Look, I get it: award show speeches can be tiresome. No one wants to watch a bunch of self-important millionaires pat themselves on the backs or feign surprise and squeeze out a few crocodile tears to appear more humble. For every inspirational or moving acceptance speech, there are hundreds of bad ones. Kieran Culkin nailed it in his SAG Award speech last year when he poked fun at the pretension so often on display at these ceremonies by clutching his trophy and smirking, “It’s like, ‘Us, what we do, mmm, it means so much!’”
It makes sense, then, that Nate Bargatze would want to rein in Emmy winners’ worst impulses with a bit aimed at keeping speeches short. As host, Bargatze announced early on that he was going to donate $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Club of America, with a big caveat: For every second over their allotted 45 seconds each winner spoke, he would deduct $1,000 from the charity donation. And to encourage brevity even more strongly, he’d add $1,000 to the pot for every second under their time. It was a genuinely funny bit at first, making celebrities awkwardly decide whether thanking their publicist is worth taking money away from needy children.
But what would have been a really solid one-off joke instead managed to suck more air out of the room and make the show significantly less entertaining as it was stretched out unnecessarily. Bargatze kept updating the audience on how much money was left after each award, and after 45 seconds, a graphic would appear in the corner showing the total dropping by the second as the person onscreen kept talking. Besides his opening sketch offering a TV-themed twist on his viral George Washington sketch from SNL, the charity bit was basically Bargatze’s only real joke of the night. That’s a real head-scratcher (and a shame) because he’s such a talented stand-up comic. Feigning horror at how low the donation dwindled throughout the night was a crutch, and the more he leaned on it, the more bizarre it felt that one of the most popular comedians out there — one who’s big enough to be headlining Madison Square Garden later this month — would show up to a high-profile hosting gig like this without any jokes.
Part of what made the bit so weak is that there were no real stakes. Of course CBS and Bargatze would never actually tease a children’s charity with a sizable donation only to back out of it and blame it on a bunch of verbose celebs. It was obvious from the jump that the show would end with Bargatze announcing they’d go ahead and give the full $100,000 anyway (and, as it turns out, he threw in an extra $250,000 himself to bring the total to $350,000). A few people played along — Hannah Einbinder offered to pay the difference as her speech went over, and after running through his list of people to thank as quickly as possible, John Oliver was bleeped for saying, “Fuck you, Nate Bargatze, that is a lot of money for you, and you can add a ‘fuck’ to the swear jar as well.’” But by and large, most people simply ignored the bit and went over their allotted time because they knew there was no way those kids weren’t getting that money at the end of the night. By the time Seth Rogen got up there to accept Outstanding Comedy Series for The Studio, they were in the red with the pot sitting at an embarrassing -$60,000.
The Emmys Have a Category Problem
“The Bear” is the most-nominated comedy series ever. But is it even a comedy?Besides the fact that using a bunch of kids as a prop to guilt people feels kind of cruel and gross, what Bargatze failed to understand is that the speeches are actually the meat and potatoes of any award show. People want to see other people — actors, yes, but also directors, writers, cinematographers who don’t often get to be on this side of a camera — celebrate reaching the pinnacle of their careers. No one cares if the show runs past 11 p.m. If they’re tuned in, it’s because they want to see things like an ecstatic Cristin Milioti screaming “I love you, and I love acting so much! Woo!”, not Reba McEntire singing the theme to The Golden Girls. Forty-five seconds is not a lot of time, and it’s hard not to feel as though the charity bit robbed us of some more great speeches as winners rushed to get all their “thank you”s in without looking like a terrible person for taking money away from children.
This year’s Emmys featured a ton of upsets and first-time winners, and the charity timer made a few history-making victories feel cheapened or down-played. Tramell Tillman became the first Black performer to win Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series with his win for Severance. At just 15 years old, Adolescence‘s Owen Cooper became the youngest male actor in history to win an Emmy. Frida Perez, co-creator and executive producer of The Studio, became the first Latina to win Outstanding Comedy Series, and after Seth Rogen pointed that out and urged her to step up to the microphone and say a few words, the graphic showing how much money was being taken away from a worthy charity in order for her to speak appeared onscreen. Is it really fair to her to have such a momentous occasion tainted by a dumb ticker pretending to rip funds away from kids? Shouldn’t being the first Latina woman to win a category in 77 years of the Emmys warrant more than 45 seconds (or however many seconds she actually got to speak after the white men she shared the honor with kicked off their time)?
By the end of the night, it was clear that even Bargatze himself sensed how poorly the night was going for him: “I can’t imagine ever doing this again,” he shrugged as he finally put us out of our misery and brought the charity bit — and the evening as a whole — to a close.
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