From my live-tweeting of the Emmy Awards telecast:
- How can presenters possibly mispronounce winners’ names, as two did tonight? You had one job!
- The lame bit he did with Maya Rudolph at The Emmys continues an uninterrupted string of times Fred Armisen has failed to make me smile, let alone laugh. He’s human dead air.
- I binge-watched all 6 seasons of “The Americans” this summer and loved it. Don’t know which episode won a writing Emmy tonight, but it could have been any of them. So good. Too bad Keri Russell couldn’t win along with Matthew Rhys, who she’s apparently romantically involved with, as the perfect send-off after its final season.
- “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” deserves all the kudos and Emmys. Original concept, cleverly executed with a wall-to-wall solid cast. Nice win for Amazon Prime, too.
- The episode of “Black Mirror” that won has Jesse Plemons in a story that starts as a “Star Trek” satire but turns into something else entirely. Brilliant stuff, as are most episodes of the show.
- I love Betty White, but tonight was her Kirk Douglas moment.
Other thoughts I didn’t tweet:
- We switched away from our DVR recording of The Emmys to watch tonight’s episode of “Better Call Saul,” which continues to move its stories forward at just the right pace. Other showrunners should learn from Vince Gilligan and his team that there’s no need to rush.
- Speaking of pacing, whoever was in charge of The Emmys montage of how TV has changed over the last 70 years should have taken a Valium. It had more cuts than Edward Scissorhands.
- Even though Sandra Oh didn’t become the first Asian-American woman with a lead actress Emmy, I’m still looking forward to the second season of “Killing Eve.” As the MI-6 intelligence officer and the assassin she’s tracking, Oh and Jodie Comer have the most interesting relationship on television.
- Can’t argue much with John Oliver’s HBO show winning in the comedy-variety-whatever category. It makes me laugh every week.
- I’ve interviewed Henry Winkler several times and can confirm that he is the nicest person in showbiz, so I was happy to see him win his first Emmy for HBO’s “Barry,” which I enjoyed.
- Right after The Emmys, I clicked over to Monday Night Football in time to see a Seahawks receiver catch his first touchdown pass in the NFL and then spike the ball in happiness. Unfortunately, they were still losing to the Bears by 7 with seconds to go, so his celebration looked ridiculous.
One last thought…
While watching the Emmys, I couldn’t help but wonder how many people don’t know any of these shows. The television landscape, across too many channels and streaming services, is so full of hundreds of programs and thousands of original episodes every year — and that’s not counting the number of reruns watched on every platform and network — that it’s easily possible that you could be a heavy TV user and still not be familiar with even one of the actors or shows that were nominated tonight, nor the hosts, nor the presenters. But I bet you knew several of the faces in the In Memoriam segment.
How true will that be in 30 years when today’s TV stars die and no one remembers them because they didn’t know who they were in the first place?