What is the purpose of an awards gala today? The question arises every time the peak season of these ceremonies arrives. It is very possible that the Emmys, which were to have been delivered in September 2023 and took place in the early hours of Monday to Tuesday (in Spanish time), will become the least watched in history. The audience for free-to-air television is in decline and so is that for award ceremonies. And even more so in a television era with so much content on offer that it is very difficult to create phenomena that attract the masses and invite them to see if their favorite series is the winner. And yet, the Emmys still matter. They are one of the best promotional and marketing campaigns for the titles that win and they help the public discover content that they might have missed.
It is likely that Row (Netflix), which collected five awards this Tuesday, including best miniseries of the season, will go unnoticed by many people in the huge catalog of its platform, which in 2023 premiered an average of almost two original programs daily. They have had more promotion Succession (HBO Max) y The Bear (Disney+), the winners in drama and comedy with six awards each at the gala. Both are productions with a minority following, although there is a lot of media resonance. In the total count of the Emmys, which deliver dozens of awards in three ceremonies, The Bear finished with 10 awards, Row y The Last of Us with eight and Succession with six.
The gala presented by Anthony Anderson met the scheduled schedule and was as agile as an awards ceremony can be, with emotion predominating over laughter. The night left a handful of winners and losers:
Winners
Anxiety and stress take over television. The victory of Ted Lasso The past two years was a symbol of the trend that became strong on television with the pandemic, the stories that made the viewer feel comforted. But that has already passed, and the sign of the times is anxiety, stress, extreme competitiveness. Television, with the agility that characterizes it to reflect its environment, has taken a turn, or at least that is what the Emmys (and the Golden Globes, which opened the way for the Emmys last week with a distribution of awards almost identical). The Bear y Row They can basically be summarized as stories of characters on the verge of a nervous breakdown (if not in full attack). Succession It’s not exactly a relaxed story either: the goal now seems to be to get the viewer on the edge of their seat and need a lime before going to sleep.
The tribute to the history of television. The common thread of the Emmy gala was the history of television. The tributes followed one another, with numerous reunions of actors from iconic productions such as Cheers, Ally McBeal, Los Soprano o Grey’s Anatomy, and even recreations of the settings in which their plots took place, such as the bar in the first or the unisex bathroom and the unforgettable dance to the rhythm of Barry White in the second. The production effort to bring together such a number of personalities is more than remarkable. The appearances of Carol Burnett, Marla Gibbs, Joan Collins and Christina Applegate managed to get the audience on its feet.
The diversity. On Martin Luther King Day, the Emmys achieved one of the awards shows with the greatest diversity among its winners in memory. Quinta Brunson, protagonist of Abbott Collegewas the second black woman to win the award for best lead actress in a comedy after Isabel Sanford for Los Jefferson in 1981. Ali Wang and Steven Yeun each collected statuettes for Row and thus they became the first Asian woman and man to conquer them. Ayo Edebiri (The Bear), Niecy Nash-Betts (Dahmer), Ru Paul (RuPaul’s Drag Race)Trevor Noah (The Daily Show) They also provided diversity among the night’s winners. Additionally, Lee Sung-jun, creator, director and screenwriter of Rowis the first Asian to win all three awards, best series, best direction and best script, in the same year.
“I want to accept this award on behalf of all the women of color who had their opportunities nipped in the bud.” Niecy Nash-Betts, winner of the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or TV Movie.
One of the most exciting speeches of the #Emmys. pic.twitter.com/8jdoTZ4i72
— Movistar Plus+ (@MovistarPlus) January 16, 2024
Losers
Many series, the same winners. In recent years, a curious paradox has been repeated: although we live in times of greater television production, the awards are distributed among a very small number of them. It’s as if voters only watched a few series and settled for that. This morning, 17 of the 26 awards were for three series. Only Abbott College (con Quinta Brunson), The White Lotus (con Jennifer Coolidge), Dahmer (con Niecy Nash-Betts) y Locked up with the devil (with Paul Walter Hauser) timidly managed to break this peculiar oligopoly. It is evident that if a series deserves all the awards, it should have them, but there have been too many years of this same trend: Emmy voters vote on autopilot.
Better Call Saul, Ted Lasso, Barry, Just Murders in the Building… Prizes are never completely fair: many deserve it and only one can win. And, as we said, sometimes some monopolize many categories. The case of Better Call Saul. The series, heir to Breaking Bad and who in many ways surpassed her mother, had 53 nominations in her six seasons. She has left without receiving a single Emmy. And thus it has set the historical record for the series most times ignored in these awards. Neither the fantastic work of Bob Odenkirk nor the outstanding Rhea Seehorn have received recognition. Another of those injustices that go down in the black history of these awards, like the well-known ignoring of The Wire. In the years of farewell to him, neither Ted Lasso, Barry y The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel They couldn’t scratch anything tonight (they did score some at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards: Ted Lasso y The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel they already had two and Barry, one). Only one production design award went to the second season of Only murders in the building, another of those affected by the tornado The Bear. And be careful, comedies still have another year of suffering, because in these awards, The Bear he opted for his first season; and the second, which will compete this year, is even better.
Open television. Quinta Brunson’s award was the only one for free-to-air television compared to the power of cable and platforms, which almost completely won these awards years ago. Does it make sense for traditional channels to continue hosting a gala that becomes a celebration of the series of those who are stealing their audience? The reflection, possibly, is already late.
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