Betty White takes on SNL

Drawing on her six decades in comedy, Betty White proved she's only getting better with age as this week's host of Saturday Night Live.

The veteran television actress's age 88 was a running gag in virtually every skit on the 90-minute show, including one in which she played a blunt-talking grandmother in a 1904 parlour scene with former SNL stars Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and Tina Fey.

Jay-Z dedicated Forever Young to his host, and the show's writers even upsized White's age to 90 for her Weekend Update commentary sketch.

Entertainment Weekly said the actress rattled off her I'm-so-old jokes "with crack timing, exulting in the idea that someone 88-and-a half years old could be up this late."

Career revival

White, who won an Emmy in 1986 for her portrayal of Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, is currently experiencing a career revival.

In January, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild.

Shortly after that, her fans launched a campaign on Facebook urging SNL producers to make her a host of the show. The campaign attracted nearly 500,000 supporters and resulted in her Saturday night gig, billed by NBC as its special Mother's Day edition.

She'll guest star on the May 19 finale of ABC's The Middle as a mad librarian.

And she'll return to series television as the co-star of a new sitcom, Hot in Cleveland, which starts its 10-episode season on June 16.

The Boston Herald called White's rising star "a testament to the power of social media and a happy development in a pop culture that seems to be getting tired of all things pretty and perky."

But on Saturday, White took jabs at the social network that put her on the show, admitting she'd never heard of Facebook before the campaign.

"And now that I know what it is," she said, "it seems like a huge waste of time . At my age, if I want to connect with my old friends, I need a Ouija board."