Nate Bargatze’s Awards-Show Purgatory
During his not-quite-opening-monologue at this year’s Emmys, host Nate Bargatze introduced himself to the audience as a stand-up comedian who has “not had a ton of success in Hollywood,” but for whom it’s “going good everywhere else.” While it’s true that much of Bargatze’s accomplishments have been made outside traditional Hollywood television or movie opportunities, he’s also a megastar who helmed the highest-grossing comedy tour of 2024, and he wanted to remind the audience that he isn’t exactly a nobody, either. The line was a microcosm of the central issue that plagued Bargatze’s performance. At no point in the ceremony was he able to figure out whether to position himself as a celebrity outsider or insider, and by trying to keep one foot in each camp, he turned in one of the most awkward awards-show hosting performances in recent memory.
In his opening sketch, at least, it seemed as though Bargatze was going to lean in. His riff on the viral “Washington’s Dream” sketch, which he starred in when he hosted SNL in 2023, was a reminder to audiences unfamiliar with his stand-up that, yes, they have likely seen him somewhere in the past. (Sharing the stage with SNL cast members Bowen Yang, James Austin Johnson, and Mikey Day, stars of another mainstream show-business institution not unlike the Emmys, didn’t hurt either). There’s a world in which this sketch might have set the stage for a professional if unmemorable hosting performance. It’s full of the type of benign jokes about the television landscape that a host might tell to keep things light without stirring controversy. Who’s going to get mad about yet another joke about The Bear not being a comedy, for example? But “reverent awards-show host” is not a natural position for a comic with Bargatze’s everyman persona. He’s the type of comic who jokes about loving McDonald’s and Walmart, and his down-to-earth affect clashes with the unrelatability and self-indulgence of an awards show. Even if he were to uncritically lord over the proceedings, he’s incapable of communicating a genuine belief that award recipients are deserving of all this pomp and circumstance.
Another comedian in Bargatze’s position might embrace this. They’d use their outsider status to their advantage to deliver monologue jokes that poke at the ceremony’s artifice or make political jokes that contextualize its insular nature. (At the very least, this offers attendees a chance to let out self-aware laughs even as they go on to indulge in all the pageantry anyway.) But these also aren’t Bargatze’s strengths. In his stand-up, the closest he gets to combativeness onstage is by recounting confusing interactions he’s had with his wife or customer-service people. He doesn’t even curse; he avoids talking politics, unless it’s to joke about how little he understands it; and his jokes rarely take the form of traditional set-up-punch-line one-liners.
So where his opening sketch might have traditionally given way to a stand-up monologue, Bargatze opted to forgo it and cut straight to his logistical duties as master of ceremonies. He’d devised a plan to keep the show running on time, he told the audience: For every second an award recipient went over their allotted 45-second speech time, he’d subtract $1,000 from a planned $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Club of America. Bargatze got laughs when he explained it at the beginning of the show, not to mention when he explained it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the press run leading up to the show last week. It’s a clever idea on paper: It’s respectful to the proceedings, but it’s also irreverent. It communicates These Hollywood awards folk are so self-important they’d rather bloviate about TV rather than ensure money goes to kids in need, all while Bargatze hides behind the idea of running a tight ship.
Where things went wrong is how Bargatze, with no other natural posture to take as host, committed to the bit too much. It might have worked as a runner if he’d called back to it judiciously, but it soon began to crowd out everything else happening during the ceremony. There was a real-time counter onscreen illustrating how much money was being deducted from the total donation during speeches, which led to fewer memorable speeches overall and seemed especially insensitive during moments of emotional or political sincerity. And every time the show cut back to Bargatze as host, he made a point to crack a joke or two about the size of the current donation total, which quickly grew one-note. Even the jokes Bargatze made to introduce presenters, some of which were well crafted — like when he put on a denim tuxedo and pretended to forget why, then introduced Sydney Sweeney (a reference to her “great jeans” fiasco) — failed to land because the donation-total bit sucked up so much airtime.
At one point during the show, Bargatze made a joke about a way he could personally restore the depleted donation total for the Boys & Girls Club. “I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve actually been nominated twice, and if I win, I promise to keep my speeches short,” he said. The show’s announcer chimed in to tell Bargatze that he’d “already lost” the previous weekend when his Emmy categories were presented the Creative Arts Emmys. “So these are the non-creative Emmys?” Bargatze replied. It was one of the only moments of the night when he landed on the right tone as host. He was able to poke fun at the arbitrary nature of Emmys status in his signature deadpan. The joke was neither too harsh nor too deferential. It was also one of the only moments in the night when he stopped straddling the line of his performance and acknowledged to the audience he’s one of them.
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