Stephen Stromberg: Monday brought the Emmys ceremony, an annual celebration in which the television industry gathers to give statues to Noah Wyle, it seems.
Yes, Wyle again received a best actor Emmy for his work on “The Pitt,” which won best drama series. Even so, it felt like Katie Dippold’s night. Her show, the horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay,” took home 14 Emmys, including best comedy series.
Did the Television Academy get things right this year?
Adam Sternbergh: The two big takeaways are that the Emmys really fell hard for “Widow’s Bay” and that you never want your awards show to end with Woody Harrelson saying to Matthew McConaughey, “These guys are so bored with us.” Despite a lot of cringey moments and technical hiccups, the shows that people like — “The Pitt” and “Widow’s Bay” — did well, so that felt good.
Robin Givhan: I have no quarrel with “The Pitt” and “Widow’s Bay” having big nights. “The Pitt” is still going strong and has a lot to say about our health care system, and I thank Dippold’s mother for, as Katie put it, making Halloween fun. “Widow’s Bay” is such a quirky, weird show with oddball, vulnerable men. How delightful!
Naveen Kumar: Another Emmys M.V.P. is Matthew Rhys, who was largely expected to win for playing the discombobulated, everyman mayor in “Widow’s Bay,” but who also took home a statue for playing a terrifying psycho killer in the mini-series “The Beast in Me.” Both performances were fantastic, and voters seemed to award him for his range. He’s now the first actor to win lead acting Emmys in the drama, comedy and limited series categories.
Givhan: It was also a good night for older actresses — Jean Smart, Allison Janney, Sally Field.
Stromberg: Smart came away with her eighth Emmy.
Kumar: Smart also made history by winning five out of five Emmys for all five seasons of “Hacks.” I adored her run, though it also would have been nice to see Lisa Kudrow honored for “The Comeback,” which is built around a brilliant, bananas performance that has evolved and deepened as the show has, ahem, come back every 10 years or so.
Stromberg: What did you make of all the nostalgia for decades-old television shows?
Sternbergh: The Emmys has leaned, at times awkwardly, into celebrating TV history in recent years, reuniting old casts and celebrating long-past shows in a way that sometimes reads as, “Hey, remember how much you used to love TV?” As someone who recalls when “Charlie’s Angels” was on the air — and nearly universally derided as a low point for the medium — the show’s 50th anniversary being lauded like it was “Masterpiece Theatre” did seem somewhat surreal.
Givhan: All of those reunions reminded me of how network TV was a nonstarter in these awards. The references to “Charlie’s Angels” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were such sad little wisps of history. And dragging out the cast of the rebooted “Baywatch” with the three blonde actresses all dressed in tacky red dresses was just a reminder of network TV’s struggles.
Kumar: I can’t imagine who is tuning into “Baywatch” after that. And it’s true, with the host, Mariska Hargitay, who’s been leading “Law & Order: SVU” for 27 seasons, there was a recurring contrast between the workhorse network shows with 20-plus episode seasons, which used to make a greater claim to being a part of a monoculture, and the prestige fare of eight to 10 episodes that dominate awards ceremonies nowadays. R. Scott Gemmill, the creator of “The Pitt,” was a writer and producer on “ER,” and the series sort of feels like a throwback to that era of professional procedurals.
Sternbergh: At least the big showing for “Widows Bay” felt like an acknowledgment of what’s exciting now, as opposed to what was exciting two generations ago.
Givhan: What intrigues me about “Widows Bay” is how specific it is. It’s so clearly one person’s vision. And it was great to see that one person was a woman. Speaking of which, I thought Hargitay did a great job, and I was shocked when she announced that she was the first woman to host the Emmys in 15 years.
Kumar: Every awards show needs to get Nikki Glaser on the phone, if the Golden Globes have anything at all to teach us.
Givhan: Or Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.
Sternbergh: It’s shocking that when Fey and Poehler were on their fantastic hosting run for the Golden Globes in the mid-2010s they never got roped in to hosting the Emmys. But I also felt like Monday’s ceremony officially restarted the “When will John Mulaney host the Oscars?’ countdown. He reliably kills it every time he’s a presenter. Apparently the Oscars have asked him, and he’s declined.
Givhan: I was ready to give him an Emmy just for being a presenter.
Stromberg: Mulaney’s “Field of Dreams” bit at the 2024 Oscars might have been the funniest thing I saw that year.
Givhan: So was anyone else surprised that Stephen Colbert didn’t get political or more pointed about censorship during his acceptance speech? I wasn’t expecting him to completely unleash, but I thought he’d have something to say about the importance of late night or free speech or something.
Sternbergh: I wasn’t surprised, since the tone of his final stretch of shows was celebratory and above-the-fray. He had Paul McCartney on! He and David Letterman threw stuff off a roof! (Letterman, of course, couldn’t resist a little dig at CBS during his appearance.)
Kumar: Awkwafina, who presented the award for best variety show, made a quip about all the hosts of the nominated shows being white and male but also pointed to late-night comedy’s role in speaking truth to power. I’m going to miss Colbert’s voice in that position, so I was craving some of that tonight.
Sternbergh: Vince Gilligan mentioned how unbelievable the last 10 years have been and made a call for general respect and finding common ground. I think the fact that a more acerbic late-night type wasn’t the show’s host insulated the ceremony from being too political, which may have been intentional.
Givhan: Alan Cumming reminded people to vote. But mostly people made oblique references to getting along and being nice to Canada.
Stromberg: Back to all the nostalgia. Have we reached peak TV? Did we a long time ago?
Givhan: If there’s any nostalgia, I think it’s for the unifying nature of past TV eras. I remember watching the Emmys and having seen or at least being familiar with all the nominated shows. Now a show can win big awards while the majority of the country has never even heard of it — even if it’s excellent. That “Charlie’s Angels” reunion didn’t happen because it was a great show. But it was a cultural touchstone. Now there are touchpebbles.
Kumar: There’s just too much TV now! I secretly loathe when casual conversation turns to what everyone is watching, because it can signal that we’ve run out of meaningful things to talk about. Rarely are people watching the same shows anymore. A lot of it is good, but who has that much time? Often, people are just looking for something to put on in the background. There’s an abundance of such programming now.
Givhan: But there are a lot of great shows! There could be a dozen best drama nominees! The problem is that so few people are watching each of them.
Stromberg: We can’t end without some red carpet talk. Who was the best dressed? And what fashions didn’t work?
Givhan: Zendaya in Prada for the win. That crystal-embellished gown with the plunging neckline, the pixie haircut, the pearls! It was high glamour but modern. Shailene Woodley in Balenciaga for sheer audacity. The boxiness of the silhouette wasn’t flattering. But I did like the gloves.
Sternbergh: I can’t speak to what worked, but Ms. Woodley provided a look that launched a thousand mean tweets.
Kumar: Poor Shailene, but that look was nuts. Honestly, I was distracted by the cosmetic surgery parade on display. I know we, as a culture, demand that older women age in a way that defies physics and the laws of nature, but it makes me sad to see how quote-unquote good some of them look. And every awards show could be sponsored by Botox, but this one stood out to me. Let Charlie’s angels enjoy their golden years in peace!
Givhan: The problem with the phrase “aging gracefully” is that it implies you show no signs of having had cosmetic intervention while also showing few signs of actually aging. But can we also talk about the men for a moment? Everyone looked like they’d just come from the facialist and hadn’t blotted their moisturizing mask.
Sternbergh: Celebrating the sustained excellence of actors like Janney and Smart — and Catherine O’Hara, in memoriam — while also plugging a “Baywatch” reboot and honoring “Charlie’s Angels” did lend the proceedings a certain cognitive dissonance.
Stromberg: Any final thoughts?
Givhan: In general, I think TV — just because of the sheer breadth of the offerings — is more welcoming and celebratory of a wider age range of women than film. (The Emmy wins were not so diverse racially.) Seeing Rhea Seehorn win for “Pluribus” and Kate O’Flynn for “Widow’s Bay” cheered me immensely.
Kumar: TV is also where older actresses who aren’t getting as many film roles come to shine, and that’s always a treat. Give me Michelle Pfeiffer, of “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” in multiple series every year, please.
Sternbergh: The show left me feeling encouraged about the state of TV. The big winners were worthy and a few historic wrongs were righted. (Seehorn finally won!) Colbert’s post-cancellation beard looked great. Now I just have to catch up on the dozen or so nominated shows I haven’t seen.
Kumar: I was also touched by the expanded In Memoriam segments, which marked especially significant losses this year, including Dolly Parton, O’Hara, James Burrows and Rob Reiner. The extended tributes from friends and collaborators felt cathartic.
Source photograph by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images.
Robin Givhan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion critic and a former senior critic at large for The Washington Post.
Naveen Kumar is a critic and journalist. He is the associate director of the National Critics Institute.
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