This year’s show was exactly the right kind of Schitt-y.
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Six full ceremonies, a three-hour high-wire act of a live broadcast, 130 remote nominee feeds and a couple of new records later, the 2020 Emmys are officially in the books.
Everyone down to MVP veteran awards show host, Jimmy Kimmel, expected Sunday night’s festivities to be a dumpster fire-level flaming hot mess, and I, too, was prepared for the worst. But in a twist that would only make sense in a year where left is right, up is down and gold doesn’t glitter, it turned out that this was, from my seat, the best, most relevant Emmys ever. For real.
So, to officially wrap things up, here are a few of my final hot takes on how one of Hollywood’s biggest nights hit it out of the park and gave us all a much-needed jolt of joy.
THE LOWER CASE ‘C’ CEREMONY DID IT FOR ME: For all the ‘how are they going to pull this off?!’ pre-show hubbub, the Emmys producers and Kimmel didn’t just get through the night—they delivered the most fun ceremony in memory.
Galloping out of the gate with the host’s opening in front of a ‘fake’ full house of stars that quickly peeled back the curtain on a more stripped down show, this year’s approach was totally engaging and surprisingly energized from the get-go.
Unlike the static, staid and overly scripted presentations of years past, last night’s event had the constant undercurrent of feeling a bit like a dangerous live experiment that you couldn’t miss a minute of. And man, did it ride that edge, intentionally and not: From the hovering promise of potential major technical snafus at any given moment, to an almost legitimately out-of-control bit featuring Kimmel, Jennifer Aniston, the lead actress in a comedy series envelope and a ‘controlled’ trash can blaze that went flamingly sideways, it was clear from the outset that anything really could happen.
Combine that with a brisk, crackling pace that easily glided between handing out awards that gave each category its proper due (how novel!), clever comedic interludes with minimal filler (I hadn’t realized how the stars’ long walks to the podium to present and accept really dragged the show down) and statuettes delivered to winners’ homes via hazmat suit-clad Academy reps (only in 2020, ya’ll), and we had ourselves a time.
SMASHING RECORDS AND SETTING A NEW TONE: I predicted back in July before this year’s fantastic roster of diverse nominees was announced that this would be a wild year for the Emmys.
With Academy members quarantined just like the rest of us, there was more of an opportunity to sample and binge shows outside of the usual big names, and voters had more time on their hands to watch the final submissions before weighing in with their ballots.
And that, my friends, made for perhaps the most deserving batch of newly anointed winners we’ve ever seen, with a string of surprises that dovetailed with the mood and progress of the current moment.
Unlike in previous years, though, voters didn’t make much of an attempt to strategically spread the honors around; instead, they clearly went with their heart and gut by showering immense amounts of love on what they liked the best, and I cheered them for it.
Exhibit A-for-AMAZHING: The Schitt’s Creek sweep. As much as I adored the show’s final season, I truly didn’t think it would pull-off the kind of comedy category domination it did… but boy, am I happy it happened.
With wins in every major race—series, lead actor/actress, supporting actor/actress, writing and directing—the little Canadian gem that could made good on becoming the first comedy or drama series ever in Emmys history to take all top seven statuettes in a single year. It also came in hot enough to claim the perch for most wins by a comedy series for a single season (nine!). And all of this was after the show hadn’t won any golden girls before 2020, only registering on the Academy’s radar for the first time last year. Big, historic stuff, kids.
But it wasn’t just the show’s wins that were soul-warming; it was the pure, shocked elation that came from the cast and creators with each reveal. Catherine O’Hara’s ‘OMG’ expression as she (finally!) heard her name called? Eugene Levy’s adoring love and gratitude for his son who created and steered the ship they all sailed into the gold-hued sunset on? Said son, Daniel Levy, and his authentic amazement at his multiple individual wins (a record-tying four!) and glowing happiness for each of his castmates? And Annie Murphy—the truest underdog from the ensemble—being shell-shocked to hear her name called as winner of one of the night’s toughest races? I get another happy tear every time I think about it.
(Also, as a side note: Let me just say that Emmys producers lucked out big-time that the Schitt’s crew took up so much screen time, as their semi-formal socially distanced set-up—complete with a mic for acceptance speeches—did so much of the ‘let’s make sure this feels like an awards show’ work for them, despite the Zoom-style remote streaming.)
But that’s not all! Black actors also set a record this year, taking home seven wins across drama, comedy and limited series categories that bested the previous top tally of six in a single year. Add to that three additional triumphs earlier in the week—Maya Rudolph scoring statuettes for both Big Mouth and Saturday Night Live, and a pair for Laurence Fishburne and Jasmine Cephas Jones (making history alongside her father and fellow winner, Ron) for Quibi’s #FreeRayshawn—plus another record-setting win for RuPaul as Drag Race host, and the Emmys (thankfully) weren’t ‘so white’ after all.
This bar-setting take was anchored by the much-deserved lauding of Watchmen, led by the queen, Regina King. Ms. King’s trophy last night was her fourth Emmy in five years (with an Oscar also thrown in for good measure), tying her with Alfre Woodard for the most wins by a Black actor ever. I’m here for all of it.
That being said, attention must also be paid to one of my favorite winners, Zendaya, whose aptly awarded, searing work on Euphoria made her a dual record-setter: She’s not only the second Black actress in history to snag the lead actress in a drama series Emmy (keeping company with Viola Davis), but she’s the youngest woman to ever walk away with a win in the category. Full-on living room standing ‘O’ for Z!
Which brings me to my final point…
FINALLY, A RELEVANT AND RELATABLE EMMYS: When you combine the heat of a huge surprise win by a social media millennial icon with the buzz meter-breaking omnipresence of Schitt’s Creek and Watchmen being fine art-with-a-message that meets the moment, I would say, for the first time, the Emmys finally cracked the case on how to be a part of the cultural zeitgeist instead of trying so desperately to shape it. All the better is that every one of these winners was utterly deserving.
After all, relevance is what makes the pop culture world go ‘round, and there is no other year in the history of the Emmys when twentysomethings actually cared about what the Academy had to say because it didn’t matter to them… until now.
Another key piece of that puzzle is relatability, which the ‘Hollywood elite’ have done a particularly piss-poor job of making a reality—again, until last night. With a mix of down-to-earth winners who brimmed with humility and seeing the stars (mostly) in the relaxed comfort of their own homes, gone was just about all of the usual pretentiousness that seemed to be a requirement of the annual event.
As the show was forced by these bizarre times to reinvent itself by tossing aside the usual phony pruning, posing and posturing to simply—egad!—honor a great year in TV when the ‘tube was one of our common saving graces, I think the Emmys inadvertently nailed it when any and every other outcome was expected.
It was the kind of odds-defying, delightful surprise that delivered on so many levels that it might just be the best new template for how Hollywood handles honoring itself, by getting over itself.
And to that I say: Indeed, more of all of this in 2021, please, TV Academy.