Another year has passed, and it is time for the Emmys to return, so check in at 5:30 PDT (okay, I guess earlier, thanks internet for lying to me) for all the useless insight and jokes from me in this year’s Emmys.
5:13 PM PDT: Well, I guess I’ll just start during the middle of the Stephen Colbert’s monologue, because sure, this is that kind of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ year. Colbert is going all in on the political side of things: tearing into Trump, and well, the Emmys doesn’t give a fuck about being political. Very, very political…
5:15 PM PDT: Hey, it is Sean Spicer… I am not sure how should feel about this feel-good Sean Spicer Tour… Let’s just leave it at that.
5:17 PM PDT: Best Supporting Drama Actor is up with the Big Little Lies cast up to give the award. Dear lord, the Emmys has a lot of enemies. Man, they spoil a lot of Westworld with these Jeffrey Wright clips. The winner is John Lithgow. The correct choice, but the one place I thought the show might go against convention.
5:19 PM PDT: Lithgow is very gracious in his speech, and he thanks everyone including Winston Churchill (which is used as a subtle Trump burn, so buckle up everyone).
5:25 PM PDT: Colbert is out to take shots at the summer movie season, Robert DeNiro, and I guess thankfully Sean Spicer.
5:26 PM PDT: Shemar Moore and Gina Rodriguez are out to give the award for Best Supporting Comedy Actress. The winner is Kate McKinnon. Hey, I got one right!
5:28 PDT: McKinnon is very emotional, and she can barely keep it together. She gives a shout out to the writing for the show, and strangely gets played off as she thanks Hillary Clinton, so that’s something.
5:29 PM PDT: Issa Rae and Riz Ahmed are out to give the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Season. The Big Little Lies train has started, with the winner being Laura Dern, who gives a savage remark about only having worked with 12 women in all her time working in Hollywood. So yeah, damn, this Emmys is going to take no bullshit.
5:37 PM PDT: Melissa McCarthy and Dave Chapelle are out, and thrilled to be Guest Emmy Winners. Also, Chapelle is taking more shots at Hollywood for how poor black representation has been at the Emmys in the past. They are presenting for Best Director in a Comedy Series, and the winner is Donald Glover for Atlanta. Let the Donald Glover coronation begin!
5:40 PM PDT: Donald Glover gives a shout out to Hiro Murai, who guided Glover and also helped direct Atlanta.
5:41 PM PDT: Anna Faris and Allison Janney are out to present for Best Variety Sketch Series. The winner is SNL, which yeah, come on, like that wasn’t happening after the last year. Also, because you can really tell how out of it I was, I didn’t even make a prediction in this category–though, like I said, it was kind of obvious. Also, Lorne Michaels gives a short, sweet, and funny speech.
5:48 PM PDT: Colbert is back, and a Westworld bit is starting to run, and it is fine. The Julia Louis Dreyfus joke is funny, and Tituss Burgess makes a fun appearance, but yeah, sure, that happened.
5:51 PM PDT: Gabrielle Union and LL Cool J are out for to present for Outstanding Writer in a Drama Series. The winner is Bruce Miller for The Handmaid’s Tale. Good for him. He insists that he owes his award to three women: Reed Morano, Margaret Atwood, and Elizabeth Moss, which is a nice touch.
5:54 PM PDT: James Corden and Seth Meyers are out to to make fun of all of the stars pretending that they have seen each other’s shows before presenting for Outstanding Supporting Comedy Actor. Hey look, Alec Baldwin won. Yep, yep, and yep. The Trump shots start as soon as he gets up there, as it is true that I guess someone playing Trump getting an Emmy is the closest Donald will ever get (I guess–never count anything out at this point). Baldwin makes sure to hype up how important the arts are, but otherwise keeps his speech rather tame.
6:04 PM PDT: Rachel Bloom is out to sing about the accountants from Ernst and Young, which was clever, and made that actually interesting, so cool.
6:05 PM PDT: Alexis Bledel and Gerald McRaney are out to present for Outstanding Director in a Limited Series, and well, Jean-Marc Vallée directed Big Little Lies, so yeah, he won. Sigh, don’t praise David E. Kelly too much, we finally got his ego under control.
6:07 PM PDT: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton are all out. The crowd is absolutely stoked about this Nine to Five reunion, and the Trump fire is immediate. Oh man, Dolly Parton is the best, and is stealing this bit. Oh yeah, they are presenting for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, and the winner is Big Little Liars–I mean, Alexander Skarsgård. The Skarsgårds have an Emmy, so hurray!
6:17 PM PDT: Colbert is out to do a bit about interviewing Emmy (played by Laverne Cox).
6:20 PM PDT: Tracee Ellis Ross and Kaitlin Olson are out to present for Best Writing in a Variety Series, and the winner is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. John Oliver is out and on fire. He tries to get #DCPublicSchool started and thanks Oprah, because why not?
6:23 PM PDT: Jeremy Piven and Sonequa Martin Green are out to present for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. The winner is, ooh, Ann Dowd. This could bode very well for The Handmaid’s Tale later on, and Dowd looks genuinely shocked. She is giving a very sweet speech, and of course she gets played off because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Fun speech though.
6:31 PM PDT: The President of the Television Academy is out to give a speech about how inclusion is happening, which yay! Ooh, there is a montage showing both behind the camera and in front of the camera representation. This is a good start, but dear god, do not rest on these laurels.
6:34 PM PDT: Sheldon and Young Sheldon are out (yep, you get your character names and not your real names) to present for Writing in a Comedy Series, and the winner is Aziz Ansari and Lena Waithe. Lena Waithe becomes the first African American Woman to win a writing Emmy in a comedy, so this is a big deal. The room is very excited about this, and awesomely Aziz lets Lena give the entire speech.
6:37 PM PDT: Lea Michelle and Kumail Nanjiani are out to present for Outstanding Reality Competition Program, and the winner is The Voice, because the Emmys can only be asked to try so much and The Voice won last year, so sure. There is a speech, but whatever, yawn.
6:45 PM PDT: Rashida Jones and Mark Feuerstein are out to present for Outstanding Direction for a Drama Series. The winner is Reed Morano for The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale train continues, and feels like it is heading towards the grand prize, but we’ll see, I guess. Morano’s speech is fine, but the Emmys basically no longer care about good speeches, and just want you to be fast.
6:49 PM PDT: Emmy Rossum and Seth McFarlane are out for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series. McFarlane characters do voice work for the nominations, and the winner is Charlie Brooker for Black Mirror: San Junipero. Cool, and a fun speech.
6:51 PM PDT: Stop everything, Viola Davis is out to introduce the In Memorium in a way only she could. Christopher Jackson is out to perform the song over the In Memorium.
7:01 PM PDT: Craig Robinson and Adam Scott are out to present for Outstanding Director for a Variety Series. I wonder if SNL could lose this?… Nope, Don Roy King for the win for SNL. He gives a solid speech.
7:04 PM PDT: Anthony Anderson and Pryanka Chopra are out to present for Outstanding Variety Talk Series. The winner is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. This is likely to happen for a while. Also, John Oliver trying and failing to shout out to Oprah again is quite humorous.
7:14 PM PDT: Edie Falco and Alec Baldwin are out to present for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, and the winner is Donald Glover. Well, two out of three individual awards isn’t bad. The coronation continues. Meaningful, and good speech.
7:17 PM PDT: Debra Messing and Chris Hardwick are out to present Lead Actress in a Comedy Series aka the Julia Louis-Dreyfus Award. The winner is… I mean, like I said, this is the Julia Louis-Dreyfus Award, so of course she won. Don’t worry, everyone else–soon Veep will end, and she will let someone else win.
7:21 PM PDT: Carol Burnett and Norman Leer are out to present Outstanding Comedy Series, and the crowd loves them. The winner is (of course) Veep, by the way. Nice to bring out Burnett and Leer though for this latest Veep coronation.
7:31 PM PDT: Jessica Biel and Joseph Fiennes are out to present for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. The winner is Riz Ahmed. More Oprah shout outs, and quite a capper for a tremendous year for Ahmed. A James Gandolfini shout out is a nice touch as well.
7:34 PM PDT: Sarah Paulson and Jason Bateman are out to present for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. The winner is Nicole Kidman for Big Little Lies. Kidman continues this unstoppable train, and gets her first Emmy. Oh look, that speech wasn’t played off, I am sure it was definitely more substantive than other speeches. Wait it wasn’t? Oh, okay, well Kidman is apparently more important so she gets to say what she wants.
7:39 PM PDT: BD Wong and Matt Bomar are out to present for Outstanding Television Movie. The winner is Black Mirror: San Junipero.
7:41 PM PDT: Cecily Tyson and Anika Noni Rose are out, and the crowd is loving seeing Tyson on stage, and Tyson gets a massive standing ovation. Tyson is a bit overwhelmed at this, and Rose is sweet as she coaxes Tyson to talk about Roots. They are out to present for Outstanding Limited Series aka Big Little Lies‘ award. The winner is, yeah, Big Little Lies. Witherspoon and Kidman give a speech about being happy about how powerful TV can be, which is humorous as the movie stars seem surprised by this. Still, this is a well deserved win, even if I am wondering if this category is feeling a bit pointless if one show is going to win everything each year. Is it really impossible for more than one great limited series to be made at a time?
7:50 PM PDT: Kyra Sedgwick and Dennis Quaid are out to present for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. The winner is Sterling K. Brown for This Is Us. Brown gets his second win in as many years, and he looks floored. He calls out past winners, and gives a special shout out to Andre Braugher (as everyone should at all times). And they play him off because Nicole Kidman needed so much time to speak. He refuses to stop speaking so the music gets louder and I think they may have even cut his mic, so way to suck there, Emmys. Way to look like a bunch of jackasses as he is clearly still talking, but the camera is zoomed out from him (and yes, he totally called out how they seemed to pick louder music for him).
7:55 PM PDT: Okay, well, after that lovely moment turned somewhat disastrous…. Tatianna Maslany and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are out to present for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The winner is Elizabeth Moss. She gives a hurried speech, which actually gets bleeped at one point, and the Emmys pick a point to play her off that makes it looks she is finished (she was kind of finished, but I am very bitter about this now, so I am not giving them the benefit of the doubt).
7:59 PM PDT: Oprah is out to present for Outstanding Drama Series. The winner is The Handmaid’s Tale,which completes its dominating night, and means that Hulu gets a Drama win before Netflix does, which is hilarious. The right winner for this year, and Margaret Atwood is on stage as the cast accepts this award.
That’s it for the show. It was a very political show, and at this point I have to just be like, what is the point of even having speeches Emmys, if you are just going to play them off? Everyone sounded very similar, except for Nicole Kidman, who seemed to get to speak as long as she wanted, unlike everyone else. I once again must say, just let these things play. This is a once a year event. Let people give fucking speeches. What happened to Sterling K. Brown was ridiculous, so fuck off Emmys!
Anyhow, fun show I guess, and good on you, The Handmaid’s Tale. Oh yeah, I picked way more of these correctly than I should have, because the Emmys are still so predictable that I don’t even have to pay attention to get most of these right, so I am not even going to bother tallying how much I got correct because whatever. Sterling K. Brown deserves better.
David Robertson