The news was busy on “Today” Monday morning: the war in Iran, rising fuel prices and inflation, the Artemis II mission, the N.C.A.A. championships.
But the news was also, strikingly, playing out in the broadcast. Savannah Guthrie returned as host for the first time since the disappearance in February of her 84-year-old mother, Nancy. Even as Guthrie read the morning’s headlines, she was herself the story. The NBC news ticker underneath her carried a quote from her Easter video message (“I still believe”) about carrying on in her mother’s absence.
Guthrie’s return was of course an emotional homecoming. But it was a complicated, unresolved blend of emotions, a kind of ambiguity that is not uncommon in life but that neither news nor dramatic TV models very often. It was an exercise in wiping a tear, putting on a smile, and carrying on.
When Guthrie took leave from “Today,” viewers assumed she would return one of two ways. There would be a happy ending to Nancy’s story, or — as seemed more likely as the investigation dragged on — a tragic one. But there would be an ending, and another chapter.
Instead, there was this. There was a gentle, tentative vibe as Guthrie’s hosts eased her into the routine. There was a note of catharsis and grief and uncertainty. It was not quite a celebration, not quite a wake.
The reminders were quiet, the welcomes sweet and muted. Her co-anchor, Greg Melvin, patted her arm and said, “So good to have you back.” Al Roker blew her a kiss from the weather map; “Good morning, sunshine,” she answered.
When the emotions of the day weren’t playing out in the open, they played out in the scenery and set dressing. Guthrie wore a bright yellow dress and a yellow heart necklace, echoing an emoji she had taken to posting on social media as a symbol of hope. There were yellow flowers, yellow ties, yellow ribbons on her co-hosts and the fans gathered outside the Manhattan studio.
Guthrie struck a professional tone, veined with emotion, as if throwing herself back into work was a respite. She found spaces to joke, joshing with Melvin about a pair of California bald eagles “getting busy” to produce their newly hatched pair of eaglets.
But the feelings welled up, especially when she and her co-hosts left the studio to greet the crowd of well-wishers outside, the emotional climax of the show. She traded “I love you”s with a fan in a “Welcome Home, Savannah” T-shirt. “You guys have been so beautiful,” she told the crowd. “We feel your prayers.” Then she defused the moment as Roker offered her a pocket square for her tears: “This is such a nice pocket square. I don’t want to slobber on it!”
Morning shows are always a mix of heavy and light; on Monday, destruction in the Middle East shared space with a “viral hack” for dealing with toddler tantrums. But rarely has this tension been embodied so much in a star host’s story, hung over with so much continuing pain.
Last week, Hoda Kotb’s “Today” interview with Guthrie did some of the emotive lifting to prepare the audience. As she often has over the past weeks, Guthrie used the language of Christianity to talk about her family’s pain and the tormenting lack of closure regarding her mother. “I can handle anything, God,” she said. “I just can’t handle not knowing.”
She will have to handle it, though, just as many people have to bear unresolved turmoil. This is part of what makes this such an extraordinary TV moment. Normally, an anchor’s job is to deliver the news. Guthrie is showing her audience an example of how to live with no news.
Her comeback modeled the act of carrying on in a kind of limbo that people everywhere experience but that TV, with its preference for clear endings and closure, rarely depicts. (In “Mad Men,” the rare TV drama to deal with nuanced irresolution, Don Draper referred to it as “living in the not knowing.”)
Real people’s real lives are filled with cold cases, actual or figurative. Not all nightmares end definitively. Not every mystery is solved. Sometimes a terrible thing happens and you never find out why. Sometimes you have to keep worrying about that troubled loved one, anticipating that next medical test, waiting for that other shoe to drop.
Out in the world, people live with uncertainty and still find a way to wake up, work, carry on. That’s the unusual example Guthrie’s return on Monday provided. It didn’t settle anything. Maybe this arrangement will work — for Guthrie, for viewers, for NBC — and maybe it won’t.
It was simply her first day back on the job. There will be a second day and a third day, and it’s not clear that anyone knows exactly where that route will lead. But that’s life.
James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics.
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