By now everyone and their mother has heard about, read about, or seen Betty White’s star turn on “Saturday Night Live.” White, at 88 the oldest host the show has ever had, was recruited thanks to a huge fan movement on Facebook. Mission accomplished: White demonstrated why sh
e remains not just a show-business legend but a consummate performer with pitch perfect timing.
In a night filled with the pleasures of seeing returning veterans like Cheri Oteri, Rachael Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehlner, and Tina Fey, White more than held her own. The show tackled the age difference between the cast and its guest (about half a century or more) head-on in a way that was funny, yes, but also generous and even celebratory. The generation gap was nowhere in evidence; clearly bawdy humor knows no age restrictions.
White’s skill as a television comedian isn’t a surprise, given her years of experience, some 56 years by her own account. But the excitement generated by her eighty-eight and a half year-old presence seemed to mean something more. Sure, Betty White is the grandmother (great-grandmother?) the audience probably wants. She’s also, in an age of heightened awareness of our own and our loved ones’ morality, the antithesis of the despair that old age represents. In the real world, there are wheelchairs and nursing homes, strokes and Alzheimers, isolation and depression; on “SNL” there is Betty White. Who among us would not be pulled in and held in a state of hopeful suspended animation by the thought of being half the active, engaged and thoroughly entertaining Ms. White deep into our ninth decade?
On the other hand, Betty White gave a kick-ass, thoroughly invested, totally funny performance. At any age, she is a television treasure. Rock on, Betty.
Check out this sketch that DIDN'T make it onto the program:
(image and video courtesy NBC site)
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Comments
She's been on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (they're good friends) several times, and never doesn't make me laugh right out loud.
Lezlie
Thanks for this wonderful and winsome reflection on the beautiful Ms. Betty. This grande dame has had an amazing life and career since being the wife of the late Allen Ludden. Great piece Nikki.
Rated and appreciated.
@Con: not sure but she's actually younger than the show's announcer, Don Pardo, as OE Sheepdog pointed out (Don is 92)
@consonants: you can read the post; just don't read the comments - LOL
I only really liked the last of the 3 MacGruber sketches. I also realized how much I miss Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch. Some of the new people on the show could take notes from Betty and her girlfriends.
Not me. Finally saw this last night (when I should have been watching Alec Baldwin and Tom Petty [oh, Tom Petty...]). From the first moment she appeared her skill and professionalism juiced that joint. I was happy they brought back all the "older" SNL women, as well. Still, the most interesting thing that happened during the show was when my viewing companion, a man in his forties, went into a reverie about meeting an older woman, in her seventies, in a store one day. She engaged him in a short conversation about laundry soap or something. His reaction, still strong in him twenty-plus years later, was how attractive she was and how beautiful she must have been when she was young - so beautiful she'd never give a guy like him the time of day..... it was like he'd basked in her glow. Which might go back to Betty White on SNL, in some way, maybe. Or not.