The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Bigger Explosions, Smaller Laughs Edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, May 12th, 2010.

On today's program, Betty White hosts Saturday Night Live. The pill turns 50,

and the summer movie season begins with Iron Man 2. Joining me today, our Slate's deputy editor,

Julia Turner, hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And of course, our film critic, Dana Stevens.

Betty White's been in show business for roughly 60 years. She was star of Mary Tyler Moore Show,

back in the 1970s,

subsequently star of the Golden Girls in the 80s and maybe 90s.

I don't remember.

She's won, I think, seven or eight Emmys.

And thanks to a very ardent Facebook writing campaign this past weekend,

she hosted Saturday Night Live.

Julia, I think it's fair to say the woman killed.

I thought she was great. I mean, it's hard not to kill when the entire audience is rooting for you, and you're the most beloved granny figure in all of showbiz. That was an incredibly sympathetic crowd, a sympathetic room, a sympathetic watching audience at home. And I think in part she killed because everybody wanted it to be a smashing success. I don't know. They did a thing

that they do. There's two different kinds of Saturday Night Live hosts. One is when they have

a incredibly versatile comedian, they give them a lot of different roles. And then there's

something they often do with a really just a dumb, hot woman where they just make her do really

dirty, silly things over and over again. And they sort of went that route a little bit with Betty White.

All of the jokes were about how obscene they could make her lines, how many, how many references

she could have to her muffin or

micro penises or bizarre double entendres. But, you know, that was a very different take on that

...