Emmys TV Broadcast Review: 2026 Ceremony Hosted By Mariska Hargitay
The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards had a distinct bicoastal approach Monday night, and let’s be honest, something truly got lost along the way, to put it politely. Sorry, Stephen Colbert, but “if you like the comedy tonight, my old writers wrote it” may be part of the Variety Series-winning Late Show’s legacy we all want to forget fast after this year’s ceremony.
Although the Mariska Hargitay-hosted ceremony was live from L.A., TV’s biggest night kicked off with a New York state of mind vibe that was more Billy Joel tribute band than Jay-Z, if you know what I mean?
Let’s make one thing clear: Hargitay gave it all she could, but the script simply was a first-draft mess in motion. In the truest sense of her longtime home of the Law & Order franchise, someone needs to go to writers’ room jail for a spell.
The first female Emmy host in a decade and a half started things with a pre-recorded show name-dropping take on Joan Jett’s classic “I Love Rock’n’Roll” that would have been pretty standard mid-ceremony fare were it not for the anticipated appearance of NBA champ and Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson. Still, even steaming haute couture for Hargitay, the desperately underused Captain Clutch couldn’t save things.
Unlike the last time NBC had the Emmys in 2022, at least you could see it all going wrong early in the broadcast with the sad mime dancing dudes coming up next. Leaping around with cheap cardboard TV screens on their heads, the gents surrounded Hargitay as she stepped on stage live at the Peacock Theater. The late great Marcel Marceau surely hung his silent head in shame for his profession — also, The Residents (IYKYK) should sue.
Giving us all a small respite, self-described “America’s sweetheart sex cop” Hargitay’s scripted retort to Nicole Kidman as she mocked the Lioness star’s easily mockable Covid-era AMC Theatres ad may have had her best line of the night with “Zip it Movie Lady! It’s TV’s turn tonight!” Actually, though it ultimately wasn’t enough, it might have been the best line of the whole night aside from Remarkably Bright Creatures star Sally Field’s “Blessed Canada” lovefest after she won Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
It was not a good night for the Emmys, on multiple fronts.
The onstage salutes to Dolly Parton, James Burrows, (very Canadian) Catherine O’Hara and Rob Reiner were heartfelt and genuinely moving. However, in contrast, the hyped Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charlie’s Angels reunions were non-events.
RELATED: Emotional Tributes To Catherine O’Hara And Rob Reiner Bookend Emmys In Memoriam Segment
Near the beginning of tonight’s ceremony, Hargitay was rightly celebrating being the first women to host since Jane Lynch in 2011. Puncturing her own posterity, Hargitay quipped “for 15 years, Amy and Tina said no.”
Note to the producers: You had some history in play tonight on multiple levels.
Hargitay has been playing Law and Order: SVU’s Oliva Benson since 1999. She has won two Emmys for that role. She won an Emmy last weekend for her moving My Mom Jayne documentary. As I said, taking on a hosting gig usually given to comedians, Hargitay put it all on the table, but she deserved much better than what she was given.
In a shift from tradition, the selection of the multiple Emmy-winning Law & Order: SVU star to host had all the air of a Hollywood throwback – at least one paper. Yes, Lynch hosted the Emmys in 2011, and Neil Patrick Harris was upfront in 2009, but both have extensive comedic chops. In the spirit of safety first, the last time a non-comedian fronted the Oscars was the 2011 fiasco of James Franco and Anne Hathaway.
To that, in what I first optimistically assumed was a punking prank, the whole shebang tonight went from bad to much worse with a Dick Wolf tribute from the L&O alum that became about a semi-plagiarized Richard Penis joke.
After Hargitay’s opener, Amy Poehler’s proclamation that she “nailed it” had to be at best a complement to the My Mom Jayne director’s considerable acting skills to deliver such lousy lines from such a lousy script with a straight face. A straight face that seemed to almost break with the lousy “First Jobs” skit and Nick Offerman’s erotic house painter patter.
Mariska Hargitay, Taylor Swift and Swift’s cat Olivia Benson during the Primetime Emmys
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
An hour into the show that seemed to hand out too few awards, another prerecorded skit with Hargitay went full free-association Olivia Benson to probe whether Taylor Swift would show up on the Emmys. By the time the superstar showed up in the precinct, the Emmys had hit new low in lame. Even the fourth wall-breaking nod to the Kansas City Chiefs (home of Swift’s hubby Travis Kelce) thumping the Denver Broncos on became just another pivot to nothing.
Not to belabor the critique, but Hargitay’s admission that she’d been working with the ex-writing staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert reveals the scribes have gotten really rusty since CBS cut them loose in May – even with the love their old boss gave them onstage. That fact was made even more evident by John Mulaney’s alternative universe opening monologue masquerading as the manosphere intro to The Pitt’s Noah Wyle winning Best Actor in a Drama for a second year in a row.
Maybe Mulaney’s quips were penned by the same team that scripted Hargitay’s, but the difference was in more than just the delivery – and I ain’t talking about gender.
Television is still a writer’s medium. Tonight, the scribes let down the side.
TV Academy voters snub his shows, but maybe it’s time for the organization to bring Taylor Sheridan into the fold, at least backstage. Maybe it’s time to give Hargitay some material that plays to her immense strengths.
