Hosted by Anthony Anderson (with his mother on clock duty), the several-months delayed 75th Primetime Emmy Awards was superbly efficient and a breath of fresh air after the mostly unfunny and predictable Golden Globes.
Right now, the television Academy is lapping its film-focused contemporaries.
The Emmys may have been honoring shows from last year, but it still managed to seem remarkably ahead of its peers — at least in terms of diversity. Right now, the television Academy is lapping its film-focused contemporaries.
This progressive bent is notable precisely because the Emmys is so resistant to change in other ways. Broadcast TV has barely won a major award outside of “Saturday Night Live” since 2016, for example, yet the Emmys continue to air on network TV only. And its eligibility calendar results in some streaming shows winning for their first seasons after their second seasons have fully aired. But on diversity, the Emmys chose to get ahead of the curve, reconfiguring its process voluntarily in 2015 after the “Oscars So White” campaign, which has resulted in much more diverse slates.
The Emmy egalitarian attempts were on full display Monday night, punctuated by the Television Academy’s decision to bestow its governor’s award on GLAAD. GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis promptly used the platform to make a plea for more transgender representation on screen.
It could have been much worse. Forcing the industry to work on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holiday that some states didn’t recognize properly until this century, was already not great optics. Coming a week after the return of the Golden Globes, and the same weekend as the newly invigorated Critics Choice Awards (not to mention an NFL playoff game and the Iowa caucuses) also wasn’t ideal. And it remains strange that the Emmys schedule is so behind; while all other awards shows are honoring “The Bear’s” sophomore outing, the Emmys is still acting as if Season 2 hasn’t happened yet.
But…
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