After showing the “View” audience a clip of Ms. Winfrey and her friend Gayle King struggling to pump gas while driving cross-country this summer, a “Thelma and Louise” excursion they had recorded for the fall premiere of Ms. Winfrey’s talk show, Ms. O’Donnell said, “I think that’s very typical of gay relationships — not saying they’re gay.”

“You might be a little bit gay,” said Ms. O’Donnell, hardly shy about her own homosexuality, as she spoke to Ms. Winfrey, whom she called “Opie,” as if she were there. “You’re just not doing it.”

Ms. O’Donnell appeared to be warming up for yet another rant — only a few days earlier, she had said that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam” — when a voice suddenly materialized from the opposite end of the table to offer a subtle but firm transition: “Just to get away from that, because I’d like to get away from that.”

It was Barbara Walters, who is not only a co-host of “The View” and its co-executive producer, but also a co-owner of the show, with ABC. Five months after hatching the idea of hiring Ms. O’Donnell to replace Meredith Vieira as moderator of “The View” and then selling ABC on the notion, Ms. Walters’s gamble already appears to be paying off, though, as that “Oprah” moment made clear, she has been keeping a vigilant eye on her newest hire.

Midway through her third week on the job, Ms. O’Donnell has washed over the relatively placid set of “The View,” as it begins its 10th year, like a jolt of Red Bull. Thus far at least ratings are up over last year at this time, by 30 percent during her first week. New sponsors have also come on board, lured by the prospect of having Ms. O’Donnell plug their products in the body of the show, including Fisher-Price’s 10th-anniversary “Tickle Me Elmo” doll.

Last week Ms. O’Donnell managed to wangle free cookies for the 200-member “View” audience for a year by paying homage to a new sponsor, the Keebler brand, in a way Ms. Vieira never could have: she suddenly rose from her seat to sing Keebler’s praises alongside a costumed Keebler elf and a chorus line of male dancers in white tails.

And yet, Ms. Walters said in an interview after Tuesday’s show, for all the energy Ms. O’Donnell has transfused to “The View,” it has occasionally fallen to Ms. Walters and her co-executive producer, Bill Geddie, to rein in Ms. O’Donnell, both on camera and off. This has been especially true, Ms. Walters said, when Ms. O’Donnell has sought to hype a product they don’t like or book a guest they don’t want (they were too discreet to say which) — or, in the case of Ms. Winfrey, to poke fun at perhaps the biggest star in television.

“I have to be very careful,” Ms. Walters said Tuesday, speaking from her corner office on the 10th floor of an ABC office building overlooking Lincoln Center. “Rosie’s opinions are her own. They’re very strong. And I don’t mind opinions. But I don’t want us to be bashing anybody. We’ve talked about that, and Rosie is very conscious of it.” source