Emmys Align Against Trump

Any gathering of major Hollywood elite is bound to include some Trump-bashing. It’s practically de rigueur this year.

At the 2016 Emmy Awards on Sunday night, Jill Soloway won Best Directing for a Comedy Series for Amazon’s “Transparent.” As she stood backstage next to star (and best-actor winner) Jeffrey Tambor — who plays a transgender woman on the show — she said, “[Trump] needs to be called out every chance we get as one of the most dangerous monsters to ever approach our lifetimes. He’s a complete dangerous monster. Any moment I have to call out Donald Trump as the inheritor to Hitler, I will.”

After Soloway spoke, Tambor added: “Ditto,” as USA Today and others reported.

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Aside from Soloway and Tambor’s hyperbolic attacks on Trump, other stars took potshots at him during the awards show. Sterling K. Brown, who won for his role in “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” joked that he’d consulted Melania Trump about his speech. Jimmy Kimmel went further, blaming reality TV producer Mark Burnett for Trump’s rise.

“If it wasn’t for television, would Donald Trump be running for president right now? No,” Kimmel said. He went on to say that, thanks to “Celebrity Apprentice” producer Burnett, “we don’t have to watch reality shows anymore because we’re living one.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars in the political satire “Veep,” said in her award acceptance speech that she would “like to take the opportunity to personally apologize for our current political climate” and said that “Veep” now appears to be a “sobering documentary” — rather than a comedy.

The introduction of the Emmys show included a familiar “low-energy” face from the Republican primaries — Jeb Bush himself.

Other award winners made pointed political statements — again, no surprise there. Tambor called for more transgender talent in television, admitting: “I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a transgender on television.” Alan Yang, who co-wrote “Master of None,” commented that “there’s 17 million Asian-Americans in this country,” the same number as Italian-Americans, but that Italian-Americans have much more representation in narrative. He implored Asian-American parents to “get your kids cameras instead of violins.” Soloway flat-out called to “topple the patriarchy.”

What qualifies as media, and what constitutes entertainment, seems to be expanding at an exponential rate — but it doesn’t seem like television has caught up creatively. The Emmys show was dominated by the same tired jokes about Trump, a 20-year-old news story (O.J. Simpson), and a cast that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in 1997. This year feels like a time warp — a Clinton is running for president, everyone is playing Pokemon, and “Ghostbusters” and “Independence Day” appeared in theaters. You’d think television would be immune to the effect, given its potential for versatility. You’d be wrong.

Related: ‘Pokemon Go’ Players Do the Craziest Things

Despite the impressive variety of outlets for modern television — shows from Netflix and Amazon Prime now regularly grace the Emmy nomination rosters — this year’s Emmys featured a few (too many) familiar faces. Host Jimmy Kimmel started the show in the backseat of a White Ford Bronco (a key part of the O.J. Simpson trial coverage) driven by “The Cosby Show’s” Malcolm Jamal-Warner. This, surprisingly, set the tone for much of the evening. Kimmel himself admitted this, saying, “If your show doesn’t have a dragon or a White Bronco in it, go home now.”

Jerry Seinfeld, attending the Emmy Awards for the first time in 18 years, was nominated for “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” His “Seinfeld” co-star, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, won her eighth Emmy. Louie Anderson, who regularly appeared on TV in the 1990s, won Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. And this doesn’t even begin to cover the most-nominated show of the night, which documents the 1994 murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman and the most-watched trial of the 1990s — “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson.”

Emmy winner Sarah Paulson, who played Marcia Clark in the celebrated show, actually brought the head prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial as her plus-one to the awards. Her co-stars and fellow Emmy attendees included Courtney B. Vance, John Travolta, and David Schwimmer — all extremely familiar names. Schwimmer was previously nominated for an Emmy in 1995 for his work in “Friends,” while John Travolta premiered on TV in “Welcome Back, Kotter” — way back in 1975.

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This year’s “In Memoriam,” introduced by Henry Winkler, underscored the peculiar historical feel of the night — Winkler began with a glowing tribute to Garry Marshall, who created a staggering number of successful shows, including “Laverne & Shirley,” “Mork & Mindy,” and “Happy Days.”

The introduction of the show included a familiar “low-energy” face from the Republican primaries — Jeb Bush himself appeared to give Jimmy Kimmel some advice.

“If you run a positive campaign,” Bush told him, “the voters ultimately will make the right choice … that was a joke.” Bush proceeded to call the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host a “godless Hollywood hippie.”