It took a while for the 2025 Emmy Awards to get to host Nate Bargatze’s monologue. First there was a sketch that called back to his pair of rapturously received Saturday Night Live appearances; a crowd-delighting welcome from Stephen Colbert, who cracked some mild jokes about his cancellation by the very network airing the ceremony, CBS; and a lead comedy actor trophy accepted by Seth Rogen. When Bargatze finally did take the mic for some unusually brief introductory remarks, he posed a typically self-deprecating question: “A lot of people are wondering, like, why am I hosting?” After his low-effort performance, anchored by a gimmick that made the show feel like a telethon, viewers might be asking themselves the same thing.
Of all the emcees networks have tapped—from Nikki Glaser for January’s Golden Globes to Eugene and Dan Levy for last year’s Emmys—to keep awards shows relevant now that the late-night hosts who once dominated them are no longer reliable draws, Bargatze might have been the most obvious choice. The 46-year-old standup had been growing his audience for two decades when, in 2023, his viral SNL hosting gig rocketed him to the comedy stratosphere. (The Emmys cold open, which had him playing TV pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, was a riff on that episode’s absurdist George Washington bit.) A recent Hollywood Reporter profile anointed him “the most successful touring comedian in the world,” whose 2024 ticket sales eclipsed even those of Jerry Seinfeld. Popularity aside, Bargatze is known for clean, family-friendly humor that requires no toning down for primetime. An affable dad who avoids divisive topics like politics and religion in favor of gentler, autobiographical material that tends to cast him as a well-meaning fool, the Tennessee native is also the rare comic capable of appealing to, or at least not actively alienating, a broad swathe of viewers. All of which can make it sound like he was engineered in a lab to mint money, when in fact his standup persona comes off as surprisingly authentic.
Despite his predominance in the comedy sector, the Emmys presented a high-stakes challenge for an entertainer in the midst of a big push to escape that box. As he put it in his monologue: “I have not had a ton of success in Hollywood, but let me tell you, boy is it going good everywhere else.” Published in May, his book Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind spent much of the summer on the New York Times best-seller list. His grand plans for his production company, Nateland, which is already a multimedia hub for wholesome humor, include, among many other projects, an amusement park. Bargatze will make another play for Hollywood clout next year with his big-screen debut, The Breadwinner, a comedy he stars in, co-wrote, and produced.
Though it wasn’t quite a disaster of Jo-Koy-objectifying-Barbie-at-the-2024-Golden-Globes proportions, Sunday’s telecast probably won’t help ease that transition. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to de-emphasize the monologue, considering Bargatze’s discomfort with the edgy “roast stuff” that is a staple of those speeches. Unfortunately, the opening sketch didn’t offer much to fill the void. Like his Washington, Bargatze’s Farnsworth regaled a trio of underlings (SNL cast members Bowen Yang, Mikey Day, and James Austin Johnson) with ridiculous yet accurate predictions for the future, in this case of TV. Much of this material felt stale, from the crack about TLC’s transformation from The Learning Channel to the home of Dr. Pimple Popper to the closing reminder that people stream prestige shows on their phones while sitting on the toilet.
After a few jokes at his own expense (on spotting Tina Fey: “I thought they should’ve had her host”), Bargatze devoted most of his monologue to setting up what was clearly supposed to be his signature running gag—one he’d already revealed in interviews leading up to the ceremony. He announced that, in an effort to keep the show on schedule, he had pledged $100,000 of his own money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. For every second that any winner’s acceptance speech exceeded the 45 seconds allotted, he would take away a thousand dollars; for every second under that limit, he’d add a grand. I guess there could, theoretically, have been some humor in forcing people as notoriously narcissistic celebrities to choose between the self-indulgence of hogging the spotlight and the desire to be seen as good, charitable people.
In practice, though—and thanks in part to a dearth of entertaining material from not just the host, but also the presenters—the ill-conceived gimmick weighed down an evening that was otherwise stacked with heartening wins (Jeff Hiller!) and headline-making speeches. A running total periodically appeared on a screen at the rear of the stage or, worse, as a graphic haunting some winners they stood at the podium. Most of Bargatze’s interstitial commentary, as perfunctory as that also was, had to do with the money. It all gave the whole show the sweaty vibe of a telethon, i.e. the most boring form of televised entertainment. Meanwhile, as anyone could have predicted, the number just kept declining until it hit a nadir of -$26,000 towards the end of the telecast. If the obviously impossible prospect of a universally beloved nonprofit owing Nate Bargatze five figures was meant to generate any suspense or hilarity… well, it didn’t.
The gag, and with it the show, wrapped up the only way it was ever going to. “The number, I’ll be honest with you, was embarrassing,” Bargatze told the crowd. So he and CBS, in an act of generosity that surely had not been planned well in advance, pledged to donate a combined total of $350,000. Though it still ran over by a few minutes, the telecast—thanks, presumably, to the rushed acceptance speeches and Bargatze’s minimal approach to hosting—did turn out to be slightly shorter than it usually is. For my part, I would’ve preferred a funny four-hour Emmys to a dull three-hour mock-telethon. But at least the Boys & Girls Clubs got something out of it.
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