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Emmys 2018: 20 Best, Worst and WTF Moments – Rolling Stone

Mondays, right? It’s a rough day to try to do anything, period, and an even rougher day to throw a major awards show. But that didn’t stop NBC from airing the 70th Annual Emmy Awards a day later than is traditional, to make way for Sunday Night Football, the only thing American viewers eat up even more eagerly than hot red-carpet goss.

Whether it was beginning-of-week malaise or something else that was afflicting the ceremony, there’s no denying that this year’s Emmys felt more than a few steps off its game. Hosted by SNL “Weekend Update” co-anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost, the 2018 edition looked and sounded like the mutterings of an exhausted industry — especially in the wake of last year’s fired-up broadcast, presided over by an energetic (and actually funny) Stephen Colbert. And though the ceremony quite literally made a production number out of its commitment to honoring diversity, 22 of 26 Emmys were snatched up by white performers, creators and producers — proof positive that lip service only goes so far.

Top honors this year went to HBO’s Game of Thrones for Outstanding Drama, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel for Comedy and FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story for Limited Series. Meanwhile, national treasure/light of our lives Betty White was honored for her decades in the industry, and critical darling The Americans took home a long-awaited pair of statuettes for its final season (Matthew Rhys for Lead Actor in a Drama and showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields for writing).

But even a surprise marriage proposal — or Leslie Jones’ fabulous opalescent pantsuit — couldn’t do much to liven up a ceremony that seemed to be simply going through the motions. We may still be in the Peak TV era, but this year’s Emmys made us wonder if we’ve started the long downhill climb.

Worst: Michael Che and Colin Jost’s bland hosting job From the moment they walked out to deliver the opening monologue, Che and Jost looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if someone had just farted and they were standing in the stink-cloud. Their low-key, above-it-all “Weekend Update” formula didn’t translate to the Emmys stage; everything was delivered with an air of bored detachment as they plodded through stilted jokes about the #MeToo movement, the primacy of Netflix and Roseanne Barr’s self-immolation. “With the amazing contributions from everyone in this room tonight, I think we can keep television going for another five, six years tops,” Jost quipped at the end of the intro. It didn’t reallllly sound like a joke.

Best: ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ makes history The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s title heroine would be the first to tell you that being a woman in comedy is frequently a thankless business, but last night’s ceremony proved there are at least a few things that have improved since the 1950s. Amy Sherman-Palladino‘s period piece about housewife-turned-stand-up comedian cleaned up, nabbing five wins including Best Comedy and Best Actress in a Comedy for its uber-talented star, Rachel Brosnahan. Remarkably, Sherman-Palladino became the first woman to net a double Writing and Directing win in Emmy history. (“My panic room’s gonna be so pretty!” she declared, hoisting her twin statuettes.) Though it’s only one season old, Mrs. Maisel came out of the gate a fully-formed spitfire of a show — and it more than earned this freshman sweep.

WTF: The Emmys go light on big issues Ever since the 2016 election rocked the world on its foundations, pretty much every major awards show has worn its politics on its sleeve (or pinned to its lapel, as the case may be). But with a few exceptions — like Ryan Murphy citing hate crime statistics in his American Crime Story speech, Evan Rachel Wood rocking a blue ribbon and Rachel Brosnahan encouraging women to vote in the midterms — politics and social issues were not a major point of discussion. The #TimesUp movement, which is currently making major waves in the TV industry, was barely mentioned; diversity, while it was much joked about, was never seriously grappled with. The T-word (you know the one) wasn’t uttered once all night. All of which isn’t to say that awards shows have to get political. But in the wake of Oscars, Golden Globes and past Emmys ceremonies that were charged with moments of awareness, the 2018 ceremony felt a little toothless. Are we all just really tired?

Worst: ‘Game of Thrones’ wins big for weak season Look. We’ll be the first to say that when Game of Thrones is running on all cylinders, full dracarys ahead, it’s one of the most thrilling things on the small screen — a full complement of gut-wrenching dramatics, whizbang action sequences and Queen of Thorns side-eye. But this latest truncated season was D.B. Weiss and David Benioff’s water-cooler fantasy series at its worst, resting on the good faith the show has built up over six previous seasons to trot out a series of episodes that were, frankly, just kind of dumb. So we rolled our eyes a bit when the series nabbed the most Emmy noms this year (22!), and even more when it won Outstanding Drama in a year when there are much more interesting things going on (many of which weren’t even nominated). Even the show’s creators looked nonplussed as they accepted Thrones’ third win in the category since 2015. Yawn. Wake us up when the ice dragon gets to Winterfell.

WTF: Jeff Daniels goes on a horse rant Plenty of actors talk about their costars at length in their speeches — but Jeff Daniels took it to a whole other level. When he accepted the Supporting Actor in a Limited Series statuette for his turn in Netflix western Godless, the actor didn’t care so much about making sure to thank all the right people as he did about … talking about horse stuff? Yeah, we were also confused. He spent most of his time at the podium descanting on all things equine, encouraging young actors not to lie about their horseback-riding abilities at auditions and recalling his harrowing experience with his steed Apollo. “He was Jeff Bridges’ horse on True Grit, and I felt he was making unfair comparisons,” Daniels quipped. Apollo apparently threw him three times, breaking his wrist in the process, to which the actor responded by hoisting his Emmy with the now-healed joint. Living well is the best revenge, we suppose.

Best: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ gets a long-awaited win The Reality Competition Series category has historically been one of the Emmys’ dullest, with the same few shows (The Amazing Race, The Voice and Top Chef) winning year after year since its inception in 2003. It’s about damn time that the statuette went to VH1’s (formerly Logo’s) genuinely groundbreaking RuPaul’s Drag Race, after a whopping 10 seasons and counting on the air. Reality shows aren’t generally a space known for enacting anything like positive change, but with its fabulously inventive queens and policy of radical acceptance, the show has proven itself to be a force for genuine good in the world — not to mention a plain ol’ good time. RuPaul accepted the award “on behalf of the 140 drag queens we have released into the wild,” and, we’d like to think, the generation of LGBTQ kids who have 140 high-profile role models. Can we get an amen?

Best: Claire Foy wins for ‘The Crown’ For our money, there wasn’t a more fierce category this year than Lead Actress in a Drama. The field boasted past winners Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), repeat nominees Keri Russell (The Americans) and Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld), plus fierce category newcomer Sandra Oh (Killing Eve). And while pretty much any of these heavy hitters deserved the win, we’re quite chuffed it went to Claire Foy for her nuanced, luminescent star turn in Netflix’s The Crown. All depth and no flash, Queen Elizabeth II isn’t an easy role to take on — but Foy’s performance is painterly in its precision. “I dedicate this to the next cast,” she said in her speech, passing the royal vestments on to Elizabeth-in-the-wings Olivia Colman. To which we say: Long live the Queen.

Best: Regina King’s heartfelt speech “Oooh! Regina King!” presenter Leslie Jones exclaimed with delight when she announced the winner for Lead Actress in a Limited Series in Netflix’s Seven Seconds. King may already have two Supporting Actress Emmys under her belt (for American Crime in 2015 and 2016), but that didn’t stop her from being endearingly shocked and flustered over her win for her searing turn in Veena Sud’s crime drama. From the look of total disbelief on her face when the winner was announced to her dumbfounded admission that she’d just cleaned lipstick off her dress, King provided one of the night’s rare emotional moments. “Thank you. This is amazing. I wanna curse right now,” she declared, and we don’t blame her. Sadly, the systemic racism that Seven Seconds tackles was reflected in the fact that King was one of only a handful of non-white honorees (along with Thandie Newton and RuPaul). Take note, Emmys.

Worst: Was everyone on tranquilizers? You could almost hear the yawns both onstage and in the audience last night, in a ceremony that proved to be as high-energy as a bag of Quaaludes. Hell, there was one part where Will Ferrell ran up to the mic in slow motion just to … kill time, we guess? Blame Che and Jost’s lethargic hosting, blame some less-than-inspiring nominees, blame Monday, blame a television industry rocked by scandals and exhausted by its own self-mythologizing. Whatever it was, it’s clear that the Emmys needs a bracing shot to the heart before it’s too late. And that starts with shaking up its own clearly tired formula.

#jenna scherer #phoebe reilly #rolling stone #emmys recap #emmys #emmy awards #emmys 2018 #game of thrones #regina king #the crown #claire foy #rupaul's drag race #rupaul #colin jost #michael che #the marvelous mrs. maisel

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