Keenan Thompson joked in his opening remarks at Monday’s 74th annual Primetime Emmy Awards about people making TV so we can all “watch TV at home.” But were we? I was watching it on Peacock, not NBC. I think it was a pretty similar experience, except that instead of ignoring the commercials, it was ignoring the floating circular graphics set to elevator music.
The Emmys are back on the big stage in the big room of the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, but they’ve done better weathering Covid-19 than losing the big streaming video chip on their shoulders. Already his year has seen the strange spectacle of telecasts nervously declaring their relevance.
After Oprah Winfrey hailed television as the world’s “most successful broadcast medium” (a sort of modern definition of faint praise), host Thompson said, “For the past 30 years, there’s been a lot of stuff in your living room. I am very grateful to have been welcomed.” — and after a couple of very subtle jabs at Netflix’s recent business setbacks — the show settled into an amiable, off-putting, shapeless, graceless groove. Not much to do. Not much to get upset about. Another one in the book.
Head-scratching methods of informing victims of the pandemic, such as hospital show montages at the beginning of unrelated award presentations and closed captions conveying the extra thank you that some winners supposedly provided something happened. Forward. (I wonder what Julia Garner’s husband thought of being in the caption instead of her acceptance speech.)
Organized or otherwise, there seemed to be a consensus about keeping it light, moving away from the problems and divisions that currently define the world for many people. , a few gentle jabs at Donald J. Trump, no mention (that I heard) of abortion or the invasion of Ukraine, and until the show’s final moments, the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
One of the show’s most prominent aspects was the weakness of its scripted parts, so maybe that was just right. Introduces Hargitay as “two cops who no one wants to defend.”
Lizzo, who took the stage as a presenter, was quick to point out that her line, “And the Emmys, a really big girl in her own way,” was written by someone else. The speech that was given seemed mediocre, disjointed, and half-written at the same time. Indeed, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez have written their own lines that are glorious chains of insults.
The sketch awkwardly pops up after a commercial break — Kumail Nanjiani as the night’s inept bartender. The “Simpsons” segment was a novel idea to make fun of Hollywood audiences’ addiction to plastic surgery.
(One of the producers may have realized that if one of the first clips was from “Only Murders in the Building”, introducing a comedy series montage and saying nobody dies wouldn’t work.) Hmm.)
In any case, even before the pandemic, it’s the awards show that the production has subsided to a forgettable, bland, indifferently produced middle ground where the memorable moments come almost entirely from acceptance. Monday’s show began with Sherrill Lee Ralph accepting the acting award for “Abbott Elementary” half-singing and half-verbally. He seemed to have no confidence in himself.
Lizzo has recovered well by happily accepting the reality competition prize for “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” Jennifer Coolidge was adorable and started dancing when it hit the playoffs after winning an award for ‘The White Lotus,’ while Michael Keaton and Matthew Macfadyen won acting awards for ‘Dopesick’ and ‘Succession.’ It was moving and eloquent in doing so. His Jerrod Carmichael, author of the comedy special “Rothaniel,” offered a slow, choppy series of words of thanks.
And then there was the funniest pastime of the night: trying to read the expressions on the faces of the American nominees every time “Squid Game” won an award.
Shows like the Emmys and Oscars aspired to elegance, a quality that is now underappreciated, for better or worse. Rather than a soirée, the goal is something in between a large corporate holiday bash and flat party, with studied “authenticity” and competitive profanity.
There is probably no better example than Monday night when Quinta Branson had to give a sophisticated and very grown-up speech, standing over Jimmy Kimmel, who was lying on stage and unable to get up. I did. Apparently self-satisfaction also needs expression.