Culture

The 2020 Emmys: A Big Night for “Schitt’s Creek,” “Watchmen,” and Tuxedo-Print Hazmat Suits


“This . . . this is so freaking weird,” Regina King observed on Sunday night, midway through the seventy-second annual Primetime Emmy Awards. King was not referring to the bow-tie-wearing alpaca that accompanied Randall Park in presenting a writing award. After all, using a cute animal in a costume to lighten the mood is one of Hollywood’s oldest tricks. What threw King, who had just won an acting prize for “Watchmen,” was the simple act of receiving her statuette, which this year involved a stranger in a tuxedo-print hazmat suit materializing at her house.

Like nearly every other human activity—first dates, history class, Passover seder—the Emmys had to adjust to pandemic life and its unique spatial constraints, not to mention the triviality of holding an awards show during our year of perpetual horrors. “What is happening tonight is not important,” the host, Jimmy Kimmel, assured us in his opening monologue. “It’s not going to stop COVID-19. It’s not going to put out the fires. But it’s fun.” Kimmel opened the show by strutting out onto an auditorium stage, with the camera cutting, shockingly, to a vast audience of laughing, gussied-up celebrities all sitting together, unmasked. This was, of course, a fakeout: the footage was from the pre-COVID world, and, soon enough, the audience vanished like a field of dreams, leaving Kimmel in an empty room with cardboard cutouts in place of people. It was a spooky sight, worthy of a dystopic sci-fi series, though the mood quickly turned to shtick. “Just like prom night,” Kimmel lamented, in his solitude.

How was this going to work, exactly? Some presenters joined Kimmel in his sleek nowhereland, among them Jennifer Aniston, Tracee Ellis Ross, and the alpaca. Everyone else was beamed in from home, or, in the case of the “Schitt’s Creek” crowd, from a well-appointed party tent in Canada. For the first hour of the ceremony, it was nothing but “Schitt’s Creek,” which swept every single comedy award—winning a record-breaking seven categories for its sixth and final season, after a grand total of zero awards in previous years. “The Internet’s about to turn on me,” the show’s co-creator and star Daniel Levy said when he returned to the mike his third time, wearing a Thom Browne kilt suit. By his fourth speech, he was imploring the audience to vote and apologizing: “I’m so sorry for making this political, but I had to.” How very Canadian.

After the “Schitt’s Creek” bonanza, most of the other awards went to “Watchmen,” in the limited-series categories, and “Succession,” in drama. (I guess we’re pretending that “Succession” isn’t a dark comedy?) All three are worthy victors, though the timeliness of “Watchmen,” in particular, came through in the acceptance speeches. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who won a supporting-actor award, talked about “the lasting scars of white domestic terrorism” and dedicated his Emmy to “all the Black women in my life.” The show’s creator, Damon Lindelof, wore a T-shirt commemorating the 1921 Tulsa massacre, which is central to the plot, and urged his colleagues to “stop worrying about getting cancelled and ask yourself what you’re doing to get renewed.” Like all of us, the Emmys had to grapple with more upheavals than the ceremony could reasonably handle. Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” may have given the best summation of the spirit of 2020 when he offered a series of “un-thank-yous”: to the virus, to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, and to the media moguls who inspired his show. Or it may have come from the “Watchmen” screenwriter Cord Jefferson, who thanked his shrink, Ian, and added, “Therapy should be free in this country.” Don’t we know it.

Television this year has been more than an art form in its late-renaissance phase: it’s had to substitute for other activities that we’ve been deprived of, as we’ve been forced into prolonged couch-potato mode. The new reality offered the stale awards-show format a rare chance at freshness, though Kimmel and company held on to some old traditions: comic bits that sagged (mostly involving hand sanitizer and swabs) and a few that were downright cringe-worthy (Kimmel threatening to call ICE on John Oliver). Other time-honored award traditions were transposed seamlessly, as when Laura Linney, Sandra Oh, and Jennifer Aniston—who all lost the dramatic-actress award to Zendaya, of “Euphoria”—broke out their gracious-runner-up smiles from home, as expertly as if they’d been on aisle seats. You had to wonder about the nominees who didn’t bother to show up, even from the comfort of their own homes, among them Meryl Streep, Ted Danson, and Jeremy Irons. Were they out walking the dog?

Elsewhere, the ceremony took some novel turns. Throughout the night, “real” Americans, among them a rancher in Montana and a nurse in New York City, presented supporting-actor awards, in what felt like a reprise of the roll call at the Democratic National Convention. It was a nice idea, even if it carried a whiff of self-important inoculation against the perception of self-importance. Shouldn’t Hollywood be giving them some accolades, instead of the other way around? Still, there was something sweet and fittingly incoherent about a third-generation “lady truck driver” (her words) announcing an award for Uzo Aduba, for playing Shirley Chisholm in “Mrs. America.” Aduba, like Regina King, accepted her award from home, in a Breonna Taylor T-shirt. It’s hard to think of a better time capsule for whatever we’re all living through.

Before the camera cut away from Aduba, you could hear her call out, “Mommy!” That was where the Emmys got really good: spotting the nominees in their native habitats, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Some, like Zendaya, sat in bejewelled splendor in front of the camera, with their families and “teams” cheering on from sofas. As Armstrong accepted the best-drama prize, for “Succession,” a phone rang offscreen, and someone in the room had to run off and answer it. It was a good night for Room Rater, the Twitter account that scores homescapes that appear on TV. (Tyler Perry got a perfect ten, for his “epic library.”) Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” kept up her kooky-headwear routine at home, wearing a top hat festooned with carnival masks, while her husband, Daniel Palladino, wore a fedora. (The two were nominated against each other, for the direction of different episodes of the same comedy series.) Billy Porter, of “Pose,” let his regal train flow from an armchair, though it longed for a red carpet. No one accepted an Emmy in pajamas, but Julia Garner, who won a supporting-actress award, for “Ozark,” appeared in flapper cosplay, with her husband, the singer-songwriter Mark Foster, in a silky red robe. As far as I could tell, only one winner—Andrij Parekh, who got a directing prize, for “Succession”—spoke from a bedroom.

Even so, the ceremony could have let even more oddness into the frame. My favorite moment of the night appeared not on ABC but on the Twitter feed of Ramy Youssef, the star of “Ramy,” who lost an acting prize to Eugene Levy (“Schitt’s Creek”). Moments later, Youssef posted a video, captioned “when you lose the emmy,” which showed one of those tuxedo-hazmat-suit people outside his door, waving a sad little goodbye as he walked off with the unearned statuette. The indignities of fame, circa 2020, could not have been captured with more succinct cruelty. I wanted to know everything about this prize deliverer, surely Hollywood’s idea of an essential worker. For sheer comic timing, whoever it was deserves to keep that Emmy.





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