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By Phil McCarten / Invision / AP / REX / Shutterstock.
Let a live show director reward what had been a rather flat rewards show. While accepting the award for outstanding variety direction, Helmer Oscars Glenn Weiss shocked the audience at the theater and at home by offering his astonished (and accepting) girlfriend. It was a wild, sweet moment just before the big moment, which greatly helped invigorate the evening. This guy from Weiss really knows what he's doing.
Otherwise, this year's Emmys ceremony was a pretty serious affair. hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che, long dreaded by those of us who have never been drawn to their "weekend update" Saturday Night Live, just proved good. Their inaugural monologue contained jokes about #MeToo and movie stars making the jump on television, which I've seen on Twitter over the past year. This platform, a joke-a-second, set the bar higher for the monologues of the awards shows. It takes a lot of ingenuity to come up with a catch that we have never heard before. Jost and Che may not have been the guys to take on this challenge.
Feeling perhaps a little apprehensive about the hosts, Emmys producers warmed the crowd with the nominees. Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon make a song and dance about the diversity of this year's nominees, joking that a long-standing problem had finally been solved. It was a kind of gesture for a complicated issue, made all the more ineffective by an initial series of losing color actors for white artists.
A recurring bit with another loved one SNL pair, Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, never quite landed. The gag was that Rudolph and Armisen were there to be experts in Emmys' history but had not done their research. Which is fun for a second, but then, by the nature of the joke, it becomes immediately repetitive. I tend to laugh at least a little each time these two do something, but they could have been better employed. As is the case, they only contributed to the general feeling of apathy. Nothing was excessively false, exactly, but nothing has raised the blood of the series either. Other than this unexpected proposal, of course.
To this was added a reworking of the standard format in which individual prizes are awarded. Instead of bringing out the presenters and presenting the list of nominees, an announcer of the voice of God presented the nominees and then called the presenters to the stage, who were solely responsible for reading the winner. At first, it seemed like an innovative idea, a way to speed up the pace and save clumsy presenters from generally overcrowded jokes. But the show could not resist the joke. Some bits were good –Hannah Gadsby make a very condensed version of his social comedy Nanette, for example – but most of them seemed even more superfluous than usual, since the names of the candidates had already been announced. Yet with some adjustments (which means: record jokes only for presenters who are very good, and when it suits the category) this new structure could be an effective innovation.
It was appreciated that the show was quite light on the gilding. There was a useless but at least brief greeting at the Emmys towards the end of the show. ("Give us a hand," said the head of the Academy under lukewarm applause). (And, uh, John McCain.) And we have seen few of our hosts often poorly designed. I did like a pre-recorded segment in which Che distributed "Emmys of Repair" to deserving black artists, like Marla Gibbs and Tichina Arnold. It was quick and inspired and it was really nice to see some familiar, old and underrated TV friends, grabbing a bit of it.
A problem that the Emmys, or any reward, can not really solve, is the same problem. The wonderful Mrs Maisel won for leading actress, supporting actress, writing, directing, and best comedy. So we had a lot of people on stage and thanked in the speeches. I guess there's nothing to be done about it unless you induce new, less-than-thinking members and encourage voters to think a little more broadly.
Which does not mean that there were no nice surprises, maybe among them Regina King earn for her powerful, if under-work, work on Netflix Seven seconds and Thandie Newton largely deserved victory for Westworld. These two gave the show a fair shake. But then The iron Throne won the best drama and everything felt again.
In the end, we escaped most of the time unscathed, if a bit bored. Which is perhaps the best we could have hoped for. In any case, congratulations to the happy couple. May their marriage be as exciting as its glorious beginning.
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