The charity case that was the 2025 Emmys

The th annual Emmy Awards were brilliantly hosted by Stephen Colbert In a just world that made sense the previous sentence would have been true For a moment when the host of The Late Show took the stage on Sunday there was reason to hope it could be Colbert strode out directly after Nate Bargatze performed an Emmys-themed redux of a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Mikey Day Bowen Yang and James Austin Johnson with Bargatze playing TV inventor Philo T Farnsworth It was fine But it didn t inspire the thunderous standing ovation that greeted Colbert when he took the stage and joked While I have your attention is anyone hiring Colbert whose The Late Show is coming to an end in at once had the audience eating out of his hand producing a headshot dating from his Strangers with Candy era and handing it to Harrison Ford asking him to pass it along to Steven Spielberg And his easy connection with the crowd made me wonder for a delicious moment if the producers might have bravely hidden a bait-and-switch The th Emmys telecast arrived after a terrible frightening week in America Who better to guide this exercise in self-congratulations into unifying territory than Colbert The answer is not Nate Bargatze Once Colbert handed out the first Emmy of the night for lead actor in a comedy category to Seth Rogen for his work in The Studio he took his leave Then Bargatze returned and shortly afterward I started wishing he d leave too Christopher Polk Variety via Getty Images Nate Bargatze at the th Primetime Emmy Awards on September in Los Angeles California Evaluating this Emmys solely by the winners TV had a great night The Pitt took home best drama while Rogen s individual win lit the fuse on a dominant night for him and The Studio which scored best comedy As for its host it wouldn t be fair to call Bargatze the worst ever in a timeline where Jo Koy s Globes debacle happened But throughout the Emmys telecast the nice guy comic flailed in the deep end of a flop sweat pool There was the instance where he referred to Gilmore Girls as Gilmores Now before Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham commanded a warm loving tribute to the show There were several times when he pretended to be unfamiliar with the celebrity presenters in procedures that absolutely weren t cute But those were nothing next to the most of wrongheaded move in latest Emmys history the penalizing charity counter Related The Emmy winners list The gag entailed Bargatze announcing his commitment of to The Boys and Girls Club of America However to keep the winners speeches to seconds or less he declared he would deduct from that amount each second someone went over So the choice was to keep their thank you speeches short or supposedly take money away from needy children Hopefully nobody deduced that Bargatze or CBS weren t going to pay up at the end of all this They did contributing to The Boys and Girls Club much more than the purported No harm done Except for the optics of it all Television is an escapist medium and Bargatze a Red State comedian vowed to avoid politics But no awards show is uplifting enough to forget the cruelties our establishment is visiting upon children Also the Television Academy didn t entirely avoid politics Late in the telecast its chair Cris Abrego led a tribute to the Corporation for Masses Broadcasting recipient of the Governors Award in the same year that Congress stripped its funding The CPB is but one of various institutions dedicated to enriching children s lives that are being hollowed out for no reason beyond heartless partisanship With that on people s minds it s no wonder that joking about taking money away from kids did not go over well If you weren t turned off by the perception of callousness the distraction of watching the level of charity pot dwindle while people thanked their mothers spouses and co-workers was aggravating On the off chance that an awards producer ends up reading this here s a hint we want to hear what the winners have to say Kevin Winter Getty Images Nate Bargatze speaks onstage during the th Primetime Emmy Awards on September in Los Angeles California We especially delight in hearing from winners like Katherine LaNasa star of The Pitt She was something of a dark horse in the best supporting drama actress category which was loaded with the stars from The White Lotus and a pair of two-time Emmy winners in Patricia Arquette from Severance and Julianne Nicholson for her work in Paradise Her celebration should have been the only thing to which the audience paid attention Then the counter popped up to show the audience how much LaNasa was supposedly taking away from needy youngsters by expressing gratitude to her co-workers and husband The counter also marred Hacks star Hannah Einbinder s acceptance for her best supporting actress win That was memorable for another reason since producers cut the sound so the home audience wouldn t hear the diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan declare Go Birds f k ICE and free Palestine Einbinder s political comment was the greater part direct in an Emmys ceremony where very limited winners had anything to say concerning the plethora of crises going on in the world including the ideological attacks on the nation s highest institutions dedicated to preserving art and heritage That is disheartening but it also explains why Emmys producers chose such an aggressive strategy to curtail speeches Winners are primed to yell over the music playing them off but competing against a visual measure of one s alleged selfishness had more of a chilling effect We need your help to stay independent Subscribe in contemporary times to promotion Salon s progressive journalism The producers did seem to read the room a little as the show wore on showing the counter for a few speeches and keeping the time overages a mystery in others Bargatze avuncularly threatening to introduce a swear jar into the proceedings didn t go over well either especially with the host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver who used part of an acceptance speech for one of the show s two Emmy wins to say F k you Nate Bargatze that is a lot of money for you and you can add a f k to the swear jar as well Oliver s pointed insouciance concerning the jokey charity threat is about as predictable as Jean Smart s repeat win in the best comedy actress race and the massive haul for The Studio In addition to his acting win Rogen scored an Emmy for best directing and shared a best writing trophy with his collaborators Evan Goldberg Peter Huyck Alex Gregory and Frida Perez The Apple TV series also took home the top comedy Emmy There were folks in the audience who didn t think that was anything to laugh at the unmistakably sour expression on James Burrows face as Rogen skipped to the stage was life-giving If you were a TV Hall of Famer who won Emmys for Taxi Cheers and Will Grace you might feel a certain way about the town s favorite stoner routing the comedy landscape too Bargatze s standup style is pleasant and all-welcoming qualities that could have been assets in a moment of massive anxiety and uncertainty But his first Emmy hosting gig revealed an insistent tone deafness that he could not steer out of and it made a parade of worthwhile wins into a slog In all The Studio scored wins across the Primetime and Creative Arts Emmys making it the most-awarded show of the year It s also the kind of series award show voters love a satire about the inner workings of the entertainment industry that calls attention to its devaluation of genuine art and original concepts Balancing that out was the best drama win for The Pitt in a category that strongly favored Severance and Noah Wyle s best drama actor conquest in a race against Adam Scott The workplace mind trip scored its share of hardware including for Britt Lower s Emmy for best drama actress and Tramell Tillman s history-making supporting actor achievement making him the first Black actor to win in that category Elsewhere -year-old Adolescence star Owen Cooper became the youngest ever male Emmy winner period with his triumph in the best supporting actor in a limited anthology series or TV movie race The previous record holder was That Certain Summer star Scott Jacoby who was when he won in Adolescence dominated the limited series categories with wins for best limited or anthology series best actor for its co-creator and star Stephen Graham best supporting actress for Erin Doherty and best writing This too was predicted Flip over that coin and you get Dan Gilroy s writing win for Andor which makes sense to anyone who watched this frighteningly prescient season Then again Gilroy s long speech prioritized praising his corporate overlords Bob Iger and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy before his cast and his wife reducing the money pile from to What was Andor about exactly Yet an Emmy win for this poignant smart Star Wars story joins the realm of pleasing surprises beside LaNasa s clinch and Jeff Hiller s supporting comedy actor count for his beautiful work in Somebody Somewhere Calling this an unexpected turn is a mild sell Hiller s race favored Ford a first-time Emmy nominee Like that triumph Cristin Milioti s Emmy for best actress in a limited or anthology series or movie for her work in The Penguin was also sweet that category pitted her against Cate Blanchett and Michelle Williams Between Milioti and Hiller though he had the speech that best captured the enjoyment of the underdog pawing his way to the top I feel like I m going to cry because for the past years I ve been like World I want to be an actor And the world s like Maybe computers he joked Then Hiller summed up the magic of Somebody Somewhere as a show about connecting and love in this time when compassion is seen as a weakness which while not explicitly political acknowledges the mood meeting this telecast Start your day with essential news from Salon Sign up for our free morning newsletter Crash Subject Bargatze s standup style is pleasant and all-welcoming qualities that could have been assets in a moment of massive anxiety and uncertainty But his first Emmy hosting gig revealed an insistent tone deafness that he could not steer out of and it made a parade of worthwhile wins into a slog We will never know whether Colbert would have done better oh please He absolutely would have Consider his reaction marking The Late Show winning the Emmy for outstanding talk series Ten years ago he recalled answering Spike Jonze s question of what he demanded his show to be about by saying he sought to do a late-night comedy show about love I don t know if I ever figured that out but at a certain point and you can guess what that point was I realized that in certain techniques we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss he observed And that s related to love because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it He concluded Ten years later in September of my friends I have never loved my country more desperately God bless America Stay strong be brave and if the elevator tries to bring you down go crazy and punch a higher floor Positive nonpartisan and he quotes Prince More of this in the future please We may see Colbert play ringmaster for a future awards broadcast after The Late Show ends if we re lucky and he wants the job From what we saw on Sunday he s exactly what people who love bold television need Bargatze may want to take a scant notes before he tries this again or better yet stick to touring and leave the Emmys out of it Read more of Salon s awards coverage Stephen Colbert s satisfying Emmys win Kathy Bates Emmy nod is telling us something Emmys honor humanity not politics The post The charity incident that was the Emmys appeared first on Salon com