My Reactions to the 2024 Emmys Concluded: The Joy and Surprise of The Winners

 

As I mentioned in yesterday’s article I have spent much of my career grading the Emmys based on how I view both the actual winners of the awards and how I grade their responses to it. I tend to use two metrics: their enthusiasm and joy and the utter astonishment of the victories.

There was more than enough of the former standard in January. Few could deny the enthusiasm on Ayo Edebiri’s face when Christina Applegate told her to ‘get your ass up here!”,  the utterly Roman Roy like approach Kieran Culkin took in his acceptance speech for winning for Succession, the utterly incredible triumph that we heard in Niecy Nash-Betts’s acceptance speech for Dahmer and the wonderful moment after The Bear won Best Comedy and Ebon Moss-Bachrach kissed Matty Matheson full on the mouth.

What there wasn’t, despite the reactions of the winners, was much real surprise. I don’t think there was a single winner during the entire January ceremony that came as a shock to anyone predicting the winners, certainly not me. I might have hoped Rhea Seehorn or Tyler James Williams would win but it didn’t stun me when Jennifer Coolidge and Moss-Bachrach did: they were the heavy favorites at Gold Derby. And while I didn’t think any were undeserving – I did see all of their work and found it more than worthy – it didn’t leave much room for spontaneity.

 At no point did we have the utter surprise and awe that fell over the crowd when Sheryl Lee Ralph took the Best Supporting Actress prize for Abbott Elementary in 2022. No one denied she’d given a spectacular performance but most believed that it would go to Hannah Waddingham or Hannah Einbinder. I thought that if anyone from Abbott won in this category it would be Janelle James given that she’d won in this category at the HCA’s a month earlier. Ralph’s moment was incredible not just because of her immediate viral reaction but because of the circumstances of it. There was even more diversity among the winners in January but less surprise. If I had any objections to that broadcast, it was that.

The same can’t be said remotely for what we saw on Sunday. Before the broadcast was half an hour old we got our first upset win and that tone continued for the entire broadcast including, as we all know, right up to the end. So with that in mind, let me review the winners.

There were no signs of what was to come in the early awards. It was expected that Moss-Bachrach and Jeremy Allan White would repeat their wins in the male acting categories in comedy for The Bear and that is exactly what happened. Billy Crudup’s win for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama was similarly unsurprising. What was nice, at least for me, was to see him give a shoutout to his wife. I had forgotten (if I knew) that he is married to Naomi Watts, who was up for an Emmy this year. That wasn’t the only power couple at the Emmys who I didn’t know was there – as was true with the very next award.

While everyone was still reeling from Kaitlin Olson supposedly offending the world when she compared Meryl Streep to a jock strap (again, she’s heard worse) we got the first stunner: the winner was not Streep or Hannah Einbinder, the heavy favorites but Lisa Colon-Zayas for The Bear. This clearly stunned Colon-Zayas as she walked up to the stage. She made it clear her husband had told her to write a speech and she didn’t listen. It wasn’t until they cut to her husband that I realized she was married to David Zayas who has been one of my favorite character actors in Peak TV since he first came to my attention in OZ. How could I not have known this going in? I’ve been watching Dexter again.

As upset as Einbinder’s mother was at her daughter losing (I’ll deal with this in another article) the significance is undeniable. Colon-Zayas is the first LatinX woman to win an Emmy in this category. This also marks the third consecutive awards where a woman of color has won in this category. Considering that there was a grand total of one prior to 2022 this is the clearest sign of how far the Emmys have come over the last decade. More were to follow.

We resumed normality for the next few awards. Elizabeth Debicki won for her work in The Crown  Jessica Gunning prevailed for Baby Reindeer. The most wonderful one of those was when ‘the amazing Jean Smart’ prevailed for her third Best Actress in a Comedy. I was personally thrilled when that happened for more than one reason. When Colon-Zayas won I began to fear that The Bear was going to manage a Schitt’s Creek style sweep of the Comedy awards. I breathe a sigh of relief and then joined the standing ovation when Smart won.

Smart’s speech was incredibly funny. “I don’t receive enough attention,” and after the laughter died. “No, I’m serious.” She then momentarily forgot the network she was a part of it and then made fun of it. “That’s all we need another network.” She then thanked her agent who was about to retire and with a remark that was completely Deb like said: “riding on a bicycle through Europe is apparently more important then representing me,” Smart won her third consecutive Emmy for three seasons and I’m happier for this than I was most of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s wins over the 2010s.

I was thrilled to see Alan Cumming onstage to accept for The Traitors as I mentioned before he’s long been overdue a win. His speech, done with his natural Scots accent was as delightful as himself: saying how proud he was to be a part of a new service like Peacock, saying his native Scotland doesn’t get enough attention “Holland, either” he said almost as an afterthought and giving a remark about how the water in Scotland might fix America’s problems.

The late night prizes were both equally joyous to me. I was more than fine with John Oliver winning again and I loved when Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Bowen Yang and Seth Meyers came onstage to console Lorne Michaels for losing 85 times. Every part of this was hysterical, and as always Meyers was the grown-up when he told them that he’d won 21 Emmys. Rudolph then reacted: “Lorne’s, that’s too many.”

As someone who loves everything Billy Crystal does I was glad to see him onstage when he presented the Emmy for Best Talk Variety. He shared his understandable terror the first time he appeared on Carson, then shared his ‘memories’ about the four nominees in the category the first time he showed up. He told us he thought all four men were  very funny but it was clear they’d all slighted him. Stewart, Meyers and Kimmel all invited him to dinner after his appearance and apparently none of them showed up to meet him. His remark on Colbert, well, you can track it down. “I didn’t say they were funny; I said they were my first thoughts.” Then he proclaimed The Daily Show the winner and I got to see Jon Stewart get yet another Emmy. “You’ve made an old man very happy,” he told us in his speech. No Jon, you make us very happy.

The other surprises filled most of the hour in between the late night awards and most of them came in directing and writing. In direction in a Limited Series I was thrilled to see that Steven Zaillian was honored for his work on Ripley. As someone who thought that the series was as much a technical masterpiece as it was on any other level, Zaillian’s win was one I’d been quietly rooting for. Most had expected Baby Reindeer to win and that was the only one I’d wanted it not to triumph at. When Richard Gadd won for Writing in a Limited Series I was more than happy with that and got to hear the first of three moving and powerful acceptance speeches.

Bigger surprises – and for me, more pleasant ones – came in the other writing categories. Like all of you I naturally assumed that the ‘Fishes’ episode of The Bear would take the prize for Best Writing in a Comedy Series. But instead it ended up going to Hacks and Paul Downs, Jen Stansky and Lucia Aniello won for the season finale. Downs’s gave most of the speech. “You have no idea what this means for three unpopular kids growing up” Jen whispered in his ear. “Actually Jen tells me she was quite popular.” After the laughter, “Well for two unpopular kids” Lucia then whispered in his other ear and Paul sighed. “My wife she wasn’t un-popular. Well, for one unpopular kid and two pretty popular ones…”

This is the second Emmys Hacks has won in this category, so maybe I shouldn’t have been that shocked by its winning here. But when Christopher Storer took the Best Directing in a Comedy a few minutes later like all of you I assumed, okay, the writing prize was an outlier The Bear is going to win the grand prize.

A far bigger shock – but no less pleasant – came with Best Writing for a Drama. I suspected Shogun would win for ‘Crimson Sky’ even though many though that two nominations in this category might mean a split in the vote. I’ve rarely been more thrilled to be proven wrong, particularly for Slow Horses. I loved every moment of the acceptance speech starting with: “My name is Will Smith, but I come in peace.” Smith thanked everyone at Apple, including Mick Herron and Gary Oldman. That Slow Horses managed a win against a field like this gives me great hope that it will be back in the trenches next year against what will certainly be a tougher field.

Then the biggest shock of the night seemed to happen with the presentation  of Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series. As I mentioned in my predictions of the Emmys earlier, this was an incredibly strong field with no bad choices. But the favorites were Jonathan Bailey for Fellow Travelers and Robert Downey, Jr. for The Sympathizer. Lamorne Morris ranked seventh out of seven choices.

Then the winner was announced – and it was Lamorne Morris. And much as I may have been personally rooting for others, such as Bailey or John Hawkes, Morris’s win was good for my soul. He managed to overcome what has been an unwritten curse for Fargo in that it has never won a single Emmy for acting. Morris’s work was the equal of so many other forces of good in that show, most notably Carrie Coon and Alison Tolman. And as someone who was as much a veteran as anyone else in the category and whose reaction was more spontaneous than almost any acting winner I’ve seen since Ralph – and perhaps more out of left field than any since Merritt Weyer’s triumph for Nurse Jackie – it was incredibly fun to watch him seem to melt down and pay tribute to his heroes during this speech.

During the final hour, things basically went according to the forecasters which didn’t make them any less deserving or enjoyable. Richard Gadd managed a trifecta, winning for acting, writing and producing Baby Reindeer. And with each win he seemed, if anything, to grow more humble and moved. Whatever Gadd does next and I can’t wait to see what it will be, few will forget his work here.

Jodie Foster’s triumph for True Detective drew one of the night’s longest standing ovations. And even for someone who would have preferred to see Brie Larson or Naomi Watts prevail I won’t deny I wasn’t an overjoyed as everyone else. Foster has been one of the great actresses of my lifetime and always humble. Her speech reflected that as she went out of her way to thank Issa Lopez, Kali Reis and the indigenous people of Alaska. And for someone who not long ago refused to talk about her sexuality the fact she chose to thank her wife in this speech was a real marker for both how far she – and society – have come. Danvers’s was an aggressively heterosexual character in Night Country; that no one even questioned that part of Foster’s work shows the range for this as much as it did for so many of the nominees this year (Matt Bomer in particular comes to mind)

The rest of the drama awards were the coronation of Shogun. As Daniel Levy mentioned it had already made Emmy history with fourteen Emmys at the creative arts awards but until the last half-hour the Emmys had been quiet. Then in rabid succession it won for Direction and took both lead acting prizes. I’m not sure whose victory was the most rewarding: Hiroyuki Sanada’s triumph in which he spoke both with modesty and frequently in Japanese or Anna Sawai’s speech in regard to both the cast and the kind of roles she got. Sanada and Sawai are the first native born Japanese actors to win at the Emmys, a victory that is as much triumphant as Lee Jung-Jae’s win for Squid Game two years ago.

Naturally it took the grand prize and it was fitting it came from the cast of The West Wing. That show had broken the record for most wins by a drama series with 9 in its first season. Now a quarter of a century later they gave the grand prize not only to a record breaking series but to a network that ever since it had broken onto the scene in 2002 had never once won the grand prize. That it did so for a series that was, at least in theory, completely different from shows such as The Shield, Damages and The Americans might seem strange but it was no less revolutionary and far bigger a risk.

Now all that remained was for Catherine O’Hara to crown The Bear the winner for Best Comedy. Except that wasn’t what was in the envelope. Instead the winner was Hacks. The audience might have been shocked but they covered it will if they were.  Paul Downs clearly handled it masterfully and Lucia Aniello said she had to make it quit because they were going to start shooting Season 4 this week.

Personally I was overjoyed. I had no problem with The Bear winning (I’m actually going to write a piece about why it belongs in the comedy category despite what so many people think) but as was clear in my predictions my heart was with Hacks. It’s not only one of the most consistently funny shows on any service, it’s now on my shortlist for the greatest shows of this decade. It is without question one of the masterpieces of a genre and while it is just as deep as The Bear no one argues it’s a comedy.  Ever since I started seriously reviewing streaming series Hacks has been the only show that I have been willing to start watching as soon as it premieres. No other streaming series – not Ted Lasso, not The Kominsky Method, not even The Bear – has held that power over me. But I feared given the extensive level of competition in the comedy category that it would be one of those shows like The Good Place and Insecure that would never win the top prize despite its quality.

I don’t know if it was the backlash against The Bear’s placement in this category or the fact that momentum had been moving away from that show and towards Hacks in the past few months. (I reported as much in many of my articles about the Emmy watch for the last few months.) And to be honest I could care less. No one in their right mind will argue that Hacks was an undeserving winner; few would argue The Bear was either robbed or even denied its due. (The show broke its own record for most wins in a comedy, something that has clearly irked many.) The Emmys is supposed to recognize great shows. No one will argue that Hacks isn’t one.

Regardless of whatever the critical reaction will be to both the winners and the broadcast no one will deny it wasn’t a success for ABC. Early ratings show that it jumped nearly sixty percent in viewers compared to January and while that may be less than seven million viewers, no one will say it wasn’t a big step forward for a broadcast that has been steadily leaking viewers for almost as long as the medium its celebrates has been at its peak. And considering both the quality of the broadcast and the winners, this may be the most positive sign the Emmys has had in a very long time. Whether it will last now that the era of Peak TV is over (something I continue to debate and that FX clearly is fighting against) remains to be seen. What I do know is that no matter how you slice it this was the kind of night Television’s Biggest Night needed and got.

This ends, for the second time, my coverage of all things Emmy related for 2024. I’ve already started on the new season this week. Expect to see much more in the days and weeks to come. Sunday left me optimistic about the future of television since the end of last year’s work stoppage. Let’s see how long the buzz lasts.