What may be most extraordinary about Savannah Guthrie’s return to “Today” was just how ordinary it seemed.
This was by design. Guthrie, the long-serving co-host of NBC’s morning news show, has been absent from the program since her mother Nancy was reported missing on Feb. 1. “Today” had covered the case, in the early days of the investigation, aggressively, seemingly both out of a sense that they couldn’t ignore news affecting their own TV family and out of a desire to shake loose potential leads. As time has passed, though, Guthrie had publicly expressed — including as an interview subject on “Today” — a desire to take her family tragedy out of the center of the frame. “Well, here we go, ready or not,” she told her co-anchor Craig Melvin at the top of the broadcast. “Let’s do the news.”
That’s what Guthrie and Melvin did, with a broadcast whose nods to Guthrie’s family situation lay largely at the margins. Guthrie’s yellow dress and Melvin’s yellow tie matched the yellow ribbons that many fans standing at Rockefeller Plaza wore, but served as bright accent to news stories about the efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz and about the Artemis II NASA mission. Some correspondents alluded not to Guthrie’s sad news but the happy fact of her return, with Al Roker blowing her a kiss at the top of his weather report and Jenna Bush Hager briefly declaring “We have our sunshine back” before sharing a TikTok-derived “toddler tantrum hack.” At the end of the first segment — the one in which, before the show’s more lifestyle-y content took over, Guthrie and Melvin did the news — the pair of anchors were shown exchanging a high-five and looking into one another’s eyes. Viewers who’ve spent these past two months struggling to imagine Guthrie’s emotional state were provided a scintilla of relief: She was visibly relieved to have shown herself she could get through the top of the show.
The broadcast seemed carefully constructed to show Guthrie, in her return, to her best advantage. In her first day back, Guthrie didn’t handle any interview solo. (Melvin did two, including a relatively sensitive conversation with singer Rebecca King-Crews, alongside her husband Terry Crews, breaking the news that she is in treatment for Parkinson’s disease.) And, in the 8:30 a.m. corner of the show during which the hosts gather outdoors to greet their public, Bush Hager escorted Guthrie onto the Plaza by the arm, allowing her a moment to speak. ”These signs are so beautiful,” Guthrie said tearily. “You guys have been so beautiful. I’ve received so many letters, so much kindness to me and my whole family. We feel it. We feel your prayers. So thank you so much.” As the show went to commercial, she was shown embracing fans.
This brief statement was, perhaps, all that needed to be said before the hugging began. “Today” has given airtime to the Nancy Guthrie story both to try and help a case that has stymied investigators and to honor its anchor’s unimaginable pain, but it is an inhuman ask to force her to dredge up deep wells of feeling on live TV. This past weekend, Guthrie’s Easter message, publicly shared by her church, gave a sense of her inner state, and it is one of both hard-won hope and turmoil: Guthrie described feeling “deep disappointment with God” and “utter abandonment.” It is no criticism of “Today” to say that this particular sentiment, expressed this way, is more than the program could bear. Instead, Guthrie’s return seemed an effort to reclaim for herself a bit of what life was like before, and to show her audience both that she is okay and that we at home can do challenging things too.
Guthrie’s return was, in the end, an unusual TV event — a much-speculated-about comeback moment that the network and show made every attempt to downplay. No doubt Guthrie herself wants it that way, but it ended up feeling right for the viewers, too. Hearing Guthrie crack silly morning-show jokes — urging South Carolina native Melvin to use “earmuffs” before reporting on his home state team’s loss in the NCAA women’s basketball finals, or cracking that two bald eagle parents had been listening to “baby making music” before having eaglets — was a reminder of something that doesn’t need to be outright stated to be clear.
Grief is complicated; so are people. And one can laugh and do the news and do one’s job while feeling unsettled inside. Guthrie’s return was a powerful, gutsy demonstration of just that. Her dress, by the time her part of the broadcast came to a close, had made its double meaning clear. Yellow is the color used to symbolize support for missing persons, and to urge them home. It’s also the color of sunshine.
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