A commentary on the 75th Emmy Awards telecast, delayed from September 2023
There was no way for the 75th Emmy Awards to feel current. Delayed by the double strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA – the former ending on Sept. 27, 2023, the latter lasting until Nov. 9, 2023 – the 75th’s batch of hardware honors a season that’s been over for most of a year. The top wins, though predictable, felt appropriate because they were unforgettably good.
But consider best comedy winner “The Bear” as an example of what I’m talking about. The FX not-a-comedy took home wins for best comedy, best actor for Jeremy Allen White and best supporting actress and actor for Ayo Edebiri and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Anyone who saw Season 2 would find no reason to quibble with those victories.
The main reason to celebrate was to notice who was heard and how.
Here’s the thing – these honors were for work done in the show’s first season. It’s unclear whether that would have felt any less strange in September 2023, but watching it happen in 2024 feels like we’re playing catch up.
“Succession” winning best drama also felt right but distant from when its stunning season aired. Individual awards for Matthew Macfadyen, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, with series creator Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod clinching awards for the stellar “Connor’s Wedding” episode, were spot-on too. That also aired last April.
“Beef” slaughtering the limited series categories was also preordained, along with the individual wins for its stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, who became the first woman of Asian descent ever to win an Emmy for a lead role.
Factor in the writing and directing clinches for creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin, these were good wins. So was Quinta Brunson’s win in the best actress comedy category for her work in “Abbott Elementary,” making her the first Black woman honored in that category in more than 40 years. (Isabel Sanford, star of “The Jeffersons,” took home the award in 1981 before her.)
Between chronological disconnect and the general sense that there was no way for this Emmy to win an awards season pageant it had no choice but to crash, the producers made the smartest choice possible given their circumstances.
They took a loving gaze backward to the «good old days.»
A somewhat ironic thought, given the Emmys’ scheduling on a day meant to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., and the strong showing of diverse winners in major categories in which “Succession” was not nominated. This Emmys telecast’s strengths were not expressly about who ended up with hardware, however. The main reason to celebrate was to notice who was heard and how.
Emmys host Anthony Anderson hinted at nostalgia driving the night by opening the evening with an homage to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and TV themes, including “The Fact of Life” and «Good Times,» along with “In the Air Tonight” – which was not the theme to “Miami Vice,” but might as well have been.
Anthony Anderson at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Peacock Theater on January 15, 2024 (Christopher Polk/Variety via )From there the Emmy brought in talent to accompany the accessories, bringing pieces of familiar sets to life for the actor presenters to hand out awards. The “Martin” cast did a bit in the sitcom’s famous living room. Most of the surviving “Cheers” cast (minus Woody Harrelson) reassembled in a recreated version of the bar. Lorraine Bracco and Michael Imperioli opened their envelope copy of Dr. Melfi’s office on “The Sopranos.”
This bought the show a share of goodwill in this time of awards show fatigue, especially a week after an abysmal Golden Globes outing that crawled forth for too long.
