The Year So Far: Best/Worst Awards Show Moments
I know August is a strange time to do some midyear rundowns, as we're in fact well over halfway through the year now. But, after a busy #hotgirlsummer for all of us (right? RIGHT?), it's time to prepare for the return of sports, shows, and critically-acclaimed films this Fall, with a look back on the year so far. Plus, due to the lingering effects of the pandemic, everything's been pushed back a bit, hasn't it? That's right, I'm taking a page out of Disney's legal approach against Scarlett Johansson and blaming the pandemic.
With the foremost awards for Film, Music, Theatre and Sports behind us already, and the list of nominees already announced for the Television equivalent, there is no shortage of "awards show 2021" content to analyze. I have mentioned before, I am a massive sucker for awards shows, and do my best to watch every minute of every major one, even if I know it's going to end in disappointment. Awards shows in 2021 have, as you might expect, looked incredibly different than in years prior, for better and for worse. A few organizing bodies really mastered how to do a COVID-era awards shows, more really did not at all, while others had a good thing going, only to ruin it in the end. Here is my rundown of the highlight and lowlight from the premier awards this year:
Best Awards Show Moment:
The logistical masterclass of the Grammys
I tend to follow the same pattern for the Grammys every year: weeks, even months of anticipation, eagerly eating up every live performance and award on the night, and then ultimately going to bed angry, after a night of only a few good performances and generally unsatisfactory award winners. But this year, of all years, there was so much to celebrate from a surprisingly terrific Grammys ceremony. The production of the fan-less show was inch-perfect, with little to no timing errors, marvelous performances, a particularly poignant In Memoriam segment, and acceptance speeches both funny and heartfelt.
After seeing an entirely virtual Emmys in Fall 2020 and a virtual-live hybrid at the Golden Globes in January both struggle to figure out how to cohesively pull together their respective ceremonies, first-time Grammy producer Ben Winston put them all to shame. This show was COVID-safe, but was also refreshingly intimate, letting us see a wide variety of artist perform only to other artists, their peers and heroes.
And as far as the results go, sure, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish winning the biggest awards of the night was nothing new and was somewhat anticlimactic but it's hard to argue with the quality of folklore and "everything i wanted," respectively. The most important results of all belonged to two Houston legends Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé, who made respective history as the first female rapper to win a major award (Best New Artist), and the most successful solo artist at the Grammys with 28 wins.
Honorable Mentions: Jason Sudeikis' Golden Globe win and ensuing hoodie meme, Chloe Zhao's history-making wins at the Oscars, Ted Lasso domination among 2021 Emmy nominations, Chadwick Boseman's wife's emotional acceptance speech for his Globe win, Yoon Yuh-jung and Daniel Kaluuya's delightful Oscar victories and even more delightful acceptance speeches, Bowen Yang becoming the first Saturday Night Live featured player to be an Emmy nominees, Mohamed Salah's ESPY nomination
Worst Awards Show Moment:
The Oscars' bungled ending
I’ll start with the necessary disclaimer: trying to stage an awards show, particularly one of this magnitude, amidst a worldwide pandemic is an unenviable task, and the fact that they pulled a show off in any capacity, let alone one that was not without its highlights, is a rousing success. Still, even with the, you know, COVID of it all, it’s hard not to think of ways it could have been better executed. We had seen a general upward trajectory in the awards ceremonies that had been held in the last year, from a pretty unimpressive and forgettable Emmys last fall, to a fun but chaotic Golden Globes in January, to as discussed above, a Grammys that was a rousing and remarkable success. Building off that positive momentum, the start of the Academy Awards had myself and fellow film nerds geeking out, with its introduction that played like the beginning of a movie. Regina King took an Oscar from outside Los Angeles’ Grand Central Station and something like opening credits rolled as she strode into a revamped main terminal that made for a beautiful setting, and began the show with a nice pseudo-monologue that included a nod to ongoing civil rights protests in the wake of the Derek Chauvin murder trial.
It’s not exaggeration, however, to say the show only went downhill from there. For starters, the organizers’ treatment of COVID was…bizarre. For an industry as vocally progressive as Hollywood tends to be, it was a bit jarring to see little-to-no mask wearing, and little-to-no careful distancing, etc., even around multiple attendees in more at-risk categories. Another qualm for me was the lack of clips from the nominated films and performances; I anticipated one positive byproduct of a reduced-capacity, host-less, performance-less show to be that the TV audience would be treated to more extended clips for each nominee. This is consistently one of my favorite parts of the Oscars, the ability to see snippets of what made this movie or this actor such a compelling nominee. Instead, strangely, there were virtually NO clips throughout the night, save for a couple seemingly random categories like International Film and Animated Film.
But the real turd in the punch bowl came at the end of the broadcast. Inexplicably, the announcement of Best Actor and Best Actress were moved to after the award for Best Picture. This would have been a brazen and absurd decision anyway, as Best Picture is indisputably the 'biggest' award of them all, but the only reason it could have been done would be to give Carey Mulligan or Andra Day proper recognition for their first-ever Oscar amidst an extremely competitive Best Actress race, and then of course, to close the show with an emotional posthumous tribute to Best Actor winner Chadwick Boseman. Imagine everyone’s surprise then, when Best Actress went to Frances McDormand, who took this prize just 3 years ago, and then the last Oscar of the night did not go, as everyone expected, to Boseman, who had won at just about every single show on the awards circuit, but rather to Anthony Hopkins, who wasn’t even present at the ceremony. So ended the 2021 Academy Awards: with a bemused Joaquin Phoenix telling a completely bewildered live and television audience that the last winner of the night wasn’t there to accept his award. Roll credits.
Of all of the ways the last 14 months or so have forced us to reconsider our priorities, a disappointing Oscars hardly feels like something to lose sleep over. Still, for a show that so consistently pushed the message of cinema providing a necessary reprieve from the pain and stress of the last year, it would have been nice to have the foremost awards show in cinema follow suit with an enjoyable night of escapism.
Dishonorable Mentions: Multiple technical issues at the Golden Globes (like muting Daniel Kaluuya!!), the lack of clips from the nominated films at the Oscars, Dua Lipa and Megan Thee Stallion being snubbed for Album and Record of the Year, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers winning Best Male Athlete and Best Team at the ESPYs, Palm Springs snubs at the major awards,
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