The Best Was Yet Last Night

In reviewing Tuesday night's NBC special "Tony Bennett: An American Classic," The Hollywood Reporter quipped: "Bottom Line: The best thing of its sort that you will ever see." And I have to agree. The birthday salute to the 80-year-old "grand old man of pop" was an hour of breeze, on-the-spot and dead-right orchestrations, cool dancing... and an hour too short. My favorite parts: the sixties television studio variety show re-creation (for the song "The Best Is Yet To Come"), and the duet "Just In Time." It was all perfect - and totally devoid of pretension. Just how perfect it was became immensely clear during the Target commercials, which were exceedingly ugly - black and white plus glaring red, featuring all of the singers in the special as if they were photographed by bad pararazzi. Hopefully, NBC will show this again, soon.