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Farewell, Without a Parachute
Ann Curry’s Tearful Goodbye From ‘Today’
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: June 28, 2012
Ms. Curry turned to the camera and delivered a tearful farewell that was gallant and also embarrassingly maudlin and grandiose and that pretty much summed up why she got the hook after just one year in the host chair next to Matt Lauer.
It’s not really Ms. Curry’s fault that “Today” is losing ground to “Good Morning America.” And it is entirely NBC’s fault that the network keeps turning “Today” personnel changes into daytime soap opera (“As the Anchor Turns”).
“For all of you who saw me as a groundbreaker, I’m sorry I couldn’t carry the ball to the finish line, but, man, I did try,” Ms. Curry said with a choked voice. “And so to all of you who watch, thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me touch yours.”
But Ms. Curry, who for the previous 14 years was an excellent backup player, was a problematic co-host from the start. She swerved from giddy good cheer to cloying intensity, a bipolar persona that often clashed with the bland, brisk professionalism that is morning television. She was sincere and earnest and somehow managed to seem phony.
She was the network’s go-to humanitarian, but next to the polished, glib Mr. Lauer she most often looked like the class goodie-goodie who can’t keep up with the joke.
Brave and indefatigable in war zones and disaster areas, Ms. Curry looked gung-ho and elegant no matter how bad the conditions. But she wore the mantle of caring too heavily, treating celebrities with the same tender solicitude she showed injured war veterans and sick African children. At a Live Earth benefit Ms. Curry once breathily asked Trudie Styler, the wife of the pop singer Sting, “Why do you care so much?”
Ms. Curry on Thursday made a point of reminding NBC of all the feats she accomplished on the network’s behalf, though she addressed the viewers. “You are the real ‘Today’ show family,” Ms. Curry said into the camera. “You are why I have ventured into dangerous places and interviewed dictators and jumped out of planes and off of bridges and climbed mountains and landed in the South Pole and convinced the Dalai Lama to come live in our studio.”
But it was on the Rockefeller Center set that her true grit came out. On her last day Ms. Curry put on a smile and a bright red dress and — as she has for months — gamely went through the paces of morning patter as if nothing were wrong. Rumors about her ouster had been circulating for months, and NBC didn’t do her any favors.
When Meredith Vieira was brought back as a special “surprise” guest in April, Ms. Curry had to sit, silent and smiling, alongside Mr. Lauer and Ms. Vieira as they revealed that Ms. Vieira would be his co-star for much of the London Olympics coverage. Mr. Lauer did not say then what role, if any, Ms. Curry would play. On Thursday he tried to cheer her up by reminding her that she would be reporting from the London Games as well — as if consoling a college student despondent over being rejected by the top sorority.
Highlight reels are the gold watch of television news, and “Today” showed a long, affectionate one of Ms. Curry, from her first days in local news to her trip to the South Pole, where she planted the NBC flag. It included goofy moments clowning on the set, and also a tableau that seemed — under the circumstances — somewhat insensitive. Ms. Curry, ebullient as ever, leaned in to Mr. Lauer, who was wearing an arm sling. “Don’t come anywhere near me with a hug,” he said, jokingly, but perhaps not entirely so.
Ms. Curry explained, somewhat sorrowfully, that she will stay at NBC News with “some fancy new titles” and a mandate to report “at a time when this country and this world needs clarity.”
But it’s “Today” — which has yet to name a replacement — that needs clarity.
Ms. Curry is getting a job more suited to her skills, and she deserves better treatment from the network she jumps out of planes for.
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