The 2020 Emmys Were a Meeting That Should've Been an Email
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I'ma let you finish, but [in-person award shows] had one of the best [entertainment values] of all time.
The 2020 Emmys aired Sunday evening at 8 p.m. E.T. on ABC, and, of course, the nominees, the presenters, and the llamas were all socially distant, because, to quote my most-used phrase of the year, we're in a pandemic.
But what is a socially-distanced awards show if not the nominations announcement that occurred back in July with the addition of the winner? Couldn't we have just done that? After all, the best part of awards shows has never been the host cracking jokes, or the presenters' monologues (save for anything that comes out of Maya Rudolph's mouth). It's the moments in-between that we live for, those Kanye-rushing-the-stage horrors that both shock and entertain us.
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I don't want to see the insides of my favorite actors' homes, that's literally what Instagram is for. I want drama! Intrigue! Scandal! Sideways glances and Chrissy Teigen doing the face. I want to see Nicole Kidman clapping as though her fingers were made of porcelain. A rowdy Meryl Streep hooting and hollering from her front-row seat. Blue Ivy telling her parents to c h i l l.
There were some red carpet moments, sure. Cynthia Erivo and Zendaya served us high fashion; Sandra Oh gave us some meaningful accessories; Sarah Paulson and Holland Roland blessed us with the secretive-celebrity-couple PDA that we anxiously await all year long. But did we really need (*gestures vaguely at the intangible concept of a video conference call*) all this?
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Not to be a scrooge, but what if this year we had, you know, passed. Imagine: We announce the winners on Twitter; Schitt's Creek fans jump to the stars' Instagram pages for their acceptance speeches. Nominees still dress up, but only for their own personal social media following, which inevitably gets picked up on news sites like this one that already cover all the other Friends reunions. Apple sends push notifications to every iPhone user of just Zendaya's face. We finally give Jimmy Kimmel one year off from hosting anything and donate his salary to families of COVID-19 victims. And we could have been spared of this whole three-hour spectacle. Just a thought.
My feelings about the show are similar to that evergreen meme. You know when you find yourself in a meeting, and about 10 minutes in, you wonder, "why am I here?" Maybe you catch the eyes of your colleague, or, if you're a laptop-wherever-you-go-type gal, you Slack the "eyes" emoji to your work wife. You begin to get the feeling that whoever called the meeting may have done so because they delight in a captive audience. That the entire three hours you spent half-listening, half-poorly attempting to get your work done, could have been put to better use. That the meeting ... should've been an email.
Cc: The Oscars. Your move.