Nate Bargatze Kevin Winter/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Given that I live in Los Angeles and work for an entertainment industry trade publication, I'm not supposed to admit this, but much of the country - not "most" but probably more than "some" - has a particular perception about Hollywood. Writers and directors and producers and movie stars, you sometimes hear, live in a liberal bubble and emerge only for the occasional awards show - galas dedicated to famous people patting themselves on the collective butt, espousing left-wing talking points and generally ignoring the possibility that the whole industry is having a corrosive effect on society, especially young people. Related Stories TV Noah Wyle Wears Tuxedo Made by Scrubs Brand to Emmys TV Emmys Snubs and Surprises: Jeff Hiller and Katherine LaNasa Score Unexpected Wins as Kathy Bates, 'The Bear' Shut Out Very few minds are likely to have been changed by Sunday night's 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, at which host Nate Bargatze threw down a challenge at the top of the show: Bargatze announced he was donating $100,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, but that any speeches pushing longer than 45 seconds would cause that pot to diminish. Shorter speeches could restore some of that money. For perhaps the first half of the telecast, winners were sheepish about going long, especially those who had to watch the dollar figure plummeting on a screen behind them as they thanked their agents or expelled overwhelmed breath. At a certain point, though, most of the winners stopped caring, and when even Dan Gilroy, one of the writers on Andor, found it more important to praise Bob Iger than be conscientious about time and the welfare of children - a pretty direct subversion of every revolutionary theme espoused by Andor - it was clear nobody was caring anymore. By the end, the telecast had gone deeply into the red for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. There was never a legitimate concern that the show was going to conclude with the existential crisis of Seth Rogen, Stephen Graham, Noah Wyle and John Oliver - winners of an astonishing percentage of the night's trophies - sending small children to a work camp to repay their debt to Bargatze. Instead, it was left to CBS, a network perceived as turning over its ideological keys to Donald Trump, to donate $100,000 and Bargatze, a compulsively wholesome comic from Tennessee, to donate $250,000. So the Boys & Girls Clubs of America ended up big winners on Sunday, thanks to a network eager to befriend the administration and to a Red State comic - and no thanks to the Hollywood elite. Was that a narrative the producers or CBS or Bargatze intended to build the show around, or just what happened? Hard to tell, but if you asked me to summarize the plot of Sunday's Emmys, that's the plot. Or, rather, that's a plot. Or a theme? Never have I been as thoroughly conscious of how many masters an Emmys telecast must serve. The show has to function as a promotional platform for the network airing it, an increasing challenge in a landscape where only broadcast networks are airing the Emmys (for now), even as the Emmys largely ignore the broadcast networks. The show has to function as a representation of the Television Academy and of the state of the medium. The show has to function as a party for the people in attendance, since that's what the show is there for. And the show has to function as a piece of entertainment for the viewers tuning in at home. And that's without getting into whatever global or national issues the various participants want to bring into the conversation. Let it never be said that Bargatze and the producers didn't have a tough job, made even tougher by the precariously polarized nature of our country, perhaps more this week than ever before. They failed! Completely! But I'm not really sure what success would have looked like. Don't worry, Jo Koy and the 81st Golden Globes, you still hold the distinction of being the worst host and awards telecast in my not-insignificant memory, but this Emmys telecast came much closer than I would have predicted. It was an ill-conceived mess, punctuated by well-deserved wins and emotional and effective speeches, but rarely helped by Bargatze's consistently uneasy performance. In terminology borrowed from sports coverage, I assumed Bargatze had a low ceiling, but a high floor. He's not a song-and-dance man, so he wasn't going to be able to do what Cynthia Erivo did at the Tonys or even what Conan O'Brien, as a lark, did at the Oscars. I figured he was more likely to deliver low-key charm, keep everybody comfortable and spend very little time in the spotlight. Instead, he decided to make everybody uncomfortable, sometimes as a choice and sometimes just as a matter of course. Ba