Life of Wry

A brief commentary on yet another aspect of life during a pandemic: Awards shows in general, and the Emmy’s tonight.

It’s not that TV is a significant part of the my life — I’d seen exactly one show of all the shows nominated for Emmy Awards this year (by my rough count, and, full disclosure, I wasn’t able to sustain enough interest to watch the entire show). But, I’m in the category of people who really like and look forward to award shows and I was particularly interested in seeing how they would pull this off.

Per award show tradition, Jim brought me dinner so I could sit in my office cave and luxuriate in Hollywood stars and their clothes and try to catch up on a year’s worth of popular entertainment culture. I really love this tradition.

What I saw was quite clever and some parts of what I saw were really funny.

Like, look at Jimmy Kimmel’s audience:

Those are socially distanced cardboard cut outs.

All the nominees were in their homes, dressed up (or not), with their own gaggle of family and friends, each their own square on a giant Zoom-like screen that Jimmy would address from time to time from the stage, alone in the giant theater. The winners were just as excited when their name was announced as they would be in person, and gave speeches just as they would in person…all from their homes.

I lost interest because I truly did not know the shows nor the actors (which is weird). And it seems Schitt’s Creek or Succession won everything.. neither of which I had seen. And why couldn’t The Crown win something? I have seen that show (and loved it).

They carried off the whole show as though it were novel, which it was. They clearly enjoyed coming up with a lot of clever adaptations and funny bits. I couldn’t help thinking that everything in the whole wide world has changed. And while the show was novel and fun, funny and clever, life during a pandemic, with all of its extraordinary adaptations, may go on for a very long time.. and pretty soon nothing will be novel or clever.. it’ll just be the way we do things.