When A Good Idea Becomes A Bad Joke: Recapping the biggest mistake the Emmys may have ever seen

Sometimes, a joke can seem funny the first time you think about it. An idea pops into your head and it can make you laugh and laugh and you think it’s the most creative and hilarious idea you have ever come up with. It’s only after a little time passes that you realize that while they may be elements that are comical, the crux of the idea as a whole was a stinker and this was one of those things that needed a person to tell you, “Hey… let’s really think about why you think this is funny and what it’s about.”

This is exactly what happened when comedian Nate Bargatze hosted Sunday night’s Emmy awards. Bargatze, last year’s highest-grossing comedian and someone I believe is one of the best joke craftsmen working today, brought with him a through-line that he believed was going o be the star of the broadcast. However, what happened was the joke fell flat, he was wildly criticized, and television’s biggest night became the kind of thing where you had to cover your eyes every time the host stepped onstage.

Let’s talk about what happened, why it didn’t work, and the easy way to have made the joke a lot funnier.

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One thing that every awards show gets criticized for is that people take too long with their speeches. Do we really need to hear Hollywood ramble on and on as they thank their teams and their networks and wax rhapsodic about all the people who they are grateful for? According to Nate Bargatze, the answer was no.

Because of this, he devised a plan: He announced at the top of the telecast that he would be making a $100,000 donation to the Boys & Girls Club Of America, a wonderful and worthy cause doing a lot of good. However, there would be a catch. For every second a winner went over their allotted 45 second time given to accept their prize, he would remove $1,000 from the donation. There would be a way to counter-act this, however, as every speech going under 45 seconds would add $1,000 to the donation.

Seems funny, right? It kind of is. And during the ceremony, we would watch that number go up and down as Bargatze called out longer speeches and we saw the money drop as a speech went on and on. And there lied the problem. Because this joke had two things: a victim (the charity and the children who benefit from it) and a target (award recipients).

For many people nominated for Emmys, being able to accept an award would be the biggest night of your life. Sure, some of these people are in movies and could also be in the running for Oscars, but the Emmys doesn’t just honor actors. It honors writers and directors and producers. These aren’t people who ever get to spend any time talking on television. But the actors also deserve their accolades. Hell, it’s why the damn ceremony exists.

But what Bargatze did was force them to make an impossible choice. Choose to cut your speech short and you may be missing out on thanking one of the amazing people who helped you earn an award that you have spent your career chasing. Choose to give your speech and give the proper thanks and you are, basically, stealing money from children. I don’t think Bargatze realized he was telling people to choose from not thanking their wife or, potentially, not giving a park a new swingset, but that’s exactly what he was doing.

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea in the writers room, but no one bothered to run the joke through its logical course. And while the Boys & Girls Club walked away with an amazing $350,000 check, you could see the annoyance on the faces of the winners, most notable John Oliver, who had to be censored as he cursed Bargatze’s idea on air.

And it’s a shame, because there was a better idea right in front of them. And it showed up in the biggest winner of the night.

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No show won bigger than Apple’s The Studio, the Seth Rogen comedy about a film executive. In one of the funniest jokes in the entire series, everyone at The Golden Globes who wins an award basically thanks Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz), a mid-level executive who ends up having one of the best nights of his life. If only Bargatze and the Emmys paid more attention, they would have realized that was the formula for a funnier joke.

Here’s what should have happened:

Bargatze has been nominated for two Emmys but has not yet won. He should have pointed this out at the beginning of the show and then changed how he was doing his donation. He should have announced that he was going to be giving the Boys & Girls Club a donation of $5,000, however there is a way that number could go up and explain that every time he is thanked during an acceptance speech, the donation increases another five large. This does two things.

First, it creates a new villain and that villain is Bargatze. It makes the comedian, notoriously known for being tremendously affable and creating family-friendly stand-up comedy, now become a person so desperate for attention that he is willing to withhold money from a charity if he doesn’t hear his own name. It’s not the award winners stiffing the charity now, it’s Nate. And that is much, much funnier. Plus, you are now allowing actors and writers the chance to find funny ways to slip his name into acceptance speeches, which actually would do the job of making the speeches more fun to watch. No one would care if they went over, because all they would have been doing is thinking, “When are they gonna thank Bargatze?”

It would have made the Emmys entertaining and more watchable. And also funnier, which is what jokes are supposed to do.