Are Meredith Vieira And Al Roker Going To Kill Each Other?

On the American Today show this morning, Meredith genially asked weatherman Al Roker, who is black, if he knew about the weather in Africa. Because her kid’s going there! Al, though, took jokey offence, and the scene got pretty uncomfortable

So for the next hour or so he continued to rib her about being selfish and self-involved, giving her weather updates for the places where her other kids live (Stanford and Northwestern, good job Mer!). At one point an exasperated Meredith just looked over at him and said “I hate you.” Yeesh.

Was it all theatrics? Were they just making fun coworker morning blather jokes? Or does the awkwardness and the tenseness hint at a rift between the two sunshiny morning folks? We hope it’s the latter because maybe that means the problem will grow and swell and eventually burst, raining a parade of embarrassment and discomfort on everyone, most of all poor caught-in-the-middle, good-God-I’ve-been-doing-this-a-long-time Matt Lauer.

You two don’t play nice now, y’hear?