For all the attempts to make Kelly’s interview of Putin into a dramatic showdown, it was actually very short on dramatics and long on repetition. The next two pieces were reasonably good, but not really up to the level of “60 Minutes,” which is still the reigning champ in the newsmagazine game. ... The final segment was an embarrassment. It was, essentially, a “Kids Say the Darndest Things” type of diversion.

The ensuing one-on-one interview [with Putin] didn’t produce any revelations. ... The rest of the 60-minute show felt a lot like, well, CBS' 60 Minutes. It featured various segments carefully designed to provide a balance of investigative pieces, human interest stories and fluff.

Where [Oliver] Stone got more access, Kelly seemed to have little. She tried to deliver something substantive in under 10 minutes, and it wound up making her coming-out party more of a fizzle than a bang.

Kelly, making her debut as an NBC host, marshaled her trademark steeliness, but it was no match for the insults (“Do you even understand what you’re asking?”) and the weaselly tactics of the KGB master spy. ... The fact that Sunday Night spent as much time rolling in the African mud with elephants (in a report about elephant poaching) as it did with Putin suggests how slim the pickings were in the editing room. Kelly filled up the rest of her debut by turning it over to other correspondents.

Without much substance, the interview offered nothing much beyond footage of NBC's pricey signature star asking aggressively phrased questions. This amounts to "holding someone accountable" as theater. ... Segments by Cynthia McFadden and Harry Smith about, respectively, the pharmaceutical industry and an elephant sanctuary, were executed with a bracing lack of depth, even though they certainly had the time after the brief Putin interview.