Forget the Globes: Emmys prove awards can be fun

So it turns out that an awards show can be fun. We don’t know what the Golden Globes’ excuse is.
The Emmy telecast Monday (Jan. 15),shown here with winner Quinta Brunson and Carol Burnett, was mostly enjoyable, despite the obstacles.
Those were the 27 awards that had to be handed out and 24 acceptance speeches that had to be endured. (We’re eternally grateful to the winners who were absent.)
The Emmys will always have a problem with repetition. This was the eighth straight win for “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” For each of its four seasons, “Succession” was named best drama; its people dominated other awards in the category … as did the “The Bear” for comedies and “Beef” for mini-series.
Since those shows had also ruled the Golden Globes, everything felt familiar. And in the eight days between awards, few people had thought of anything interesting to say.
Still, the telecast worked hard to be fun. Anthony Anderson didn’t attempt a monologue, but he did have funny things to say throughout the night. He also made fond references to Martin Luther King Day and to his own roots in Compton, Cal.
(“True fact: Kevin Costner is from Compton,” Anderson said, accurately. “I wonder if he was a Crip or a Blood.”)
But what really made the show fun was that, to mark its 75th year, it had tributes to classic shows. Complete with the original actors and re-created sets, we were returning to “Cheers” and “The Sopranos” and “Ally McBeal” and “All in the Family” and many more. We saw Burnett, 90, and Marla Gibbs, 92, who credited her long career to “the wage gap – I’ve gotta work 20 more years before I can retire.”
Gibbs saw the gap doubly, as a Black woman. The Emmys had lots of signs of an improved landscape now, with more power for women and minorities … and with a special award for GLAAD (which monitors LGBQT depiction) for helping nudge TV into the modern world.
And yes, problems do linger. RuPaul made a sly reference to the library that closed after complaints about a drag-queen story hour. “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong said, approximately, that his show viewed the convergence of media, politics and right-wing anger. “Now that that problem has been solved, we can end.”
The Emmys soon closed with a clip of King proclaiming his dream that some day, everyone can say: “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.”
That’s still just a dream. But it keeps edging slightly toward reality.