remotely from his home in D.C. during the bulk of the pandemic). He remains with Fox News as a D.C.-based senior political analyst. Williams was replaced by rotating hosts Geraldo Rivera, Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr. Reception Reaction to the show among critics has been mostly positive, though the week it premiered, Alex Pareene, columnist for the website Salon, slammed it as "boring and lame" and "not even worth getting outraged about." Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker dubbed the show his "favorite guilty pleasure" and praised its freewheeling style and zany humor, calling it "a delightfully nutty show with an undercurrent of ragin' crazy." Mediaite's Frances Martel, examining cable news' shift toward more personality-driven commentary, praised The Five for adding an element of entertainment to the news: In 2014, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart echoed these sentiments when their "correspondent" Samantha Bee debuted her "one-woman show" about the supposed romantic subplot on The Five. The show's loose and uncensored structure has led it into some minor controversies, particularly involving co-host Bob Beckel's on-air profanity and insensitive remarks. In August 2011, Beckel was forced to apologize on-air when, while trying to clarify an earlier remark wherein he called Michael Vick a "redneck," said the term was not racial, because "blacks are rednecks, whites are rednecks, I was a redneck, Chinamen are rednecks." Beckel was later compelled to apologize for using the term "Chinamen". The music the show's producers use to lead in and out of segments has also led to controversy, such as an incident in 2011 that prompted a Twitter war between Adam Levine and various Fox News personalities, over the producers' use of a song from Levine's band Maroon 5. In April 2017, just two days after joining the show, co-host Jesse Watters came under scrutiny for a suggestive joke about the way Ivanka Trump was speaking into a microphone. The day after Watters made the comments, he announced that he would be "taking a vacation" for the remainder of the week amid calls for his firing. Programming announcements and changes On October 3, 2011, after successful ratings and high popularity, Fox News announced that The Five would become a permanent series, as the program had previously been announced to last only during the summer. In 2013, The Five was the second-most-watched program in all of cable news in the United States, placing only behind The