The 70th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday night were full of ups and downs.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, HBO wasn’t the only network to sweep the most prizes. The channel and Netflix each won 23 Emmys.
Game of Thrones won the award for Best Drama Series for its seventh season — in addition to Best Supporting Actor for Peter Dinklage — and the Amazon original series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel took Best Comedy as well as several other prizes, including Best Actress for Rachel Brosnahan.
Saturday Night Live won Best Sketch Variety Series, and its “Weekend Update” anchors, Michael Che and Colin Jost, hosted the show.
Che and Jost’s monologue was widely panned as lackluster. Most of their jokes drew only a handful of laughs, which was unsurprising given that they seemed to have been given very little original thought to. Interspersing the pair of comedians’ jokes and comments were recurring interjections from two other SNL alums, Forever stars Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, whose quips about the Emmys, the awards show’s history and general television knowledge seemed to be among the most pointless of the evening.
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Among the topics Che and Jost tackled in their opening monologue — which followed a very forced skit that addressed improvements in diversity in the TV industry (and in Hollywood in general) — were the #MeToo movement, racial diversity, and the current state of U.S. politics, including race relations and police brutality.
The hosts’ SNL co-stars Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon — nominees who both lost on Monday night — starred in the opening sketch about diversity alongside RuPaul, Kristen Bell, Andy Samberg, Titus Burgess from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Sterling K. Brown from This Is Us and Ricky Martin from The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
“You know, it is an honor to be here sharing this night with the many, many talented and creative people in Hollywood who haven’t been caught yet,” Che quipped in his opening remark, an allusion to pervasive sexual harassment in Hollywood.
“That’s right: his year the audience is allowed to drink in their seats,” Jost added. “Hope you’re excited about that. Because the one thing Hollywood needs right now is people losing their inhibitions at a work function.”
Surprisingly, no joke was made explicitly about CBS or its former chairman and CEO Les Moonves, who was forced to resign earlier this month amid a series of sexual harassment accusations.
President Donald Trump was also mocked or criticized a few times throughout the evening, though not by name.
Jost joked that when the Emmys first started in 1949, “we all agreed Nazis were bad.” He also mentioned Barack and Michelle Obama‘s recently announced production deal with Netflix and said he hoped “the only thing they produce is their own version of The Apprentice, and it gets way higher ratings.”
Actress Roseanne Barr was also derided for her racist tweet that led to the revival of her sitcom Roseanne being cancelled in May.
“Roseanne was canceled by herself, but picked up by white nationalists,” Jost quipped after he and Che mentioned several series that were recently cancelled by one cable network but picked up by another.
One big moment of the night came when 57-year-old producer and director Glen Weiss won for Directing for a Variety Special after directing this year’s Oscars ceremony. At the end of his speech, Weiss proposed to his girlfriend, who walked up to the stage utterly shocked, accepted the ring and kissed him as the audience cheered and clapped.
Here is the full list of winners:
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