How I Would Fix The Emmys

The 2025 Emmys were held this week. My thoughts on the ceremony are as follows:

• The awards went to a lot of deserving people, especially Cristin Milioti, who was awesome in The Penguin and gave a very sweet and caffeinated speech when she won, which I have screencapped up there
• The ceremony and production were kind of a mess, with ill-conceived bits and a monotonous middle that made it feel like a slog, which is kind of an ongoing problem with these shows
• We don’t have to live like this
• We can improve these things
• We should try to improve these things

And so, here’s my crack at fixing the Emmys. I have sorted everything into four simple steps…

STEP 1 — Get everyone out of their seats

This one is straightforward. Get people moving around. The ceremony is many hours long and, for the vast majority of it, people are just sitting there like bored, very attractive lumps. Get them involved. Give us a little action, a reason to tune in instead of just checking Wikipedia the next morning so we know what to be mad about on social media. 

What should we do with them once we have them out of their seats? I’m glad you asked. This brings me to…

STEP 2 — Add a series of physical challenges

Put Jean Smart on a zipline. Maybe that’s how she gets to the stage to accept her award. Maybe that’s how everyone gets to the stage to get their award. There’s room to wiggle things around here. We can have a different physical challenge for each category. Running across spinning logs, dodging obstacles to avoid getting flung into a pool of water, that sort of thing. Celebrities giving speeches with their fancy clothes sopping wet and their adrenaline shot through the ceiling. You see the vision here. 

But it’s not just excitement I want to add to the proceedings. I also want to find a better way to choose among the nominees, one that is fair, and one that isn't as susceptible to becoming a popularity contest among voters…

STEP 3 — Create some sort of objective way to choose a winner

Something qualitative. Maybe we get all the nominees together and have them engage in a game of skill, with the winner decided by who ends up with the best score. Something everyone can do, on a relatively even level, regardless of age or physical ability. Something like… a trivia contest. Or, wait. No. Miniature golf. Have all the contestants compete in a game of miniature golf throughout the ceremony. Maybe we can loop the physical challenges into the proceedings, too. 

But if we do all that, I guess we’ll need to change the whole structure of the thing, too. Okay. Okay. I have something for this one. 

STEP 4 — Instead of having a host do a monologue and bits throughout the night, just have a couple of announcers up in a booth doing comedic play-by-play as the events unfold in front of them

You’d need a straight man and a goofball. Like, one would have to be a real announcer. Someone with chops and a history of working at big events. Someone like Joe Tessitore. And the goofball could be a comedian with a background in sketch and improv. Let’s say… oh, let’s say Rob Riggle. And replace all the celebrities with regular people. Put it on TV once a week. At some point, the Muppets can get involved. And then we c-…

Hmm. It dawns on me that I have just recreated the extreme mini-golf show Holey Moley, which has been on hiatus for well over a year now and which I miss very much. I wonder how that happened. Oh well. Something to consider, I guess.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Vulture let me write about two of my favorite things: Tim Meadows and fajitas

— the bad news is that Rolling Stone let Alan Sepinwall go but the good news is that you can just subscribe to his blog yourself now

— interesting pre-Emmys profile of Nate Bargatze, who seems like a much more ambitious dude than his standup would lead you to believe

— good interview with Nobody and John Wick mastermind Derek Kolstad

— my buddy Andy passed away earlier this year after a long bout with cancer, and he loved both the Detroit Lions and shouting "FUCK THE BEARS" across many social media platforms, so this thing the Lions did after beating the Bears on Sunday made me do this weird laugh/cry thing that made it look like my face was malfunctioning

— Bryan Cranston did mushrooms with Catherine O'Hara, which is a thing I would watch on a live-stream for 5-7 hours

— it’s fun to imagine someone reading a headline like “Scarlett Johansson confirms Colin Jost is returning to SNL 'Weekend Update’” without knowing the two are a couple

— the White Lotus composer who had a feud with Mike White and left the show won an Emmy this week (lol)

— Noah Wylie went to the Emmys in a tux made of scrubs, which is cool

— I love pole vault king Mondo Duplantis

— we fired a missile at a space orb, which can’t be a good thing based on every movie I’ve ever seen

— shout out to the defiant nuns

— gold shark

— “Australia approves first vaccine to save koalas from chlamydia”

— “Everything You Need To Know About The Girlboss Ants That Give Birth To Another Species In Order To Exploit Their Offspring (Slay Ant Queen!)”

— “Cheating scandal rocks world stone skimming championships”

— freakin go Phillies

— it's a fair question

Okay, that's it for this week. Please like and subscribe and let me produce the Emmys.