Emmys 2019: Some Well-Deserved Wins Can’t Save a Boring Ceremony

In retrospect, I can’t fault the producers of the 71st Annual Emmy Awards for choosing to go without a host. Certainly, someone looked at the year’s earlier Oscar ceremony, which proved competent and watchable even with the unfilled vacancy left by the ousting of Kevin Hart. And certainly that person also theorized that it probably wasn’t worth the time and effort to track down a celebrity host for the Emmys and then learn from the world’s most valiant anonymous trolls that said celebrity had written a couple of off-color tweets in 2008. Add in the fact that this year’s show was broadcast on FOX, a network which doesn’t have any late-night hosts to fall back on (their last Emmys was hosted by Andy Samberg, star of Brooklyn Nine-Nine – a show the network no longer even owns) and you could be forgiven for allowing the production to air without an emcee.

But having sat through last night’s extremely boring and extraordinarily unfunny ceremony, I will take anyone to the mat if they suggest that the Emmys should continue this trend into next year.

This is not to say that a host would have fully salvaged a show in which each hour felt more tedious than the last, and where comedy bits bombed one after another. But it would have provided an anchor point for the show to work off, a recurring wink-and-nod to the audience (assuming there still is an audience watching the Emmys – at last check, most of my friends tuned into football last night).

As it stood, the show we got was a paradoxical affair, simultaneously feeling rushed even as it dragged on forever. The show opened on a promising note, with an animated Homer Simpson taking the stage – for all the comparative jokes it invited about the Emmys being stale and around too long, it was an amusing surprise appearance by FOX’s original star. But apart from an amusing tiff between Ben Stiller and Bob Newhart, things dipped southward, with the humorous bits feeling increasingly like items on a checklist. Tim Allen ushered the accountants of Ernst & Young onstage along with a guy in a mascot costume named ”Thingamajig.” Maya Rudolph and Ike Barinholtz struggled with their vision after “lasic eye surgery” in a skit that started out funny but dragged on too long. By the time Adam Devine led a musical number celebrating variety talk shows, I was staring at the screen from between my fingers. What on earth was happening?

On top of all this, the lack of a host did not stop the producers from hiring Thomas Lennon to provide color commentary throughout the show, including cringe-worthy quips (“Fleabagging”?) after every winner. Lennon got in precisely one funny line during the night, about Felicity Huffman’s blink-and-it’s-over prison sentence; beyond that, his wisecracking was another aspect of the night that should have been excised.

Thankfully, there were some deserving winners. The terrific Fleabag won four awards, including Outstanding Comedy, scoring an upset over prior favorites The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Veep. (Maisel scored the first two victories of the night with trophies for Tony Shalhoub and Alex Borstein; Veep, despite a swan-song tribute midway through the show, went home empty-handed.) Phoebe Waller-Bridge further scored a peripheral victory when Jodie Comer unexpectedly won for Killing Eve, beating several more prominent actresses, including costar Sandra Oh.

On the whole, the plaudits were spread throughout the room. Chernobyl performed best in the Limited Series category (winning for Writing, Directing, and the top prize), but it didn’t nab a single acting award; those were split four ways between Fosse/Verdon, When They See Us, A Very English Scandal, and The Act. The Drama category shook things up as well, with victories for Succession, Pose, and Ozark (Jason Bateman won the first Emmy of his career – but as a director, not an actor).

It was only when the final award came around that the Emmys reverted to form, rubber-stamping Game of Thrones for Outstanding Drama and undercutting several younger, fresher series that ran against it. It was the most predictable move of the night, but that didn’t make it less disappointing. What could have been a capstone on a night of surprise victories instead turned into another example of Hollywood playing it safe.

Indeed, there was an air of safety throughout the show whenever the awards weren’t being announced, as presenters and winners twisted and turned to avoid controversy. A few gave politically-tinged speeches, but none felt like true firebrands. The stars of Empire introduced one montage, but the name “Jussie Smollett” was never mentioned. Most potential pot-stirring was off the table, with the most controversial aspect of the night being the endless promos for The Masked Singer.

And yet despite the air of calm and contentment the Emmys tried to project last night, and despite the many, many great television shows we see every year, the TV industry is in the worst shape it’s been in decades. The #MeToo movement has exposed the uglier side of Hollywood, even as most industry bigwigs would prefer to ignore its implications. The continued rise of streaming services accelerates the fragmentation of viewership into ever-smaller demographics, leaving the bigger networks to cope with lower ratings than ever.

And this is to say nothing of the looming threat of a TV writers’ strike. This past April, following a heated battle between the Writers’ Guild of America and Hollywood’s top talent agencies, over 7,000 WGA members fired their agents, and they remain dissatisfied with the lack of residual payments in an era when streaming services are gradually supplanting network syndication. (A hastily-constructed deal in 2017 temporarily quelled the flames, but it expires early next year.) The possibility of a strike at some point in 2020 is very real, and given how much more lucrative and ubiquitous the TV business has grown since the last one (which lasted for three months in 2007), it could do serious damage to the industry.

Obviously, Hollywood insiders would prefer not to discuss this sort of thing publicly, which is why last night’s ceremony was focused more on variety musical numbers and Thomas Lennon one-liners. But as the Emmys decline further in both ratings and relevance, one wishes they at least had more conviction when it came to self-mockery. Which is another reason why the show would be better off with a host next year.

Other Thoughts:

– Despite scoring the top prize, Game of Thrones actually underperformed for much of the ceremony. The series was nominated for 32 awards this year, the most for any show in a single season. (The previous record-holder was NYPD Blue, which scored 26 nominations in 1994.) In total, the show has received 58 Emmys throughout its run – the most for any scripted series, but still below the 65 wins for Saturday Night Live.

– Speaking of SNL, that show scored its third consecutive win for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. By this point, it looks like that show will keep winning so long as its harshest critic remains in the White House. No other series in the category has anywhere near its level of cultural cache.

– Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won Outstanding Variety Talk Series for the fourth year in a row. It appears that Oliver has become the Emmys’ new John Stewart, and with his contract set through at least another year, there’s no reason to assume he won’t score again in 2020, either.

– Bradley Whitford and Jimmy Smits had a brief but welcome West Wing reunion onstage to present one of the Limited Series awards. (The airing of the show coincided with the 20th anniversary of The West Wing, which first premiered on September 22, 1999.)

– I’m going to pretend that Bandersnatch didn’t actually beat Deadwood for the Outstanding TV Movie award. Given how badly Deadwood was treated by the Emmys in its original run (it received five awards, all technical), just let me have this fantasy.

– The night’s most politically potent moment came when Michelle Williams (winning for Fosse/Verdon) gave a speech about the importance of equal pay. Unfortunately, her plea was undermined by her statistically faulty wage-gap claim that women of color in Hollywood make only 52 cents for every white man’s dollar. Twitter celebrated her anyway, of course.

– A lot of my predictions were wrong, but I correctly predicted that Billy Porter would win for Pose. Still, no one could have predicted… that hat.

– The In Memoriam segment was beautifully produced, and warmly set to Halsey’s rendition of “Time After Time,” but I wish they’d cut the audience mic during the montage. The applause was intermittent and distracting, as I spent much of the time wondering “How loudly are they going to clap for this person?”

– What are the odds that Amazon has already called up Phoebe Waller-Bridge to beg for a third series of Fleabag? I’m guessing they’re high.

– Emmy season has been crazy, but it’s thankfully over. And Oscar season begins in 5… 4… 3…