Yesterday on The Five, Dana Perino made the bizarre claim that M.I.A. wasn’t American enough to perform in the Super Bowl Halftime Show unlike such American luminaries as, I guess, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Madonna’s accent. Obviously, Perino’s allegation was borderline laughable and easy to make fun of (seriously, if I didn’t have to leave the office early yesterday, Frances never would have gotten a chance at this post), so you know what that means; set the timer for a rival cable network to mock it. And…take it away Ed Schultz!

It is the biggest secular holiday of the year, so naturally much of today’s The Five revolved around last night’s Super Bowl events. The crew particularly stopped on the first case of indecent conduct during the Halftime Show since Janet Jackson exposed her breast to America: British/Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. giving the finger to the camera, as she does in the music video for the song being performed, “Give Me All Your Lovin’.” Most found it vulgar on its face, but Dana Perino objected not to the gesture but to M.I.A.’s presence at all: why would Madonna perform with a rapper who was “not even an American?”

Does President Obama have an “enemies list”? That’s the provocative allegation put forth by Ted Olson in the Wall Street Journal. Olson is a former member of the Bush Administration as well as representative of the Koch Brothers who just so happen to be the only real people Olson thinks is on this supposed list. So, does the list exist?

Yesterday, things got pretty fiery on The Five thanks to the comments Rep. Allen West made this weekend saying that President Obama and other leaders of the Democratic Party should “get the hell out of the United States of America.” Bob Beckel went off on the comments, saying he’d “never heard anything more disgraceful in my life.” This morning, West demanded an apology…

On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Bob Beckel has a usual batch of ways in which he shows how angry he is about a subject. There’s “Muffled Curse Words” Beckel, where he lets the audience know what he really thinks by saying the beginnings (and just that) of all sorts of fun words. And there’s “Silent, Arms Folded” Beckel, my personal favorite, who gets so upset about a subject he refuses to even talk about it.

The nice thing about shows like The Five is that, even when all of the hosts agree on something, you at least get different opinions on why they agree. Take for example, Nancy Pelosi’s threats that she “knows something” that will keep Newt Gingrich from ever being president. The five hosts all agree it won’t hurt Gingrich, but they gave different reasons why.

Recently, Newt Gingrich has had a massive upswing from his new debate strategy; forget the candidates, go after the moderator. Twice now, he’s taken huge swings at the closest representative of the media at the nearest sign of a question that seems untoward. And, twice, he’s been able to reap the benefits of those attacks by milking the audience’s applause.

Towards the end of today’s Five, the hosts decided to devote an entire segment to the story that rapper Jay-Z would eliminate the word “bitch” from any new lyrics following the birth of his daughter. The strange thing was, as Andrea Tantaros readily admitted up top, that story has already been debunked. Making it weirder, none of the hosts thought Jay-Z should ban the word and none of them even seemed to care that much about the story. So, as a viewer, I was left wondering, “Why are they even talking about this?”

Then they revealed that Bob Beckel was going to attempt to perform the hit “Big Pimpin’” and I said “Ohhhh.”

Even the most die hard of Bob Beckel fans out there would have to admit that today was a good day to have Juan Williams subbing in for him on The Five. Williams was back from his time moderating the debate in South Carolina last night and he and his co-hosts started off today’s broadcast debating his now-infamous showdown with Newt Gingrich. While Williams was the first to admit that this moment worked out better for Gingrich than he (he compared it to being “dunked on”), when asked how he felt the candidate answered his question, he argued that Gingrich didn’t answer it at all.

On Thursday, Happening Now host Jenna Lee brought on The Five‘s Dana Perino to discuss what the future might hold for GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.

Yesterday on Happening Now, Dana Perino expressed her distaste for Jon Huntsman’s use of the word “screwed” in a campaign ad, declaring it un-presidential. Something about this really tickled Rush Limbaugh’s fancy as he was making friendly jokes at Perino’s expense throughout yesterday’s show and, after Perino responded on The Five, continued them today. Today his best line was his advice that Huntsman make his next ad about how all of America is “intercoursed.”

There is one strongly held belief of Fox News’ Bob Beckel that I agree with and support wholeheartedly and it has nothing to do with his politics. It’s his belief that absolutely nothing to do with Kim Kardashian should ever be discussed on a channel with “News” in the title. Today on The Five, the group tried to do a segment on how some blah blah group tried to blah blah Kim Kardashian about blah blah blah blah whatever and Beckel had the integrity to give that crap the same amount of respect I am now.

Today on The Five, the gang discussed Sarah Palin’s talk of possible third party candidates and focused on Ron Paul. After Eric Bolling joked that Paul’s fans may be “too stoned” to make it to the polls, the topic of conversation turned to a recent ad for Paul which featured a number of liberal commentators. The hosts questioned whether it would be effective or simply a turn off.

With the Iowa caucuses a week away, The Five revisited the 2012 Republican presidential landscape to find what the polls were looking like in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And it appears that, despite a rough week of racist newsletter coverage, Rep. Ron Paul is still on top. What did the panel compare this development to? Greg Gutfeld noted that, to some that had worked with the Congressman, it was as if “Crazy Uncle got too far.”

The headline quote is not actually part of the text of Brian Stelter‘s eye-opening report on Fox News’ surprise hit The Five, but a description of the atmosphere from the inimitable Bob Beckel. He, along with producers and other co-hosts, spoke to Stelter in this week’s New York Times report that exposes several surprises about the show– the hosts were told they were trying out for a weekend hosting gig, for one– and tries to get to the bottom of its success.

While The Five has made a name for itself as a source of intelligent but entertaining political discussion that doesn’t take it self all that seriously, the real reason it has become such a widespread success, it can be posited, is that it is has its own narrative outside of the news cycle, with complex character arcs that develop with every new adventure. Take this segment from yesterday evening, when the “straightest woman in America” Dana Perino reported live from a ranch in Las Vegas, and got some great recommendations for “massage parlors” to visit from wacky uncle Bob Beckel.

On Friday’s edition of The Five, Eric Bolling criticized President Obama for omitting reference to God in his Thanksgiving message. “I feel terrible — I absolutely think he should’ve had some sort of mention,” Bolling argued. “We’re thankful to whom? About 86% of the country believes in some form of a God — whether it’s Christianity or Islam or what not.” Panelist and former White House press secretary Dana Perino came to the President’s defense…

When Glenn Beck ended his run on FOX News, the channel had a plethora of options with which to replace him. And they landed on what was probably the most unlikely of formats — a five-person panel show that tackles the day’s topics from several angles. It’s like The View, but for political junkies. And with more suspenders.

The panelists on Fox News’s The Five couldn’t decide what drug Rick Perry was on when he gave his widely publicized off-kilter speech in New Hampshire. “That reminded me when I take an Ambien on a plane and have a scotch,” Greg Gutfeld exclaimed, suggesting Perry had some drinks to loosen up as Joe Scarborough had suggested. “The difference between the right and the left is the left says crazy stuff when they’re sober. I’d rather have a drunk Perry than a sober Obama.”

On Thursday’s edition of Fox News’s The Five, Dana Perino admonished panelist Eric Bolling for haranguing Energy Secretary Steven Chu and mocking him with a mask on a stick. “I think it’s disgusting the way we name-call here on both sides,” Perino scolded. “This is a guy who was an accomplished scientist. Maybe he should haven’t been in charge of the green energy loan program going out. It wasn’t as if the both Republicans and Democrats didn’t ask for the program in the first place.”

In Florida this week, an appeals court decided to deny a petition that would have stopped Judge Richard Nielsen from using Sharia Law to help decide a dispute between former and current trustees at a local mosque. On, The Five this afternoon, this resulted in an interesting debate over whether or not any religious law or teachings should ever be used in a court case and, if so, should one religion be held above each other.

And we can officially put the “Bob Beckel Death Scare Count” at two for the past week. Seriously. Today’s The Five began with Beckel sincerely thanking his frequent sparring partner Eric Bolling for literally saving his life. Apparently, a few hours prior to the broadcast, a few of the hosts had been having lunch together at a Fox party when Beckel began choking on a large shrimp.

Today on Fox News, perhaps emboldened by their recent success, The Five attempted its most audacious and segment yet; one with SEVEN WHOLE HOSTS!

Yes, Dana Perino and Bob Beckel were down in Atlanta for what we can only assume is going to be the absolute party of the year, Sean Hannity’s 15 year anniversary show. So The Five piped them in over satellite. The segment mostly went off without a hitch. Except for that little part where Beckel faked a heart attack and seemed to scare the crap out of Perino.

On Wednesday’s edition of The Five, panelist Dana Perino spoke out against the Occupy Wall Street movement, questioning what they really wanted and telling them if they didn’t like America’s economic system they could leave. “I don’t understand, what do they want? They want a different system? There are places in the world with different systems and they are welcome to immigrate to those if they want.”

Yesterday, Hank Williams, Jr. made a silly comment on Fox & Friends comparing Barack Obama and John Boehner golfing together to “Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu.” Soon after, his iconic theme song got pulled from ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast. Today on The Five, Williams Jr. got very little sympathy from anyone on the panel except for Bob Beckel who said he recognized the addiction behind Williams’ ever present sunglasses.