The 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards

Colbert and Fallon introduce Variety with singing.

Variety

The variety montage includes SNL, Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show, The Superbowl, The Daily Show, The Tonys, The Olympics and a telethon.

That’s certainly variety – how do you possibly compare that lot. Methinks the 63rd Emmys should be a bit more specific about their “Miscellaneous” category.

Joel McHale is funny. I will have more of that one please, and I’ll take this opportunity to plug Community, my favourite new show of last year.

They announce best writing in a variety show nominations and well… they are:
The Oscars, Bill Maher’s stand-up, The Kennedy Centre Honours (I don’t know), The Tonys, and Wanda Syke’s stand-up. Did they pull them out of a hat?
The Tony’s win, and Dave Boone accepts it fabulously to minimal applause. They really shoot themselves in the foot doing the best two segments in the first hour. It was the epitome of polite, we’ve all nipped out to the bathroom, applause.

Ricky Gervais comes on, says hello and everyone laughs.
Apparently The Emmy’s is a dry party, and Gervais rips into the soft part of television, and Mel Gibson’s, underbelly then starts handing out beers to the audience.
He’s very funny, if there was an award for handing out awards, I think Gervais would have it in the bag.

Variety/Music or Comedy Directing is why he’s here, yet another baffling category with too many programmes to consider,
Gervais is delighted to be able to say “Bucky Gunts” over and over again, and cheers when Mr Gunts wins for his work directing the 2010 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony. I watched that and they did do good work.

The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, SNL, Conan and Bill Maher go up for Best Variety/Musical/Comedy. Will it go to Conan because he’ll never get nominated again, or being as this is being telecast by NBC, will he get overlooked and run out the auditorium crying? This is actually exciting.

Oooohh…

The Daily Show! They take their 7th Emmy, and everyone is a little disappointed, Jon’s not even there and they’re a bit smug about winning it a lot. The guy doing the speech is unlikely to be revealed as head writer.

John Shafner, The Chairman of the Arts and Sciences Academy, comes on to award George Clooney with the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award. In a piece of televisual genius, they get Carole Hathaway to present Doug Ross with an award, and I make a noise somewhere between a sigh and a cry of joy. What a loser.

Julianna Margulies has a wee choke up too when she gives her speech about the Cloonster. He gets a standing ovation, even Betty White gets up.
He’s charming and beautiful and now it turns out he’s a Saint. Between you and me, I think George Clooney is the best version of being a human. His speech is amusing, but powerful, pointing out that which we all know; if a disaster doesn’t get the right coverage, it becomes old news despite the fact people still need help. He’s a really good man.