Conan Sweeps The Emmys*

[PGage]

*Not really

I know any post about this show risks a lot of #Emmysodull or #Emmysoirrelevant or (at least on a big part of my Twitter) #Emmysowhite, but it’s worth it.

John Oliver beat Conan for best talk show, but shouted him out at the top of his acceptance speech, giving Conan a chance to do a small comedy bit of pretending he thought he was being told he won, then getting disappointed, but also unleashing Conan for the rest of the night. Later Oliver was chief among those rooting Conan on in his antics.

There is already quite a debate about the ethnic dynamics underlying the winners. For my money the nominees were quite diverse, and the winners entirely predictable and at least defendable, with the possible exception of a somewhat overrated season of The Crown. Most of the outrage on my Twitter feed seems forced and performative, with the best case made for Michaela Coel losing to Kate Winslet for best actress in a mini-series, though frankly, in the strongest category of the night I was rooting for either Anya Taylor-Joy or Elizabeth Olsen. Coel did win I think for writing.

However  there is no question that Cedrick the Entertainer (again, predictably, IMO) was  mostly not good, and from a comic standpoint Conan both stole and saved the show. 

If Conan won the night, the big loser was Scott Frank, winner of best directing in a miniseries for Queens Gambit (well deserved IMO), but gave a pitch perfect performance as a privileged, pompous clueless and boring white man in his acceptance speech, reading several long pages, ignoring and then shouting down the playoff music, apparently concluding that since Debbie Allen did something similar minutes before fir a kind of lifetime achievement award, while giving a passionate and inspirational speech, he could do the same. He was wrong.

I guess whatever network airs the show puts one of its people in as host (I did not know Cedrick had a show on CBS), but if they know what’s good for them they will figure out a way to get Conan to host next year.

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[Mark Jeffries]

The Twitterverse seemed to be affronted over Conan's overeffusive welcome to the TV Academy CEO, claiming that he was disgracing Debbie Allen and diversity.  No, it just proved how humorless idiot millennials are.

Personally, I would love to see Oliver crapping on everyone as Emmy host, but that won't happen unless HBO televises it.  If it's Fox next year, who's going to host?  Nick Cannon?  Dr. Ken?  Chef Ramsay?

Mark Jeffries
spotl...@gmail.com

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[Brad Beam]

If the current rotation holds, NBC airs the ceremony next year.

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[M-D November]

Whichever costume wins the next cycle of "Masked Singer".  Not the celebrity.  Just the costume and a PA with a vocorder.

[Dave Sikula]

They'll probably drag Samberg, Fallon, or Meyers into the swamp, especially if Lorne is producing.

Cedric was embarrassingly bad Sunday, so anyone -- even Wiig --  would be an improvement.

-- Dave Sikula

[PGage]

He really was quite bad. I have seen his stand up, which is better than his horrid tv shows, but still not really great IMO. I am not sure what CBS was expecting because as bad as he was, it was just about what I would have predicted. 

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[daves...@gmail.com]

I think the problem with all of the skits was the problem with the broadcast in general* (even if the ratings were up this year): that the audience has become so fragmented that there's just too many things that too many people aren't familiar with.

I mean, I guess to anyone who's watched all of Cedric's shows, that thing with his TV wives amusing (I can't imagine anyone did, but go with me ...), but to anyone like me who's managed to avoid his TV work, it was three actresses chewing scenery badly. Same with the Ken Jeong thing. If you haven't seen him, you don't know what's going on. (And I kind of like him, but his act is getting so thin, one can read a newspaper through it.)

The thing with Pence and the fly was about as topical as Mort Sahl's material about the Eisenhower administration.

Even the "I never won an Emmy sketch" (which went on too long) suffered from "Who are these people?" syndrome. (Poor Fred Savage.)

I'm not a fan of award shows, but this one did nothing to help the cause. It was badly written, poorly paced, and utterly unnecessary.

--Dave Sikula

(*Other than the tacit acknowledgment that the medium has become so infested with British actors playing Americans that they had to set up a middle-of-the-night soiree in London.)

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[PGage]

I think you are letting Cedrick off too easy; he is just not good (at least when he aims for mainstream audiences). I know who Fred Savage is, and 2 of Cedrick’s three TV wives, and those sketches were still extremely unfunny. The Pence sketch was unfunny when SNL did it back when it was topical (but seriously, who let him go that far back for such a hack idea?).

I don’t think TV is too fragmented for a good Emmy’s show, and in fact aside from Cedrick I thought this was a good show. The nominee list (which I guess was expanded) were almost all of very high quality. I consume a lot of TV but still had not heard of some shows (e.g. Pose) or had heard of but not yet seen others (Hacks, which I started watching yesterday). I did see a lot of irritated Tweeters grousing “Who’s Ted Lasso?”, but if they don’t care enough to spend $10 to get Apple TV for one month to watch both seasons (easily done) then I’m not taking the irritation too seriously. A glance through the nominee list for the televised categories only left me stink eyed over a few (I have not seen it, but hard to believe “Keenan” really represents the best of American TV this year).

By the end of the show I thought the Emmys had reclaimed their position ahead of the Golden Globes, which may now be an ex-thing on broadcast TV anyway. It’s not clear if any of these Award shows will survive another two years (though I would bet they will), but if the Emmys don’t, I think it will more be that a fragmented audience no longer watches TV events like this, not that television programming is too fragmented to generate interest in recognizing the best content.

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[daves...@gmail.com]

I think we're already seeing the death of the awards show, if using only the Tonys as an example. I generally have an interest in them, even as much as they're bowling trophies for work in a very small segment of just one city.

Of course, that broadcast (in recent years, anyway) isn't so much awarding work that millions of viewers will never see as it is a commercial for shows that will (theoretically) soon be coming to a performing arts center near you--in an non-Equity tour.

CBS's decision to cut down the number of awards given on the network is not unexpected, but is a little disappointing. I'll be watching Paramount Plus for the "real" broadcast, regardless of the fact that (for the most part) it's a bunch of recycled schlock that I have no interest in. (I admit I am rooting for my pal Danny Burstein, who's been nominated six times without winning, and who suffered the terrible death of his wife last year.)

I would imagine that, the Oscars excepted, because the Oscarcast -- no matter how awful it is every year -- is an outlier, the other majors will cut down on the number of televised awards (as the Grammys have already done) in favor of a reliable time-slot and mediocre banter and skits.

And I've never thought Cedric was funny, and Sunday did nothing to change that opinion.

--Dave Sikula

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[M-D November]

For the record, Apple TV+ is only $5/mo, and there's almost always a free trial. The catalog is more limited than other services at similar price points (Hulu at $7/mo, Disney+ at $7/mo by virtue of a pre-launch multi-year offer), but Apple has been aggressively adding originals and buying films to fill out the library.

I watched a few episodes of "Keenan" S1; I really like Keenan, and was willing to give the show a shot, but it never landed for me - possibly because it's too sitcom-formulaic, possibly because it's just not very well written, possibly because putting Keenan in the lead role of a modern sitcom doesn't give him opportunity for those "[KEENAN REACTS]" moments he's famous for from SNL.  Either way, we didn't stick with it, but I was happy to see Keenan getting recognized.

Cedric was a bad host.  There's no need to sugarcoat it.  His jokes didn't land, he kept calling Reggie Watts by the wrong name, and the majority of his pre-tapes weren't funny (although I did like the No-Emmy support group...at least until Dr. Fraud walked in.) I get that he's a pillar CBS's comedy lineup, but they've also got WAYNE FRICKING BRADY on the network - how do you not recruit him for this?

[daves...@gmail.com]

While I think Kenan is pretty much the only good thing on SNL, I've never bothered with his own show. What he does on Saturday nights is incompatible to the needs of sitcom acting.

As for a host, they also have Queen Latifah and Keegan Michael Key, either of whom would have been more entertaining and preferable.

I'm just glad (and surprised) we didn't get Corden.

NBC has the next show? I don't know who they can plug in. They've got no sitcoms on the prime time schedule, so I guess we're looking at Fallon, Meyers, or Samberg, unless they want to drag Poehler out of the swamp again. Knowing my luck, they'll use Maya Rudolph and let her do her usual "people think this is funny?" shtick.

--Dave Sikula

[David Bruggeman]

With Brooklyn 99 heading off to reruns-only, Samberg may in a position to say no.

Not sure if he'd want to, but Nick Offerman is co-hosting an NBC reality competition show (Making It).  He might not make a hash of it.

David

[M-D November]

Also, didn't Samberg host the last time NBC had the Emmys? (I seem to remember a backlot-spanning opening number wherein he tried to ingest all of peak TV.)

[Brad Beam]

It was the “Weekend Update” pair last time around.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 23, 2021, at 17:48, M-D November <mdnov...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Also, didn't Samberg host the last time NBC had the Emmys? (I seem to remember a backlot-spanning opening number wherein he tried to ingest all of peak TV.)

[Dave Sikula]

If Lorne is the producer — and unless whatever kompromat he has on his bosses is no longer active, it will be — it’ll definitely be someone with an SNL connection. Whether that’s Fallon, Meyers, Samberg, Poehler, Fey, or even — god forbid — McKinnon, is up to his whims.

— Dave Sikula

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 23, 2021, at 2:48 PM, M-D November <mdnov...@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, didn't Samberg host the last time NBC had the Emmys? (I seem to remember a backlot-spanning opening number wherein he tried to ingest all of peak TV.)

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[M-D November]

Quite.  It was apparently the 2015 ceremony I was thinking of.