By the end of 2014, it was easy to forget that The View didn’t always cater to the day-drinking housewife demographic. The show that once radically reworked a women’s talk show by featuring star journalists such as Barbara Walters, Lisa Ling, and Meredith Vieira had devolved into a catty clown show.

In the three years following the departure of Walters, the intellectual and tonal anchor of the show, the table included at some point or another anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy, professional turncoat and ratings anathema Nicolle Wallace, a handful of actresses, and Rosie O’Donnell.