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5 months ago
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Four months later than originally scheduled due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards finally showed up tonight. Fast-paced, packed with reunions, tributes and a Best Talk Show win by Trevor Noah for a Daily Show he exited in late 2022, the Anthony Anderson hosted ceremony was skillfully solid and eminently predictable.
Ambitious, the Jesse Collins Entertainment produced endeavor had a lot of good moments in a compressed award season that has already left most of us dizzy. To that end, in the paper cut of criticism, wouldn’t have hurt if the Emmys had taken their foot off the pedal a bit, and gave the Fox broadcasted show some time to breathe.
Overall, as my colleague Joe Utichi said tonight on Deadline’s Emmy live blog: This is an Emmy-worthy Emmys. At the same time, and through no fault of their own, the 203 Emmys were a little bit of an gleaming afterthought even before the DTLA show even started this MLK Day. Coming off the resuscitated Golden Globes on January 7 and the Critics’ Choice Awards on the weekend with big and well-deserved wins for the final season of Succession, The Bear’s first season, and Netflix’s limited series Beef, Monday night’s show was solidly anticlimactic.
In fact, with Succession, The Bear and Beef snagging most of the major Emmy categories, one of the biggest surprises of the night had to be how few remarks there were about politics and the labor actions that bitterly divided Hollywood last year and shut down almost all production.
Of the latter, I get how no one wants to scratch that scab right now – too soon.
Of the former, well, that’s a bit complicated, isn’t it? I mean, at the very end of the ceremony, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong did joke about fixing “partisan news coverage gets intwined with divisive right-wing politics” after four seasons of the HBO Best Drama. The man knows how to read a room, even a very large room.
The TV Academy’s 75 touchstone TV moments had the potential to touch on the major political events of the last near century as captured on camera. Though doubtful that the infamous rise of a Emmy nominated Reality TV host to the White House in 2016 were among them, the Emmys showed just a snippet of the horrors of 9/11 and other said moments. Picked as one of those 75 touchstone moments, a portion of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech was given centerstage over the end credits on the celebration of what would have been the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s 95th birthday.
Another place in the show for the fragmented world outside the Peacock Theater to be brought up, it was the presentation of the 2023 Governor’s Award to GLAAD. Accepting the award from Colman Domingo and Hannah Waddington, LGBTQ organization’s CEO Sarah Kate Ellis had pointed words on the power of story, representation and the “ballot box.”
Yet, besides brief comments from winners RuPaul and Niecy Nash-Betts during their acceptance speeches and a “Happy Birthday Dr. King” from Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage handing out the Best Drama Award, it was startling how little was said on-stage about this year of election on one of the pertinent political nights in a divided nation – and, No, that Rupert Murdoch quip by Succession’s Armstrong earlier in the night doesn’t count.
Certainly, there were a lot of politics around on Monday night. They just really weren’t on TV’s big night.
Counter programming on all the cable newsers, the deep-freezing GOP Iowa caucuses quickly proved to a blowout for Donald Trump on this Martin Luther King Jr holiday. Unless there is a totally unexpected upset or indictment, tonight’s first vote of 2024 pretty much set the stage for a Trump rematch with now incumbent Joe Biden in November. Add to the mix, and due to the strike rescheduling, NFC South champions the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were hosting and thrashing the Philadelphia Eagles in an NFC Wild Card round on ABC, plus ESPN and online on ESPN+
The Emmys were originally scheduled for September, with nominations unveiled on July 12 last year, but kicked down the calendar due to the five-month long strikes. Risking being as outdated as the presidency of Gerald Ford and shifted to the Bermuda Triangle of a Monday, it may have been better for the TV Academy to take a pass on 2023 and pick up the 76th Emmys in September of this year. But the show must go, and the network with little actual drama on it nowadays, knuckled down the multi-nominated black-ish star and We Are Family host Anderson.
It was a good choice by Fox and the producers. A very good choice, actually.
Anderson skipped the usual nominee shout-outs and ribbing monologue to confidently slide in and out of his own professional (multi-Emmy nominated, never won) and personal small screen history. Too many award shows have become unwatchable in recent years in part for treating their hosts like warm props reading form letters, instead of real people. Anthony Anderson was very much Anthony Anderson, and that gave the show an identity it would have sadly lacked otherwise.
Kicking off with a Mr. Anderson’s Neighborhood set-up that soon shifted from an Eddie Murphy tribute skit to a TVLand trip down memory lane that had a Norman Lear tribute in there somewhere, this delayed Emmys playing to its medium’s history and the artifice of the whole thing. Out of the horror story that way too many award shows are, it was a promising and heartfelt start for the 2023 Emmys.
Soon after the versatile Anderson warned everyone his mother and We Are Family co-host would be cutting long speeches short, Christina Applegate’s appearance on the stage and returning to her old Married …With Children stomping ground prompted a well-deserved standing ovation. Applause that was only reinforced by past Emmy winner Applegate’s presentation of the Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and praising Carol Burnett’s stint handing out the Lead Actress in a Comedy Series award.
Nominated in the category, the multiple sclerosis ailing Applegate lost out to predicted winner Quinta Brunson of Abbott Elementary.
No disrespect to the very talented Brunson and any of the winners tonight, but it was at that point the night took on its anticipated trajectory in most categories. A path, despite the throwback tone fueling this racing Primetime Emmys with Sopranos, Martin, Cheers, Grey’s Anatomy, Ally McBeal and All in the Family reunions and tributes, that became a process of time and inevitability.
Not that it was all been-there, done-that.
There was that joyous speech by Nash-Betts for her Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story win. There was Good Times alum Marla Gibbs as a presenter and pay equity advocate, and there was a genuinely funny Mean Girls remake wisecrack in the SNL Weekend Update reunion with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were real moments that only live TV can bring.
But, let’s be honest, for the most part, the 2023 Emmys was about as surprising as Trump winning the Iowa caucuses. You could see the results from a mile away, even in the snowstorms that were battering great swaths of the country. As Succession, The Bear and Beef cleaned up, there was only the scale of the win to be determined.
Then again, especially with Succession now truly over and out of the running, we’re going to do this Emmy jamboree once more this year in September. By then we may have some real surprises and much more mention of the ballot box. Let’s have some more Anthony Anderson and his mama too.
