TV Talk: Excellent Emmys telecast leans into viewers’ love of TV
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There were not a wealth of Emmy winners with Western Pennsylvania ties but host Anthony Anderson managed to kick off the “75th Emmy Awards” Monday night on Fox with images and music ready-made for Pittsburghers.
Anderson came on stage to the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” theme with the title changed to “Mister Anderson’s Neighborhood” and “Compton” written on the side of one of the buildings in the familiar opening credits’ background.
“Hello friends and welcome to our Emmys neighborhood,” Anderson said, hanging up a parka in a faux living room set.
From there Anderson set the stage for a confident, warm, nostalgia-fueled Emmy telecast, one of the best in recent memory as it genuinely celebrated the medium as awards were handed out at warp speed.
Anderson brought out a choir to sing classic TV theme songs (“Good Times,” “The Facts of Life,” “Miami Vice” and others used as music cues throughout the telecast). And Anderson found an ideal substitute for playing off long-winded acceptance speeches with music: His mother held up a cardboard sign of a clock with a line through it. Hard to get cranky at Mama. (And it worked: The Emmys almost ran short!)
It didn’t matter that most of the awards were reruns of those given out in the TV categories at last week’s Golden Globes and Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards. The Emmys were entertaining on their own thanks to multiple partial cast reunions (“The Sopranos,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Martin,” “Cheers,” “All in the Family,” “Ally McBeal”) and overall good writing for the presenters. The show’s producers understood the assignment: Make it fun, show love for the medium we all enjoy.
Anderson cracked a couple of jokes at the start but skipped a monologue to get to the awards which began with two excellent presenters: Christina Applegate, suffering from multiple sclerosis but still quick with a quip (“You’re totally shaming me with [my] disability by standing up,” Applegate said, reacting to the audience’s standing ovation), and Carol Burnett, whose awards introduction took an unexpected left turn into a zinger (“I was lucky enough to be the first female host of a variety series …. And a lot has changed in the last 46 years. Progress has been made and it truly warms my heart to see how well men are doing in comedy now”).
Western Pennsylvania ties to the Emmys were limited with nominations for partially Pittsburgh-set “Daisy Jones & the Six” and “The Last of Us,” which creator Neil Druckmann conceived as a video game while studying at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Daisy” won two Emmys earlier this month for period costumes and sound mixing for a limited series at the Creative Arts Emmy Award ceremonies. That’s also where 1970 CMU grad Judith Light won a trophy for guest actress in a comedy series for her role in Peacock’s “Poker Face.” And that was about it. 2006 CMU grad Anthony Carrigan lost to Ebon Moss-Bachrach of “The Bear” in the supporting actor/comedy category.
Acceptance speeches ran the gamut from emotional (Quinta Brunson), humorous (“The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri thanked her parents, saying, “Probably not a dream to immigrants to this country and your child is like, ‘I wanna do improv.”), exclamatory (Niecy Nash-Betts), heartfelt (“Judgment and shame is a lonely place but compassion and grace is where we can all meet,” Steven Yeun said) to rhyming (Paul Walter Hauser) and EGOT-ing (Elton John in absentia).
Anderson dubbed it “the chocolate Emmys” because of the wealth of Emmy winners of color, noting how the wins came on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Evidence of the smart, creative approach taken by this year’s Emmy producers could be found in the presenters, particularly the reunion of “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” anchors Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who read the nominees in the variety special category, which included the Tony Awards.
“Celebrating the best in musicals that were based on movies that will probably be movies again,” Poehler said.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” added Fey, whose “Mean Girls” musical, based on the stage show that was based on the original movie, debuted in theaters in recent days.
Occasionally celebs got bleeped, including presenter Pedro Pascal who explained his arm is in a sling because of a shoulder injury which he joked he sustained when “Kieran Culkin beat the [poop] out of me.”
That this Emmy telecast managed to entertain was no small feat considering the oddness of the awards’ timing. Delayed from September due to the concurrent writers’ and actors’ strikes, the awards honored series broadcast between June 2022 and May 2023. “The Bear,” which recently won Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards for its second season, was nominated at the Emmys for its first season.
Odder still, this was just the first of two Emmy ceremonies this year. The 2024 telecast, honoring shows aired from June 2023 through May 2024, is slated to air in September.
Here’s the full list of 2023 Emmy winners:
Drama series: “Succession” (HBO).
Lead actor/drama: Kieran Culkin, “Succession.”
Lead actress/drama: Sarah Snook, “Succession.”
Supporting actor/drama: Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession.”
Supporting actress/drama: Jennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus” (HBO).
Writing/drama: Jesse Armstrong, “Succession.”
Directing/drama: Mark Mylod, “Succession.”
Comedy series: “The Bear” (Hulu/FX).
Lead actor/comedy: Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear.”
Lead actress/comedy: Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary” (ABC).
Supporting actor/comedy: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear.”
Supporting actress/comedy: Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear.”
Directing/comedy: Christopher Storer, “The Bear.”
Writing/comedy: Christopher Storer, “The Bear.”
Limited/anthology series: “Beef” (Netflix).
Lead actor/limited series: Steven Yeun, “Beef.”
Lead actress/limited series: Ali Wong, “Beef.”
Supporting actor/limited series: Paul Walter Hauser, “Black Bird” (Apple TV+).
Supporting actress/limited series: Niecy Nash-Betts, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” (Netflix).
Writing/limited series: Lee Sung Jin, “Beef.”
Directing/limited series: Lee Sung Jin, “Beef.”
Talk series: “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central).
Scripted variety series: “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (HBO).
Writing/variety series: “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”
Variety special: “Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium” (Disney+).
Reality competition: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (MTV).
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.