Emmys TV Review: Smoothly Executed Reunion-Rich Ceremony Lacks Spark With Few Surprises

It was a tame throwback Sunday at the Emmy Awards tonight with blasts from the past taking center stage in a show seemingly longing for another era.

Besides the unexpected and well deserved Best Comedy win for Hacks, the show was full of predictable trophies for FX’s Shōgun and The Bear and Netflix’s Baby Reindeer. Along with anticipated victories for True Detective: Night Country’s Jodie Foster, The Crown’s Elizabeth Debicki and Hacks’ Jean Smart, Sunday’s nostalgia-heavy, nearly three-hour 76th Primetime Emmy Awards was punctuated by a crowd-pleasing West Wing 25th anniversary reunion, featuring Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Janel Moloney, Richard Schiff and Dulé Hill.

Even so, there was not much new to be said there on this small screen display of back to the future.

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“Our political landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years,” stated Moloney, the show’s Donna Moss, “but two things have not changed — the importance of everyone making sure to be registered and to vote,” “and the quality, the quality of the drama series on television,” said Sheen himself in best Bartlet fashion as the nominees for Drama Series were unveiled. Star Bradley Whitford had to miss the reunion, and Jimmy Smits — who was a presenter earlier — was not onstage.

If the appearance by everyone’s favorite fictional POTUS and his close aides wasn’t enough to make you sugarcoat the past, there also were 50th anniversary reunions for Saturday Night Live (no Eddie Murphy, of course) and Happy Days with the Fonz (Henry Winkler) and Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard). There also was Murphy Brown’s Candice Bergen nam-checking near-forgotten former Vice President Dan Quayle and taking a childless cat lady swipe at current GOP VP nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH)

The second reminiscing Emmys in a row, the only thing missing from the flashback-filled affair at L.A.’s Peacock Theater was a walk-on by Bill Clinton.

Otherwise, like January’s strike-delayed and rearview-mirrored Emmys, people got awards, stars gave speeches and thanked spouses and agents, there was some bleeped-out swearing, and it was, as always, way too long. Tonight’s gimmick of groups of presenters being lumped together via genre as classic TV cops, doctors, lawyers, coaches, mom, dads and villains was one of the few flexes we didn’t see at the 75th Primetime Emmys. Yet, with the predictable exception of Niecy Nash-Betts thankfully kicking up a storm, the contrivance got pretty dusty pretty quick.

Thank God for the honest, cutting-to-the-core acceptance speeches by Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd over the show’s many wins over the night. And blessed be John Leguizamo for coming out at the two-hour mark to shatter the torpor with his razor-sharp ripping of DEI critics and bigots. On this weekend celebrating Mexican Independence Day, the1998 Emmy winner, along with TV Academy Chair/CEO Cris Abrego, praised the power of inclusion, nominees Selena Gomez, Sofia Vergara, Issa Lopez, Kali Reis and Nava Mau and the “progress” the industry is making to wide its scope on both sides of the camera.

However, on a day where a gunman got very close to Donald Trump on the former president’s Florida golf course, the elephant in the room of the upcoming election pretty much went unmentioned besides urges from a handful of winners for viewers to vote. Sidestepping any reference to either Trump or Kamala Harris onstage, Jon Stewart captured the ethos of the evening when he growled “you have made an old man very happy,” as The Daily Show scored the Emmy for Best Talk Series.

Truth is, with a joke halfway through the show from co-host Dan Levy about the Emmys being the perfect age for CBS’ traditional demographic, the AARP fix was kinda in from the jump.

Almost immediately overshadowed by the banter among Only Murders in the Building’s Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin before giving out the first award of the night, Levy and his co-host/father Eugene Levy began the show in a distinctly low-key fashion. Noting they were not stand-up comedians, the past Emmy winners and Schitt’s Creek co-stars did a tour of nominees and a few dad gags. The duo wrapped up the swift opening with a promise to be less Canadian (aka super nice) than usual with little tolerance for long acceptance speeches.

A promise that was promptly ignored, I might add.

Still, in the fourth-largest Canadian city in the world by population, the True North quip went over well. In fact, in a generally smoothly executed fashion, tonight’s Emmys produced by Jesse Collins, Dionne Harmon and Jeannae Rouzan-Clay and directed by Alex Rudzinski overall went over like a Spotify-generated Sunday brunch acoustic playlist. Gadd and Leguizamo’s stints onstage aside, the soft show caused no offense and raised no eyebrows.

Leaving us with a ceremony will be highly forgettable, except to the winners themselves.

Up against NBC’s Sunday Night Football’s Chicago Bears-Houston Texans matchup, the second Emmys of 2024 almost was destined to be a hard sell even with Saturday’s last-minute resolution of Disney’s carriage battle with DirecTV. As has become the norm for Hollywood award shows during the past 11 months, there were also pro-Gaza protestors in the streets surrounding the Peacock Theatre this evening and disrupting red carpet arrivals.

All in all, the 76th Primetime Emmys was an awards show that would have been business as usual in past decades — which is good but in this “tumultuous time for the industry, the nation and the world. But it just wasn’t good enough, even if President Bartlet was in the house.

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