The terrific site AfterEllen.com has probably the best analysis of Rosie O'Donnell's time on "The View" that I've read. And yes, I'm kind of obsessed with this whole thing right now. Could I be a candidate for RosieRehab?
Here's how the piece begins:
Rosie O'Donnell's stint on The View was amusing, frustrating and, above all, surprising. When the 2006–07 season first began, no one could have predicted that Rosie would find herself in a shoving match with Donald Trump or a finger-pointing contest with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. No one could have foreseen that The View's ratings would soar, that its audience members would go ballistic for free trips on gay-friendly cruises, or that its formerly tame hot topics would actually catch fire.
And no one could have guessed that Barbara Walters' hand-picked new hire would jump ship so early and so dramatically, leaving the others to reach for bailing buckets marked "I'm just as interesting as she is."

The article gives seven reasons why Rosie didn't fit in..
1. She's too real.
It all comes down to this. Rosie is too real to fit the standard celebrity molds. She's both a mess and a saint, and that confounds the hype machine. She's overweight; she loves Broadway; she's against the war; she's worried about autism; she's prone to malapropism; she's too tall for those standard-issue chairs. Shortening the chair legs made her fit in visually, but she was still a misfit on all other counts.
To find out the other six reasons, click onto AfterEllen.com

Rosie figured it out as she went along, and she eventually figured out The View wasn't the right place for her. I'm not sure where she belongs, but I'm glad she lets us see even the clunkiest misstep as she follows her convoluted path. Her wanderings are vastly more engaging than the tentative, sedate discussions of paparazzi and porn, which is what the first post-Rosie View gave us. (You could almost hear the collective lunging for the remote.)
I'll tune in for whatever Rosie does next, because I'd rather be wincing at Rosie's latest gaffe than yawning at someone else's tepid chatter. For nine short, scintillating months, The View had vision. Now it just has a void.