This Week in Gossip #40

The Emmys were good, AI is still bad, and MrBeast is the worst.

Greetings, fellow gossipers. I am back from Toronto and jetlag was a harsh mistress. Make sure to check out my coverage of TIFF, both on Substack and Pajiba.com. It was a fun year and the films were fascinating. And now, on with the news…

The Emmys Make Good Choices and Award Hacks, Baby Reindeer, Shōgun

The 76th Primetime Emmys happened over the weekend and, dare I say it, they made great choices? Shout out to my colleagues and contemporaries who had to go straight from covering TIFF to this. You're stronger than the troops. At least we got a solid selection of winners. Hacks took home Outstanding Comedy while Shōgun, the Outstanding Drama victor, broke records by winning 18 of its 25 nominations. Baby Reindeer was the limited series/anthology winner of choice, while The Traitors snatched the reality competition crown from RuPaul's Drag Race.

Yes, we're all still complaining about The Bear being considered a comedy but who could be mad at Liza Colón-Zayas winning in supporting comedy actress (except for Hannah Einbinder's mother?) Billy Crudup won for supporting actor in a drama for The Morning Show, which was one of the not good choices. You lost the chance to give an Emmy to the snake-mouth guy from Ichi the Killer! Elizabeth Debicki felt kind of like the outstanding actress in a drama default choice in a weak category that was mostly Morning Show folks. I suppose they had to give The Crown something (no, they didn’t, that final season was crap.)

But seriously, did the Emmys actually succeed with these wins? I’m not used to an awards body making generally good choices. When they announced the nominations, the entire thing felt like a failure in the making. Truly, The Crown's final season was so awful, and the continued heralding of The Morning Show seems scammy, somehow. I actually liked 3 Body Problem but having it in the outstanding drama category was silly (I imagine Netflix put down a lot of money to make that happen.) I was expecting a lot of safe and/or mediocre choices. And there were a couple of those, I suppose. Jeremy Allen White is great in The Bear but picking him over Larry David, Matt Berry, and the Only Murders in the Building duo felt like they misunderstood the assignment.

While at TIFF, I hung out with Sarah Marrs of Lainey Gossip, and she talked up the idea of the Emmys going from a comedy/drama split to one of episode length. Make it a short form versus long form issue, and not only would it maybe encourage showrunners to rein in their worst impulses (looking at you, Netflix/Apple originals), but it would toss aside the notion that short = comedy and long = drama.

The show itself was, as my boss put it, aggressively fine. Hosts Dan and Eugene Levy was cute but pretty bland. There was a lot of sponsored content which felt misplaced at best. Many of the speeches were very good, like Anna Sawai’s very emotional acceptance and Richard Gadd’s call for more industry support for non-IP original shows like Baby Reindeer. Honestly, I think my bar for awards show success is lower than the average viewer simply because I’ve been burned so many times and I’m aware of how easy it is for the industry to give into its worst instincts. So, I’ll take these small pleasures wherever I can get them. Now, next year’s going to be an Interview with the Vampire sweep, yes?

The Life of Chuck Wins the TIFF Audience Award: What Does it Mean?!

(Image via TIFF.)

I got back from TIFF on early Friday morning, Scotland time, and have been desperately trying to return to my normal routine ever since. Spoiler: it's not working. Covering a film festival is tough. You never see everything you want to because the scheduling is so tough and getting into everything is nigh-on impossible. I saw about 20 films over 6 1/2 days and that's a fraction of what some critics I know covered (Marya E. Gates pulled off 40! Wonder woman!) I also left before they announced the winner of the People's Choice Award. This year, the top prize went to The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan's adaptation of a Stephen King short story, starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill. The runners up were Emilia Pérez, the musical drama that won Best Actress at Cannes, and Anora, this year's Palme d'Or winner. I saw… none of those films. Again, it was a busy time!