Review: Colbert Aside, Inclusive Winners Made for a Refreshing, Sharp Emmys

Last year’s Emmys were memorable — insofar as casual TV viewers remember any single Emmys ceremony beyond the night it airs — for two things. One was host Jimmy Kimmel’s vocal anger over then-presidential nominee Donald Trump, at one point yelling at audience member Mark Burnett, the former producer of The Apprentice. The other was the dominance of Game of Thrones. It’s hard to say which absence was more striking during this year’s Emmy Awards, which aired Sunday night. Game of Thrones‘s ineligibility for awards (having aired outside the eligibility window this year) opened the door for a mass quantity of wins by newly-minted Best Drama The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s post-apocalyptic drama about a world defined by its hatred of women. And yet the show, for all that it was hosted by CBS’s relatively politically engaged late-night host Stephen Colbert, didn’t just ditch Kimmel’s somewhat stagy anger — it seemed in large part disengaged from the world outside of the TV set’s four walls. Which is fine! After all, as Colbert talk-sang in his introduction, everything is better on TV. And there’s nothing wrong with escapism. But a host whose rise to prominence—it’s hard to remember now, but at the time of his booking at Emmys host, Colbert was in a near-existential ratings lag behind apolitical competitor Jimmy Fallon — has been fueled by a sharp understanding of the current pol...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized awards Source Type: news