In the lead-up to last night’s Emmy Awards, the host, Nate Bargatze, explained that he wanted to keep the evening as tightly-run as possible, so that the ceremony wouldn’t exceed its three-hour timeslot. To enforce order, he intended to rely on a single bit throughout the show: For every second a winner went over their allotted time for giving an acceptance speech, he’d take $1,000 away from a planned $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. For every second someone saved, he’d add $1,000 back to the pot. This way, the Emmys would focus solely on celebrating the best of TV, and nothing else. “I need this to be a fun night,” he told Variety. “There’s enough of the other stuff going on.”
This probably seemed like a good idea on paper: Awards shows notoriously run long, and acceptance speeches tend to cover similar ground; if anything, Bargatze reasoned, “all night we will be talking about the Boys & Girls Club.” But in practice, the strategy resulted in speakers rushing through their thank-yous, apologizing to the children representing the organization on stage, and a significantly scripted broadcast. In trying to minimize the speeches, the Emmys underlined just how necessary they are to the show’s pageantry.
Every ceremony must overcome the inherently repetitive nature of its format. Stars swan onto a stage to present an award; a list of nominees plays; a winner is announced; a speech is given. Lather, rinse, repeat. Aside from musical performances or unexpected pairings of presenters, the evening’s emcee plays the most crucial role in breaking up the monotony: He or she might change into an array of different telegenic outfits, act in a series of skits, or even sing a solo before the crowd. But on Sunday night, Bargatze didn’t reveal any hidden talents. Instead, he brought one big joke—and, hammered over and over across three hours, it went from cute to awkward.
The bit was almost enough to sap the Emmys entirely of the energy that comes when an unexpected winner gets to react, along with the audience, to their surprise victory. And this year, it was hard to tell who might come out on top in many categories. The Studio, generating buzz among the comedy categories, was up against Emmy heavyweights such as Hacks and The Bear. The Pitt, meanwhile, was facing off a sterling second season of Severance. That meant several surprises throughout the night: Andor, overlooked in most of the primetime Emmys categories, won for Outstanding Writing For a Drama Series. Slow Horses won only its second Emmy ever, for Outstanding Directing For a Drama Series. Jeff Hiller won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on the underseen comedy Somebody Somewhere, and his heartfelt speech, which called for compassion and empathy, was a noted highlight.
But again and again, Bargatze focused less on those who had won than on the stakes of running overtime. After Andor’s win, he thanked Gilroy for “helping me out” by keeping the speech short. After Hiller left the stage, he pointed out how much money had already been deducted from the pot. Each time, the bit undermined the emotions of the speeches, while making the Boys & Girls Club come off more as a punchline than a worthy cause.
Instead, as winners sped through their speeches, the evening ended up dedicating most of its airtime to what usually makes awards shows feel extra-lethargic: the scripted, barely rehearsed speeches that presenters give before each award. Those went long, too, with no financial penalty. (Not every exchange went off as planned, either: Witness the painfully awkward introduction to the Outstanding Directing For a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie category, when the actor-director Elizabeth Banks highlighted the category’s five female nominees, only for the sixth and only male director to win instead.) And in moments when a winner did say what was on their mind, the Boys & Girls Club bit overwhelmed them. Take Hannah Einbinder, another surprise winner who took home her first trophy in Outstanding Supporting Actress In a Comedy for Hacks. She ended her rushed speech with a passionate message—“fuck ICE, and free Palestine”—only for a graphic displaying how much money was being deducted to show up onscreen, since she went a few seconds long.
The truth is, there is rarely a Merritt Wever or an Adrien Brody in awards speeches—extreme cases of brevity or verbosity that stun both those in the room and at home. As the night progressed, winners seemed to grasp that they didn’t have to succumb to Bargatze’s gag, and could ramble just a little. Stephen Colbert, accepting The Late Show’s first Emmy for Outstanding Talk Series, reflected on the end of his show and the state of American politics. “I realized that in some ways we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss, 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 said, before adding, “My friends, I have never loved my country more desperately.”
Moments of sincerity like these came late, and rarely, during the Emmys. Bargatze didn’t know what to do with those, either—he later called attention to the length of Colbert’s speech, not its substance. In the end, there was one final, dull twist: Bargatze, along with CBS, which aired the ceremony, would be donating a total of $350,000 to the Boys & Girls Club anyway. The runtime of the speeches hadn’t really mattered—and despite Bargatze’s stated intentions, the awards weren’t all that fun, either.