In the pandemic era, the Emmy Awards are not the first major event that can’t be a traditional shindig, but they’re perhaps the most high-profile awards show so far to attempt quite this kind of socially distanced, mask-wearing, virtual ceremony. Host Jimmy Kimmel and everyone producing the broadcast had a pretty tough hill to climb in making it watchable.
And surprisingly enough, it was. It wasn’t just watchable; it was … pretty good.
The opening bit featured Kimmel apparently doing a typical Emmy monologue, but of course it was just a monologue that they mixed with old audience footage. While it probably went on too long (what doesn’t?), it was a pretty effective way of easing people into this strange format, like going into a cold pool a few inches at a time. I wouldn’t have come up with it as an idea, and it didn’t seem like an especially good idea as it became clear what they were doing. But it looked better by the time they’d taken it through to Kimmel saying that, of course, they were not all together, there was not an audience, and they’d be mostly showing people in remote locations.
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