Emmys 2021: The best, worst, and weirdest of the ceremony

The 2021 Emmys will be remembered as the year when , Conan O’Brien proved you can make great TV while not winning awards for making great TV, and someone in the writers’ room thought there were still a few more laughs to be wrung from a fly buzzing around Mike Pence’s head. After you’ve tallied up and you’ve caught up with the and , read on to find out what The A.V. Club thought was the best, the worst, and the weirdest of the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic once more necessitated a multi-location ceremony, with most of the nominees for joining the festivities from the Soho House in London. (Where, creator Peter Morgan mentioned during one of his acceptance speeches, it was extremely early in the morning.) Nevertheless, the Emmys’ U.K. satellite was linked to its Los Angeles counterpart through one crucial attribute: Eye-catching accessories worn just a few inches above the eyes. Across the pond, it was Emma Corrin setting the standard for hair-covering fashions, with the bonnet that gave their all-yellow ensemble the appropriate future-deco capper. Meanwhile, at Emmys HQ, ’s —which, after this week’s , only counts as the second-most-outrageous thing he’s worn on his head on TV this week.

During the mic passed from star (and real-life rapper who plays an aspiring rapper on TV) Dave Burd to actor (and mother of ) Rita Wilson. It was a transparent ploy to earn the 2021 Emmys a of its very own, so credit to a game Wilson for gamely mugging (and lip-syncing?) her way through rhymes about HBO Max passwords and Bert and Ernie. A bit of a mindfuck so early in the ceremony—and not the last time the onscreen talent gave a better performance than the material deserved.

Your regular reminder of actors being separate people from the characters they play can be found in , an awed flurry of applause and fist pumps that would look downright sarcastic if directed at Roy Kent by Jamie Tartt. That sense of camaraderie was echoed from the stage when Evan Peters accepted his award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, breaking from his otherwise straightforward gratitude stream to turn to co-star Kate Winslet and thank her “FOR BEING KATE WINSLET!” Top marks to whoever in the control room called for the camera change during Peters’ wind-up. We hope you’re also feeling the affection of your co-workers tonight.

Nothing says “The Emmys aren’t quite up to speed with the full breadth of sketch comedy on television” like . Except maybe the way the pre-taped and onstage comedy sketches bombed during the second hour of the show. Some, like the teleprompter shenanigans starring the cast, wound up collapsing into an uncanny valley of “Attempt at humor or actual on-air flub?” (Who would’ve thought Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara’s comedic conviction could fail them like that?) And then the show went and dropped a bit about the fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head during the 2020 vice presidential debate—a footnote in The Longest 18 Months In Recorded History that had already inspired .

Maybe we can chalk up the decision to stack bomb on top of bomb to the unorthodox sequencing of these Emmys as a whole. Some of these experiments in rearranging paid off, as in the decision to put Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series—a category with a greater amount of intrigue and competition this year than customary Emmys climax Outstanding Drama Series—at the very end of the ceremony. Others, like the way the nominees for some awards were introduced prior to the presenters, threw things off-kilter. Awards-night surprises should come in envelopes, not in the herky-jerky rhythm of doing “And the nominees are…” before America Ferrera arrives at the mic.

Thank god, then, for , who thrives on strange cadences and comedic awkwardness. (And .) At the 2021 Emmy’s lowest ebb, the star pulled the show back from the brink. Here’s hoping the Academy has her back to say “This is such an honor” in a more sincere fashion this time next year.

You could hear how touched Debbie Allen was by the tribute that preceded her acceptance of the Governors Award, in which Jada Pinkett Smith, Ava DuVernay, Ellen Pompeo, and Michael Douglas all channeled Allen’s demanding Fame dance instructor, Lydia Grant. (According to Allen, she’d just been at Pinkett Smith’s 50th birthday party and had no idea the Red Table Talk host would be warming up the crowd for her.) But that was just the overture to the night’s best speech, one that was an emotionally rich and well-deserved earned reflection of Allen’s career in front of and behind the camera. Who else was going to work Captain Kangaroo, Steven Spielberg, and Shonda Rhimes into their remarks? Who else could? Only Allen, who tapped into a little bit of that Lydia Grant vibe herself when she looked directly into the camera to say “Honey turn that clock off. I ain’t paying no attention to it. Turn it off—turn it off.”

There’s a lifetime achievement honoree waving the producers off—and then there’s what The Queen’s Gambit’s Scott Frank did while picking up the award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. To dismiss the walk-off music once deserves a light chuckle of acknowledgment; twice verges on faux pas. But when “Por Ti Volare” is swelling for the third time and you’re just getting around to your “Anya Taylor-Joy’s eyes” joke, maybe you should’ve heeded that after all. As TV editor Danette Chavez put it on The A.V. Club’s Emmy Slack, “This award is as much Michelle Tesoro’s, the editor who’s worked with Frank on both of his limited series.” Perhaps Tesoro could’ve given him a hand with reining the speech in, too.

Conan O’Brien did not win an Emmy tonight; in its final grasp at the Outstanding Variety Talk brass ring, Conan was bested by Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. No matter: Conan O’Brien still won the 73rd Primetime Emmys, giving a show that was otherwise defined by faltering jokes and predictable winners a tinge of chaos. Joining a victorious Late Show crew onstage was funny; funnier was when he greeted the arrival of Frank Scherma, chairman and CEO of the Television Academy, as if Scherma were some combination of rock star, dignitary, and deity. Out there in the audience, Conan was punching up the show in realtime. Even on the night when we take television the most seriously, we still need people like O’Brien to remind us that we shouldn’t take this stuff too seriously. Whatever form his HBO Max show winds up taking, it can’t get here soon enough.