesday’s show, was notable mostly for the way Frankel managed to plug herself: She slipped in a reference to one of her own books and gave Ross a gift basket full of her own products.

Otherwise, Ross mainly talked about exercise and being Diana Ross’s daughter. She plugged a special on BET that she would be hosting soon.

Frankel introduced the next segment by saying that the women in it would make the audience mad but would teach them why husbands stray. A panel of three women — a “former legal prostitute,” a stripper and a private detective who decoys suspected cheaters — generally agreed that men go outside their marriages because of emotional, not physical, needs.

After getting some calm questions from the audience, Frankel looked around the studio and asked, “Who’s angry at these women?” But the expected audience turmoil never happened.

In a segment called “Frankel-y Speaking,” audience members stood up and delivered confessions. The first said she liked to date married men; the second said she had been serving takeout food to her boyfriend and claiming she cooked it. When Frankel made the second one call her boyfriend, she got his answering machine.

The low point or high point of the episode was a visit from the reality-TV villain Omarosa, who had nothing to plug. But she did have a bone to pick. She said that after someone on “The View” compared Frankel to her, Frankel said, “I have a career.”

Frankel said she would pay Omarosa $10,000 if she did in fact say that, and it turned out she did. So the two bickered unpleasantly over which one was more accomplished.

Omarosa claimed that as an African-American, she had to be exceptional, while “you” — presumably all white people — “get to walk around and be mediocre.” She also dragged out the old chestnut that when a woman is assertive, she’s considered a “b-word.”

Frankel kept trying to get Omarosa to define her “brand.” An audience member later suggested that Omarosa’s brand is “hate — she comes on to be hated.” The segment had the perhaps intended effect of making Frankel seem lovable by comparison.

Thursday’s episode was Halloween themed, with Frankel dressed in some kind of candy-princess costume. Her celebrity guests were the soap actress Kelly Monaco, who wore a Wonder Woman costume, the “Flipping Out” star Jenni Pulos and a comedian and impressionist named Dean Edwards.

The hostess and her guests spent a lot of time interacting with the audience. Edwards and Pulos gave advice on whether audience members’ recent dates were “a trick or a treat” and helped judge whether they could “rock” their costumes.

Working the business-expertise angle, Frankel said that she liked her candy jewelry so much that she set up its designer, a wardrobe assistant on the show, with a candy manufacturer. “That’s how things happen,” Frankel said as she hugged the assistant. “Make everything your business.”

Similarly, on Friday, when Perez said she had to audition for her part in “The Counselor,” Frankel said, “That’s business: No matter how successful I am in one area, I have to prove myself in another area.”

On the same episode, a woman named Tionna Smalls, who was identified as the editor-in-chief of Bossy magazine, was asked to weigh in on the topic of losing friends after a romantic split. Seemingly knowing what it takes to be an expert on a daytime-talk-show panel, Smalls dropped a series of what must have been prepared catchphrases, many of which made little sense.

“You’re my friend to the end, hi-de-ho, ha-ha-ha-ha,” she said. Later, making a tying gesture, she said that women need “to put our bras together and be sisters.”

Frankel handled well the difficult task of interviewing a 4-year-old-girl whose dance recital video has gone viral, and she bandied double- and single-entendres glibly with a chef who presented supposedly aphrodisiac dishes.

Amidst all this nonsense, its hard to believe someone might take the business talk seriously, but each episode ends with a graphic headed “Advice Disclaimer” that says that the information provided on the show is “general and educational in nature and for entertainment purposes only” and that viewers follow it at their own risk.

In other words, viewers should distrust the one thing that makes “Bethenny” different from all the other purveyors of fluff on daytime TV.