It’s official, Netflix is not going to be fixing the awards-show rankings disaster by turning the Display Actors Guild Awards into must-watch tv.
This 12 months’s SAG Awards opened strongly sufficient, with a really humorous bit during which “Hacks’” Deborah Vance (Jean Good) ready to host the awards solely to find that the explanation SAG-AFTRA had been making an attempt so assiduously to contact her was to not request her companies however to inform her she hadn’t paid her dues.
This was adopted by precise host Kristen Bell singing the pleasant ditty “Do You Want to Be An Actor?” (to the tune of “Frozen’s” “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”) whereas a montage of early appearances by nominees and others underlined the generally ignominious elements to the appearing life.
Because the night’s first winner, for his supporting function in “A Real Pain,” Kieran Culkin saved issues shifting, commenting on the burden of the award — ”I don’t assume anybody might maintain this for 45 seconds and that’s your allotted time, Adrien Brody” and what that weight may signify. “It is funny that the heaviest of all awards is given by actors — ’us what we do, it means so much,’” he mentioned, mugging ponderous emotion. “You can see the meeting of actors — ‘it needs more weight.’”
Promising, very promising, however it was all downhill from there.
Which is to say, the present then turned exactly what it’s — a bit greater than two hours of well-known folks giving and receiving awards.
I’m not saying there weren’t entertaining moments. Bits honoring scream queens, “Law and Order: Guest Stars” and actors who bought their begin in soaps have been nice enjoyable. In successful for “Baby Reindeer,” Jessica Gunning informed fellow nominees Jodie Foster, Kathy Bates and Cate Blanchett that they’d been on her dream board when she turned an actor, which was very candy.
Martin Brief gained greatest actor in a comedy sequence (over favourite Jeremy Allen White!) for “Only Murders in the Building,” which might have little doubt yielded a terrifically humorous speech besides he was not in attendance, (reportedly as a result of he caught COVID on the Saturday Night time Dwell fiftieth anniversary prime-time particular.) Neither was Steve Martin, which left Selena Gomez because the one to thank her co-stars when the present gained (over the Emmys-sweeping “The Bear!”) for greatest ensemble in a comedy sequence.
Jane Fonda, the SAG Life Achievement Award recipient, whose speech nudged on the political second.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Instances)
Jane Fonda, this 12 months’s Life Achievement Award recipient, did her greatest to stiffen everybody’s spines for the perilous time that “is coming our way” regardless of a number of audio difficulties and, maybe, a memo warning her to not say the phrases “Donald Trump.” Los Angeles firefighters and law enforcement officials have been honored, and contributions to SAG-AFTRA’s fire-relief fund movingly solicited.
On the very finish, “Conclave” gained greatest ensemble for a movement image, which made me very completely happy.
Nevertheless it was, over all, pretty boring and greater than sometimes lame (Keri Russell and Kerry Washington offered collectively as a result of, apparently, somebody thought that having them say one another’s names a number of instances can be hilarious).
No worse than most awards reveals, however no higher both.
Netflix’s apparent perception that, regardless of dwindling rankings for the Oscars, Emmys and Grammys, streaming might take the SAG Awards and make them, nicely, a star has proved to be misguided.
Everybody deserves to dream, I suppose, however the SAG Awards don’t actually need Netflix to make them shine. They’ve at all times held a particular place in awards season because the ceremony with essentially the most stars per sq. inch (none of these pesky documentary-short makers) and a bellwether for the appearing, and maybe greatest image, winners on the upcoming Oscars.
As is inevitably famous in speeches by presenters and winners, the ceremony is deeply private — an opportunity for actors to have fun with, and settle for accolades from, their friends, individuals who perceive the difficulties and wonders of being an actor. The ceremony, which is barely 30 years previous, could also be glittering and glamorous, however as a live-television occasion it was by no means thought-about on par with the Oscars, the Emmys and even the Golden Globes.
Netflix, nonetheless, thought otherwise. Final 12 months, after 1 / 4 of a century on TNT and TBS, the SAG Awards moved to the streamer, which appeared to imagine that, in the correct palms, the shape might one way or the other outshine the operate. All it wanted was a bit zhuzhing up. As in awards delivered through the pink (on this case silver) carpet pre-show, backstage interviews with winners and nominees and, after all, no commercials.
However even with these cheeky tweaks, and a splendid speech by Life Achievement Award diva, er, winner, Barbra Streisand, viewership didn’t climb from the 1.8 million who had tuned within the earlier 12 months to TNT/TBS.
This 12 months, the backstage interviews have been out, changed by commercials (which truthfully are a mandatory pressure in any awards present, if solely to offer snack and loo breaks). The awards for stunt work have been nonetheless given through the pre-show (are these receiving them not well-known sufficient? Focus on). However in case you didn’t know you have been watching Netflix (and through the pre-show, all these massive pink Ns made it inconceivable to miss), you’ll have been forgiven for pondering you have been watching TNT/TBS.
If Netflix hoped to show that streaming is the answer to the dwindling curiosity in awards present, it didn’t make its case Sunday evening.
The SAG Awards stay as particular as they ever have been, to these within the room, and people calculating the Oscar odds (see my colleague Glenn Whipp for extra particulars). They don’t want Netflix to make them greater than that.
Which is nice. As a result of it didn’t.