The Emmy awards opened last night with a parody song and dance sequence about how the show had fixed its problems with diversity, and then undermined themselves for the rest of the night.
The long, very-white show included oh-so many awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a surprising amount of love for Netflix’s Godless and the horses in it, and a seemingly endless number of awkward pauses between hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost. Plus, there was a live TV proposal, and a mysterious appearance from Atlanta’s Teddy Perkins. You can find the winner’s list here, but for the true tally of how the night went, peruse our collection of the highs and lows of this year’s show below.
LOW: Endless red-carpet spon-con. Ever wanted to hear Giuliana Rancic over-pronounce Samsung Galaxy 500 times a minute? E! has the coverage (and apparently, smartphone, tablet, and watch) for you.
HIGH: The brief moment when Kate McKinnon and Kenan Thompson walked out at the top of the show, and we wondered if they would be hosting the whole thing.
MEDIUM-HIGH: The increasingly awkward (and unintentionally meta) “We Solved It” song about how everything in Hollywood is okay now, with guests Tituss Burgess, Ricky Martin, Kristen Bell, Andy Samberg, Sterling K. Brown, RuPaul, John Legend, and the “one of each dancers.” So cringe-inducing it’s delightful – shout out to Sandra Oh’s delivery of “it’s an honor just to be Asian” from the audience.
LOW: Colin Jost and Michael Che’s tense, forced banter in their actual opening monologue. Someone get them them back to their Weekend Update desk, with some big cue cards and another SNL cast member to do the heavy lifting.
HIGH: Brian Tyree Henry reacting to that monologue:
Same.
HIGH: Henry Winkler finally wins his Emmy. “I wrote this 43 years ago!” Winkler announced, joyfully thanking a list of names before telling his adult kids, “you can go to bed now, daddy won!” Hooray for the Fonz, now and always.
HIGH: Alex Bornstein removing her jacket. Before walking on stage to receive her award, Alex Bornstein took off her jacket as though she were about to do a striptease, told women to sit down when they use public restrooms, and called Amy Sherman-Palladino her friend (“I love you and I hate you”). Bonus: she wore her wedding dress!
HIGH: Sandra Oh fully commits to her presenter bit. She tore apart her envelope as part of a joke about speaking her truth, believably freaked out, screamed that the winner was La La Land, and then shouted out a guy she dated in high school. He could have won a directing award! They lost touch!
LOW: The presenters come out to banter after the nominees have already been introduced by some nameless announcer. Half the fun of the awards show is watching people internally freak out while trying to pronounce everything correctly, and if we don’t get to watch that happen, what do we have in this lawless universe?
HIGH: Rachel Brosnahan stanning for democracy. While accepting the award for Best Leading Actress in a Comedy, Brosnahan took the opportunity to remind everyone to register to vote. Mrs Maisel is a show about “a woman who’s finding her voice anew,” Brosnahan said, “and one of the most important ways to find and use your voice is to vote.”
HIGH: Teddy Perkins makes an appearance in the audience. If you aren’t going to win the Emmys, haunt them, whoever you are.
LOW: Emmys history explainers with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. In a very brief intro for Writing in a Limited Series, Bob Odenkirk and Aidy Bryant provided a goofy history of celebrities being forced to read bad scripted banter between awards. Those twenty seconds were milquetoast, and yet they were easily twice as funny as the actual “Emmys history” bits with Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. Rudolph and Armisen’s deadpan lack of preparation was purposeful, but it was paired with Colin Jost and Michael Che’s seemingly unintentional complete lack of charisma, and the whole thing was less funny than a half-hour prestige comedy.
AWKWARD MIDDLE PLACE: James Corden tried to address the direction of the evening by suggesting that everyone should get “EmmysSoWhite” trending. The crowd laughed uneasily.
(Excerpt) Read More at: Vulture.com
