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I've been watching the Emmys since the 1970's so maybe I'm just a little old school, but for me, last night's ceremony was weird and a little bit heartbreaking. Never really realized until last night how vital the live audience is to the show's entertainment value. Yes, I understand why it had to be done this way, but for all the entertainment I got out of it, I could have just read the winners in the paper or online. Jimmy Kimmel worked his ass off trying to make this thing work, but Bob Hope couldn't have pulled off what he had to do last night...sitting in the auditorium talking to cardboard cut-outs of the stars? Really? Randall Park presenting an award with an alpaca? I thought it was very strange that we were allowed to see some winners have the award actually placed in their hands and some winners we didn't. They should have done it one way or the other. The supporting actress in a limited series award being detained by Tracy Morgan? They've already announced the nominees and we learn that Morgan is there instead of Tracy Ullmann and he holds up the announcement of the winner for five minutes for no good reason while the nominees are on pins and needles? Ridiculous waste of time. There were some technical problems that were hard to legitimize...either the writer or director of Succession gave a nice speech where the audio wasn't matching his lips. And Sterling K Brown's bit of running out onstage pretending that This is Us had won Best Drama series totally fell flat. That might have worked with a live audience, but without an audience, it was as funny as dead air. The only thing that totally worked for me the whole evening was the "In Memorium" segment. It was handled with care and more imagination than usual. I LOVED the shot of Jerry stiller imposed on the window of Monk's. Probably the saddest part of the evening for me was the fact that I hadn't seen any of the winning work, but I can't blame that on the Academy. There's just too much stuff see these days and a lot of it just isn't accessible as television used to be.
