Once a major television event that drew as many as 20 million people to witness the ritual sacrifice of Susan Lucci, the Daytime Emmy Awards have fallen on hard times. The ceremony hasn’t aired on a broadcast network since 2011; this year it failed to find a home on TV at all, instead decamping to the final refuge of the soap operas it still ostensibly honors: the Internet. If that was the extent of the hiccups endured by the 41st Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, the show would’ve already faded from memory, leaving behind the faint whiff of victory for The Young And The Restless, the small sting of Steve Harvey’s declined invitation, and all of the swearing the FCC had no jurisdiction over. Unfortunately, still to come was nearly two hours of red-carpet coverage from underprepared, desperately ad libbing “social media hosts” and two more hours of the actual show.
As detailed by Deadline and The Washington Post, the television academy tried to make the best of a bad situation, but really just wound up making it worse. Remember First Night 2013, the live New Year’s Eve catastrophe that is still only the second- or third-most embarrassing line on Jamie Kennedy’s resume? This was a lot like that, only with hosts who got stuck asking asking actress Emme Rylan if she was named after the Emmys, then cut the tension by comparing themselves to The Muppets’ Statler and Waldorf.
And then the livestream went completely dark for the first four or five minutes of host Kathy Griffin introducing the ceremony.
Between Entertainment Tonight executive producer Linda Bell Blue paging through a lengthy acceptance speech and Griffin shooing the cast and crew of Young And The Restless off of the Beverly Hilton stage after its win for Outstanding Drama Series, golden award statues were handed out. Not that anyone was there to accept them: Several big-name winners, like Ellen DeGeneres (whose eponymous show took Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show honors) and Katie Couric (Best Talk Show Host) were absent, as was Dr. Mehmet Oz, who was busy receiving a drubbing over on Last Week Tonight. At least the people behind TV’s last surviving soap operas managed to make it out to the ceremony, only to witness a once-proud TV tradition tarnished in the gaudiest, cattiest, most melodramatic fashion possible.
So, all in all, it made a good soap opera, one you can still watch here. A full list of winners follows.
SUPPORTING ACTOR, DRAMA
Eric Martsolf, Days of Our Lives
SUPPORTING ACTRESS, DRAMA
Amelia Heinle, The Young and the Restless
CULINARY PROGRAM
The Mind of a Chef