Tuesday TV Touchbase: Emmys Postmortem

 

Sunday night, Andrea and I watched the Emmys out of sheer boredom. There was literally nothing else we felt compelled to watch at all. 

Boredom was rarely alleviated. 

I was mildly curious about how the TV shows I watched might fare and also how this whole virtual format would work. 

Answers: Not well. And not well. 

Last week I posited that the Marvelous Mrs, Maisel would be the unstoppable juggernaut among comedy series.  It was not. Nope, the honor for "unstoppable juggernaut" fell to Schitt's Creek. 

It was getting annoying watching Schitt's Creek win award after award. 

• Schitt's Creek 
• Schitt's Creek  
• Schitt's Creek 
• Schitt's Creek 
• Schitt's Creek   
• Schitt's   
• Schitt's   
• Schitt's  
• Creek  
• Creek
• Creek

Over and over and over ad infinitum. 

Look, Alex Borstein was ROBBED!!!!!!

Here's the thing about Schitt's Creek. I've heard a lot of good things about this series. It's on my list of things to catch up on when I have time. 

By the time the first hour of the Emmys was over, I was vowing to NEVER watch Schitt's Creek. 

I will watch Tiger King before I watch Schitt's Creek, that's how much I was annoyed by it.  

OK, Ken Levine was happy about the Schitt's Creek sweep. As he described it in his blog, Schitt's Creek is "an actual comedy that strives to make people laugh...  Not a 'dramedy' that has a few smiles or a quirky message show, but a real honest-to-goodness COMEDY."

I trust Ken's instincts and tastes when it comes to comedy and it sounds like Schitt's Creek might be something I might enjoy. Thanks to the Emmys, I have declared Schitt's Creek is something I now actively hate.

Alex Borstein was ROBBED!!!!!!

The show itself was gamely hosted by Jimmy Kimmel who opened up with a monologue to a packed house of TV celebrities.  What the hell? Is this is some kind of liberal answer to a MAGA rally? 

Nope, just stock footage from a previous Emmy telecast from the before times. The bit played out a bit too long and it wasn't the only comedy bit lacking in timing. Comedy is really hard without an audience.

Jennifer Anniston was on hand as the first presenter and the hapless participant in an elaborate sequence of events to disinfect the winner's envelope that including setting it on fire then putting the fire out. Things got a little hairy when the fire wouldn't stay out despite Anniston's use of a fire extinguisher.  As Maureen Lee Lenker wrote for EW, "the scene became a literal garbage fire. Pretty great metaphor for 2020, though."  

Cord Jefferson, winner for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series category,  thanked his therapist Ian during his acceptance speech.  

Speaking of thanking therapists, I'll thank mine. 

Thank you, Heidi! 

The In Memoriam segment was well done with artist H.E.R. (who I never heard of before this) performing “Nothing Compares 2 U" with power and feeling.  (Somehow Schitt's Creek got in there too!) Every featured fallen member of the TV community were honored with carefully designed images that matched them to their work. For example, the image of René Auberjonois placed against a canopy of stars and the station from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a particularly well rendered tribute. 

HBO’s Succession won best drama series and Jesse Armstrong, the shows creator, decided to forego the usual thanks yous and insteaded gave a list of “un-thank yous" to the virus to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson’s responses to the pandemic. 

There were a lot of entreaties from winners and presenters for people to go out and vote and it was not unclear as to who to vote for. Given this is Hollywood giving awards to itself, it's a lot of preaching to the choir.

And what a small choir it was. The ratings for the 2020 Emmys were the lowest of all-time with only 6.1 million people tuning in which is down about 12% from last year's all-time low.  What really hurts the Emmys is there are a lot of nominations for shows that no one has watched on outlets not everyone has access to featuring people we've never heard of. An awards show on a broadcast network with little to no broadcast network representation is just begging people not to watch. 

Of the 6.1 million people that tuned in, how many were actually watching, paying any attention or managing to stay awake?  

I will admit the thing I got the most excited for was not in the show itself but a commercial for the long awaited, much anticipated series from Disney+, WandaVision! 

I was all "squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" 

If all goes well, I've embedded the trailer here. 

OK, Wanda and Vision watching Schitt's Creek? Enough already!* 

*I must clarify that Schitt's Creek was not in the WandaVision trailer or the In Memoriam. 

The 2020 Emmy broadcast was not a clusterfuck going up Schitt's Creek but it did suffer from the lack of a certain energy otherwise associated with a live show. The efforts to compensate for that lack of an audience worked for the purpose of getting the show done but little more than that. And without any crowd pleasing favorites to root for, just niche shows on niche outlets, there's not much to get excited about. 

For all the shows I watched, I went almost zero for anyone winning an award until "Last Week Tonight with John OIiver" won an award presented by that great comic talk show master himself, David Letterman. 

One a positive note, the Emmys ended almost on time. The last award was presented at 11:04 PM EDT so kudos to Jimmy Kimmel and the production crew for running a pretty tight show. 

Thanks for reading. Remember to be good to one another and just in case you forgot, Schitt's Creek! 

'Bye!