And the dolphin trainer is just one segment among many on “Ronan Farrow Daily” in which the host trots out news items about racism, ill-treated minorities, foreign imbroglios and environmental upheaval, then earnestly asks his guests if such things are bad or have the potential to generate ill effects on society and life as we know it. For instance: “Is hate more prevalent than the average American realizes?” Or: “We are a nation of insurgents. Do you think this is something that the American identity will never escape?” And: “What about people who say the embrace of hyperskinny by the fashion industry, by the entertainment industry, is damaging to fuller-figured women?”

This may be the biggest surprise of MSNBC Ronan, in light of the way charisma oozed from his pre-TV persona: He’s boring. On the air, he is mannequin-ish and inaccessible, more suave ambassador than nerdy emcee. He’s not a clever orator like Maddow or a fiery one like Lawrence O’Donnell. He seems tightly wound on camera, particularly when interviewing guests who are not in the studio.  He tends to speak over them: Introductions and farewells are awkward largely because he does not pause for the inevitable “hello” or “thank you” a new guest or departing interviewee is bound to utter. He is also prone to telling viewers “we’ll come back to that point” when breaking into an interview, but never doing so.

Sure, part of the problem may be that MSNBC doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with him. If Farrow was seen as a means of building bridges with a new generation of viewers, why not launch him at 11 p.m., when youth-skewing stuff like “The Daily Show” has fared well? Putting him on at 1 p.m., when he is surrounded by ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs, pitches for the buffet line at Golden Corral, and direct-response spots for Life Alert (Help me! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!) seems to defeat the purpose of a program that hopes to galvanize a generation. And Hayes, Kornacki et al. mostly got their starts on the network by filling in on prime time while Rachel Maddow or others were away. Their introductions were gradual; audience and host could feel each other out. Farrow arrived with a trumpet blast of publicity.

No one really expects him to talk about Woody and Mia in detail, but some color about what makes him interested in the topics he presents would be welcome. Instead Farrow’s unwillingness to apply his own experience to his interviews leaves the broadcast feeling oddly hollow. In recent shows, he has discussed his lack of finesse with e-cigarettes (“I’m so uncool someone handed me a vaporizer once and I had no idea what to do with it”); things he has in common with Republican congressman Darrell Issa (privacy issues); and his desire to broaden the two-party system of American politics. But that’s all just surface talk, loose threads in his diffuse prescriptions for world improvement. For all his big ideas about foreign affairs, his show is oddly absent of argument.

Once in a blue moon, a revelation. Last month, when interviewing Taren Guy, an African-American woman who embraces natural curls, Farrow at last made clear why this particular subject interested him. He had grown up with an African-American sibling, and understood the emotional duress hairstyles can cause, especially during one’s youth: “Oh, my poor white-lady mom, trying to make sense of all of it, doing those braids. She did a good job,” he said. Suddenly, a complicated cultural issue began to gel.

Farrow is trying hard to be a TV host. He surely means the things he says. But the idealism that felt genuine in his advocacy work seems lamely Oprah-esque amid the hard-edged snark of cable news. This may be the reality of our current cable news landscape: For optimism to be palatable, it has to be at least partly couched in frustration. Farrow radiates the happy aura of the golden child even while decrying humanity’s grossest injustices. His Twitter feed has gotten more toothless, too; he’s gone from dishing out self-aware jabs at Hollywood culture to numbly self-promoting. And with so little effort to sharpen the worldview of his show, its message is not unlike the sounds issuing forth from that dolphin swimming in Florida: We feel like there might be something meaningful to be gleaned — we just don’t know how to decipher it.

Brian Steinberg is the senior TV editor at Variety.