TVSquad

Something about Today's Ann Curry has always struck me as odd. Don't get me wrong; she seems like a nice woman and a hell of a journalist. But something about the way she answers questions, how she gets chummy and touchy-feely with people she's just met, and how she always chooses to go on needlessly life-threatening assignments makes me think that she's not quite all there.

Her November climb up Mount Kilimanjaro furthered this notion. Yes, it was nice to see how the glaciers on the African mountain were affected by climate change, but couldn't we have seen it using an airplane and a high-powered spy camera? Did Ann and her crew really need to climb the toughest route up the mountain during the most treacherous time of the year to get the story?

Well, it was absolutely necessary, as she tells TV Week in an entertainingly wacky interview about the assignment.

Among the nuggets of lovable nuttiness are the first words out of her mouth (at least according to Michelle Greppi's edit), in response to a query on how she's doing: "I picked up a terrible amoeba from the water." About a blister she developed on the climb: "I have one the size of a golf ball on my heel, and you know what's funny? The blister has popped and what's left of it is the shape of a heart." Then she goes on to tell Greppi how much heart her crew had; they all wanted to go on, despite epic headaches, soreness, and swelling that would alarm the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man.

She then goes on to justify why she took an assignment that put her and her crew in a state of "24/7 suffering," as she put it: "I want to be a journalist for this time. I want to be one of the great journalists of our time. When I see that something's happening, I want to do it. If that means it's going to present physical challenges and be dangerous, well, why are they paying me the money?" One of the greatest journalists of our time? Even Kanye West might find that statement to be a touch boastful, don't you think?

Basically, Ann says she just can't say no to these insane assignments when they're put in front of her. But, then again, would her bosses put them in front of her if they didn't think she'd, you know, actually say yes? Think about where the other three main Today players were for the "Ends of the Earth" special: Matt was SCUBA diving off the coast of Belize; Al was standing in front of a waterfall in Iceland (I've been there; all you need to get to that site is a tour bus); Meredith was standing on a boat in Sydney Harbor, for heaven's sake.

Why did they all take the safer assignments? Probably because they realized that this ratings stunt wasn't worth putting themselves and a crew in danger. For some reason, Ann doesn't have that kind of filter. She really needs to save her sense of adventure for stories that need real on-location reporting; it would seem awfully silly if she took herself out of commission for a stunt broadcast.