63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

Tonight was Emmy night! Oh, I do love award shows, especially when the awards are for something I care about - like evening tv. Of course I love the dresses, too, but that's a subject for another post. I loved this award show: I haven't laughed this much or this hard during an award show since I don't know when. This was one funny show.

Jane Lynch was the perfect choice for the show's host. She's hilarious and can sing and it was her musical opening number and monologue set the light-hearted tone of the show. Pretty much every time she was on stage she joked around.

Of course a funny host isn't enough to make a funny show. Almost everyone who was on-stage said or did something funny thanks to the writers. For example, Ricky Gervais'  pre-recorded monologue with the offensive stuff "edited out" was hilarious. I also giggled throughout the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series nominees go on-stage when their names were called and then I howled when they crowned the winner with a tiara and a bouquet of roses. The fact that almost everything had to have been scripted didn't make anything any less funny.

Naturally, not everything intended to be funny was actually funny. The songs the Emmytones sang to introduce each section of the were clearly supposed to be funny but they fell flat. Charlie Sheen wasn't at all funny, although it seemed like he was trying to make some kind of joke as he said whatever positive thing he'd been told to say about Two and a Half Men.

Although the tone of the show was light-hearted, not every segment was (or should have been) funny. It would have been inappropriate had the segment remembering people who'd died this past year made any jokes. And not every introduction included much of a joke, either. In fact, the second half wasn't as non-stop hilarious as the first and that was ok. Funny moments were scattered throughout the show and the tone of the show stayed light throughout the show.

I definitely enjoyed watching the Emmys this year, and not just because pretty much the entire show was entertaining and fun to watch. I loved that it didn't take itself that seriously: there's nothing wrong with a dignified (some might say stuffy) award show but a light-hearted approach is definitely a welcome surprise. And I loved that it ended on time. Other award shows could learn a thing or two from this one.