Stephen Colbert could have been forgiven for crowing. Less than two months ago, The Late Show host learned his much-loved talk show had been cancelled by CBS in controversial circumstances. While the network claimed it was purely a financial decision, many believe the show was sacrificed to curry favor with President Trump. Tonight, Colbert won the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show. As his team celebrated wildly behind him and in the audience, Colbert raised the prize aloft and took the gracious route: He began by thanking CBS.
His intention for the show, he explained, had been to create a late night comedy show about love. “I don’t know if I ever figured that out, but at a certain point — and you can guess what that point was — I realized that in some ways, we were doing a late night comedy show about loss,” he continued. “That’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it.”
It was a poignant moment, and one of the highlights of an awards show that at other times proved more efficient and functional than genuinely memorable. Host Nate Bargatze, recruited primarily for his broad appeal and aversion to controversy, delivered a safe package that played it all straight down the middle. He opened with a television-themed take-off of his star-making “Washington’s Dream” SNL skit, and avoided delivering a monologue at all. His gimmick of offering $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, just so long as winners kept their speeches below 45 seconds (docking $1,000 for every second they ran over), was commendable, but had mixed results at actually keeping winners from rambling. In truth, it was the comedy “bits” delivered by various presenters that seemed most ripe for trimming.
John Oliver and Seth Rogen gamely played along with the charity wheeze, keeping their speeches ultra-short to add money back to the pot, but there was little surprise when the funds ended up heavily depleted anyway. Bargatze, endearingly, ended the night by revealing he’d actually give $250,000 — plus an extra $100,000 from CBS — to the youth charity.
If the night’s real winners were adolescents, it was fitting that Adolescence swept the board. Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s stunning Netflix limited series won every award it was nominated for, including deserved wins for virtuoso director Philip Barantini, guest actor Erin Doherty and 15-year-old star Owen Cooper, who became the youngest male to ever take home television’s highest honor.
The other big winner of the night was Rogen’s The Studio, which had gone into the night with a record-equalling 23 comedy nominations (tied with The Bear last year, which, as usual, was the butt of several jokes about its lack of jokes, and won nothing this time out). The Studio ended the night with 13 Emmys, breaking the record for most wins for a comedy show in a single season (beating The Bear’s 11).
Rogen won the first award of the night for his acting and shared the directing award with his creative partner Evan Goldberg. The show, much like Adolescence, makes extended use of “oners,” long, unbroken, continuous takes, perhaps demonstrating the academy’s desire to reward ambitious direction in an age when computer trickery increases the temptation to cut corners.
Either that, or else The Studio’s success just proves that Hollywood still loves stories about Hollywood. Fans of the show might feel the cast and crew missed a trick. In all their many speeches, nobody shouted out Sal Saperstein, the executive who winds up being endlessly thanked at the show’s version of the Golden Globes. That’s in the episode where Rogen’s executive character reveals he’s utterly desperate to be name-dropped in a winner’s speech, so there’s a nice bit of meta-comedy when Rogen himself shouts out Apple exec Tim Cook.
As for those who will feel snubbed, Severance had been tipped for a big year, so director Ben Stiller and creator Dan Erickson may feel hard done by that the show went home with just two acting awards, for Tramell Tillman and Britt Lower. Lower provided one of the night’s most subtle viral moments when fans realized she’d nodded to her character Helly R by writing “LET ME OUT” on the back of her speech.
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Severance’s loss was The Pitt’s gain, with the medical drama winning the night’s biggest drama award. Noah Wyle, who was nominated five times in a row for ER but never won, finally got his hands on a trophy for playing an entirely different doctor (unless you ask lawyers for the estate of Michael Crichton).
Elsewhere, Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder of Hacks both took home well-earned Emmys, just as the beloved comedy prepares to shoot its farewell season. The show follows a sharp-witted comedian who achieves her dream of hosting a late night talk show, then has it snatched away by a short-sighted network. Stephen Colbert must wonder where they get their ideas.
