Entertainment

HIGH FIVE ROSIE LIVE ; NOW WE ALL KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS

The Rosie O’Donnell Show (Live)

Weekdays at 10a.m. on WABC/Ch.7

ROSIE O’Donnell and her daytime talk show are back among the live-ing.

Oh, what a difference a same-day broadcast makes for O’Donnell, as anyone who watched yesterday’s gleeful return to live well knows.

Except for a chat with bandleader John McDonald that was too frontloaded with B-material what-I-did-with-sick-children-over-the-holidays gab, the show moved quickly to show viewers who’d missed O’Donnell’s ability to turn anything topical into a soundbite that immediacy is back.

From the opening montage of clips showing how confused O’Donnell and her guests got when they taped several days before air, to the show’s theme , to a production number that was short on budget and long on energy, “live” was the word of the day.

“We’re all glad to say today’s not last Thursday,” chorused the dancers who reduced O’Donnell’s coif to a reassuring reminder that real hair droops when real people exert themselves.

And we’re glad to say that after the obligatory blah-blah-blah about holidays (maybe O’Donnell’s live writers were socked in at a Chicago airport), O’Donnell got one of her best acts together.

She stepped back into her role as the couch potato’s favorite watercooler.

How many people on TV actually watch TV? Not many.

O’Donnell does. Passionately.

She nailed Sunday’s new episode of “The Practice” for making it clear why Lindsay makes a far less interesting bedmate for luscious senior partner Bobby than prosecutor Helen.

“Did you see “The X-Files,'” she asked the leader of the McDLTs.

“No,” McDonald admitted.

“John,” she carped, “what do you do? Have a life?”

The show, which has lost ratings since moving to taped-anytime-status, has renewed its lease on life.

Not so much for what does happen as what can happen, which will come as a pleasant or otherwise surprise to the audience, the host and her guests simultaneously.

No, John Travolta, didn’t do much more than be his usual charming and playful self – even cheating on a “Welcome Back, Kotter” trivia game so everyone in the audience would go home with a $500 minidisc player.

But it was a lot more fun watching him demonstrate his mini-lecture about the morphine of junkfood (how Ding Dongs in childhood become chocolate cake with whipped cream when we become sophisticates) knowing that nobody knew where he was going.

As he and O’Donnell drooled over the foods that will be restricted if not forbidden in the New Year, Travolta allowed as how “I don’t think we gonna be the opinion leaders for diet.”

But O’Donnell may become a poster girl for weight loss in spite of herself.

She’s hired a personal trainer, the very real-looking “Ironman Lady” Judy Molnar to whip her and viewers who join her Chub Club into shape.

Once “Live With Regis & Kathie Me” gets off its vacation duff and back into its Upper West Side studio, the trio of “Live,” “Rosie” and “The View” gives WABC/Ch. 7’s weekday morning lineup a selling point no one outside the scandal-mongering cable networks has: currency.

If you’ve seen the first 15 minutes of each hour between 9 a.m. and noon, you can hold your own in – or at least keep up with – any cocktail conversation not involving the euro.