Celebrating America

Doing that Tom Hanks signature soft shoe down the line between gravitas and everyman accessibility, he set the tone for the night—one of extreme, inescapable, long-overdue earnestness. ... All in all, Celebrating America was a pretty standard version of what these things are. And after all of the everything of these last years, that alone was kind of nice. ... You grade specials like these on a curve. In this specific case, that curve is: “I do not even remember the last moment I felt joy so let me just appreciate this one thing.”

Sober, beautifully staged, and symbolically welcoming. The tone was earnest and, with some straining, consistently hopeful, which is why Tom Hanks, one of our American totems of sanity and unity, was in charge.

“Celebrating America” made for a technically impressive event, despite a few jarring transitions between live and pre-taped segments. ... For me, though, the most compelling moments of “Celebrating America” were the ones that didn’t celebrate America so much as try to eulogize the most recent version of it.

Celebrating America was dignified, optimistic, inspirational and moving (as well as socially distanced and Covid-safe of course). Instead of attempting a facsimile of an exclusive pre-Covid party, the producers made its virtual nature a virtue.

"Celebrating America," which was simulcast on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS and others, straddled the line between awkward telethon and music video, but at its best moments it was earnest and moving, a celebration of the diversity of the nation scored by superb musical performances and emceed by the always cool and collected Tom Hanks.

It was a safe, soothing and unadventurous affair, but necessarily so, and what fresh material did emerge was solidly on-message.