Kelvin Yu, left, and Aziz Ansari accept the award for outstanding writing for a comedy series for Master of None at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
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It was a sly reference to the narration his alienated and occasionally hallucinating character provides USA’s “Mr. Robot”, but it was also a fine summary of Sunday night’s telecast in its ability to reflect the changing nature of television.
First-time nominee Rami Malek (Mr Robot) won for best lead actor in a drama, while Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) won the prize for best lead actress in a drama, in a surprise win for the BBC America series.
Her show recently addressed Nazi Germany and what it calls the “other-izing” of groups of people. At times literally. The opening bit ended with Kimmel hitching a ride on Daenerys Targaryen’s dragon from “Game of Thrones” and roasting Ryan Seacrest as he wound up the red carpet coverage for E! She brought the real Marcia Clark with her, and then apologized to her from the podium, saying that she’d been “superficial and careless” to judge Clark on the “two-dimensional” portrayals of her during the real O.J. trial.
He also said that Burnett will be the first over “the wall” if Trump wins. “The tribe has spoken”. “They have ‘The Godfather, ‘ ‘Goodfellas, ‘ ‘Rocky, ‘ ‘Sopranos.’ We’ve got Long Duk Dong”.
And Courtney B. Vance got on stage & asked, “y’all mind if I praise God?” The Veep star picked up her fifth consecutive award for comedy series lead actress, giving her a record six wins in the category.
“Our show started out as political satire”, she said, “but now it feels like a sober documentary”.
There were two heartfelt tributes to celebrities we lost this year: Tambor saluted his former Larry Sanders Show co-star, Garry Shandling, who passed away in March, while Henry Winkler remembered actor, producer, director and writer Garry Marshall, creator of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy. I think we can keep going a lot further in that direction, not just in entertainment, but socially and politically, and strive to be as progressive as possible.
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series went to Jeffrey Tambor for “Transparent”.
“Please give transgender talent a chance. I would not be unhappy if I were the last cisgender man to play a female transgender”.
Directing for a Variety Special: Thomas Kail and Alex Rudzinskifor, “Grease Live”. “Don’t nobody want to know about boring Emmy secrets”, Jones said.
“Since you’re good at keeping things safe, I have a job for you – my Twitter account”.
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Pizza was too mainstream for Jimmy Kimmel, who made a decision to ask his mother to make 7,000 peanut butter and jelly (PBJ) sandwiches and had the young stars from Stranger Things ride bikes, handing out lunch bags. That alone was an excellent example of why this Kimmel hosting stint went so much better than the last one: He had a better sense of where the “too much” line lies, and other than an ill-advised in memoriam joke, he avoided crossing it.
