The Emmy Awards Was Terrible TV About Truly Great Shows

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images This piece first ran on the Obsessed by Kevin Fallon Substack .

Subscribe here to read more like it! At least it ran short.

That’s probably the best thing one could say about the 2026 Emmy Awards , the TV award show that it would be hard to imagine an honest fan of TV or award shows actually enjoying.

It was a telecast in which everyone, from host Mariska Hargitay to the night’s winners and, most especially, the people hoping to be entertained at home, was let down.

As a person who watches so many of these ceremonies, has a passionate fondness for them, and genuinely roots for them to be good, it seemed as if no one involved in making this year’s show had ever seen one before—or maybe even been to one.

At the very least, they seemed to have no idea what anyone would actually want to see.

It’s baffling because the ingredients were all there, but wasted.

It was as if producers looked at the recipe calling for flour and cheese, had both in the cupboard, thought “eh, let’s not bother to put them in,” and then served an unrisen, cheeseless pizza that, because they couldn’t even meet the telecast’s allotted running time, wasn’t even fully cooked. (I don’t know if any of that made sense.

I don’t know how to cook.

But that’s why I don’t! Maybe people who don’t know how to make good award shows shouldn’t!) Hargitay, the Law & Order: SVU star entering her 28th season on the show, was so game, energetic, and enthusiastic.

After a slightly nervous start, she was a natural in emcee mode, exhibited crack comedic timing, and proved that she’d probably knock out of the park any inspired bit writers would give her.

But, my goodness, was the material she was given atrocious.

When Stephen Colbert later bragged that his former Late Show writers penned the jokes, I was like, maybe you don’t want to draw attention to that! The opening musical number, a parody of “I Love Rock and Roll” called “I Love TV Screens,” served to rapid-fire name-drop random nominees’ names more than make light of or skewer them. (It would not be the only time Hargitay would break out into song to simply name TV shows.) Lyrics, like the one rhyming “ice cream” with serial killer “Ed Gein,” or the masterful, “The sea hag’s chasin’ me! Ah! Eek! Wait, that’s Jen Coolidge with a boba tea,” made, in hindsight, Ariana DeBose’s “Angela Bassett did the thing” seem like Shakespeare.

Hargitay excelled when she was delivering a fun bit referencing Nicole Kidman ’s “we come to this place for magic” ad, which was amusing before the record-scratch dig, “Zip it, movie lady,” when Kidman was brought into the fold.