What Would a Socially Distanced Award Show Even Look Like?

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [View in Browser]( [Subscribe]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Fitting Oscar for a mask. - The best TV episode of the week. - The best new food show. - Laughing about Jeremy Piven. - Another great tweet. Award Shows in the Time of Coronavirus [Alternate text] Amidst all the, well, everything going on in the world, there were two bits of news that may have escaped you this week because with the, well, everything going on there is absolutely no reason you should have paid attention. That said, here is a longer-than-necessary write-up of those two very things. It was announced that this year’s Oscars ceremony is going to be pushed back until April due to the coronavirus, while this year’s Emmys ceremony is still going to take place as scheduled in September. I know. Award shows? [In this climate](? They are an indulgence that couldn’t seem more inconsequential right now, except for the crucial fact that they provided something extremely consequential this week: Several hours of distraction while I laughed to myself imagining what the hell a Hollywood award show would look like in the age of social distancing and coronavirus precautions. The Academy’s decision to [delay the Oscars]( is designed to allow more time for theaters to possibly reopen and festivals to possibly take place, which means a traditional award season could possibly happen—definitely disappointing, given how exciting it could be to see this year’s race shake out in such extreme circumstances. It’s also in hope that there can be some sort of ceremony at the Kodak theater that actual celebrities can safely attend and ABC can air. Hollywood, the land of delusions! A few days later is when [Jimmy Kimmel announced]( that he will be hosting an Emmys ceremony in September and has no idea what that means or how it could be pulled off. It’s fun to imagine a Zoom Emmys. Are nominated celebrities going to hang out in virtual waiting rooms for hours on end waiting for their categories to be called? Is anybody going to get dressed up? Is anybody going to win an Emmy in their pajamas? Will anyone reference the thing all actors joke about, where they say they used to pretend they won while in the shower using a shampoo bottle as a trophy, and actually accept their award in the tub? Or is this an obvious bit that everyone will do? The Oscars are more fun to think about because the likelihood that there will actually be something in-person happening is so much higher. Take, as an example, this photo that AwardsWatch founder Erik Anderson [shared on Twitter]( of the recent Baeksang Arts Awards in South Korea, the country’s largest ceremony honoring film and TV. The only people allowed in the audience were nominees, with no plus ones, all sitting in social-distanced seats at least six feet apart from each other. [Alternate text]( Look at that! It’s outrageous! I can’t wait for them to do it with Meryl Streep. Even if things have progressed to a point where restrictions don’t have to be as dramatic, it’s entertaining to think about what the vibe will be like. It almost certainly won’t be back to the normal we’re used to. I mean, the red carpet alone. God grant me the strength to weather a Giuliana Rancic red carpet interview in these times. “What are you wearing, and would you defund the police?” Actually, that sounds amazing. Picture the celebrities social distancing from the photographers taking photos of them in what we can only presume are designer masks. “Wow, is that a Swarovski mask? Stunning!” joked my colleague Laura Bradley. (The Daily Beast staff talked a lot about the COVID-19 Academy Awards this week.) How will presenting the trophies work? Are presenters going to toss the Oscar from one side of the stage to the winner on the other, to ensure they are safely distanced? And how will the, well, everything going on be addressed? “An In Memoriam segment followed by 100 celebrities singing ‘Imagine’ in masks,” the Beast’s Andrew Kirell joked. Matt Wilstein predicted Tom Hanks, the [first Very Famous Person to contract the virus,]( will host. After the concerning development that came to light this week, I personally get stuck laughing at the image of fancy celebrities swanning through the coronavirus poop clouds in the Kodak Theater bathrooms. A-list poo particles! And while it’s slightly off topic, the assertion that the Emmys are going to go on as planned provide an occasion to look at the state of the race before official voting starts in a few weeks. Those races are blindingly white—at least when it comes to what oddsmakers are betting on as frontrunners. Leading the comedy categories are Schitt’s Creek, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Good Place, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Drama is Succession, The Crown, Ozark, and Better Call Saul. If not for Regina King in Watchmen, it would be the same situation in limited series, too, where Mrs. America and Unbelievable are the other prime players. However these Emmys end up being staged, the dissonance between the industry’s systemic whiteness and the Black Lives Matter awakening happening around the country is going to be the shining star. One Day at a Time’s Sensational Animated Special It’s no small feat that [One Day at a Time](manages to loudly articulate all of the volatile political and cultural talking points that cause the average person to develop anxiety and an upset stomach, yet also be the aspirin and the tonic to calm those ill and uneasy feelings. [Image] The Pop series, thriving despite one of the most [irritating programming decisions]( Netflix has ever made, returned this week with a special episode. It was a special special episode, breaking its multicam sitcom format and instead fully animating the Alvarez family in cartoon form. It’s one of the more ingenious and inventive pivots to produce new content amid the constraints of the [pandemic-necessitated Hollywood shutdown](. The show had more to say, shutdown be damned, and we should all know better by now than to try to keep the Alvarezes silent. In fact, that’s the theme of the special. And you can watch it now! “The Politics Episode”—again, fully animated—centers around the family’s anxiety over an impending visit from their Trump-supporting relatives. In a bit of genius against-type casting, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz and Lin-Manuel Miranda voice Penelope’s (Justina Machado) cousin Pilar and her husband, respectively, while Gloria Estefan is Pilar’s mother, the sister of [Rita Moreno’s Lydia](. Before they arrive, the family imagines how the uncomfortable conversations about politics are going to go. The animation allows them to jump-cut into hypothetical arguments over Pizzagate, transgender rights, and climate change. Penelope wonders why the family can’t just talk Pilar and her husband out of their MAGA ways with facts. “Sorry I forgot to tell you, facts don’t matter anymore,” her daughter, Elena (Isabella Gomez) tells her. When their imagined conversations devolve into hurling insults, Penelope wonders, “What happened to when they go low, we go high?” “Yeah, that went out the window with facts,” Elena says. It’s an obviously topical episode but, more importantly, very funny. Miranda gets an ace Hamilton joke. Gloria Estefan and Rita Moreno have a sing-off. Moreno is somehow still the best physical comedy actress on TV when just using her voice. But above all that, it never lets humor or personal politics—on behalf of the creative team or the characters—supersede intelligence and heart. Padma’s Excellent New Food Show A few weeks ago, I was on a kick trying to cook more in quarantine and also feeling very anxious about the state of media and wanting to find a way to support journalism. Long story, my first issue of Bon Appétit magazine arrived in the mail this week. I bring up the unfortunate timing of this print magazine subscription because it’s one of two times I felt like a fool this week for a previous obsession with a cooking brand that didn’t just harbor [ghastly institutional racist barriers,]( but tended to exhibit them in plain sight in its YouTube [Test Kitchen videos]( that I may or may not have binge-watched until 3:30 am on several nights. The second time was while watching episodes of Padma Lakshmi’s new Hulu food show Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmi. The series follows the Top Chef host as she travels to immigrant communities around the country to learn what “American food” really means today. (A fantastic quote she [gave to Variety](: “We throw around a lot of platitudes like, ‘nothing’s as American as apple pie.’ Well, apple pie is not American. Not one ingredient in apple pie is indigenous to North America. Not even the apple! So what are we talking about here?”) [Alternate text]( In minutes, Lakshmi and the series dismantle ideas about how we think about food, specifically from immigrant cultures, and the ways we’ve allowed media and television to talk about and even celebrate it. It’s embarrassing the ways in which we’ve lionized the Anthony Bourdain approach to food and travel series that are about cultural exploration: white man goes to foreign place and is applauded for asking thoughtful questions of the people there. (It wasn’t just Bourdain. It is every single one of those shows.) Some of them are good. That’s fine. But this is great. Here is Lakshmi, a woman of color and immigrant who has spent her life in a white society and who has “been subjected to beauty standards that my male colleagues don’t even know what it’s like to be subjected to,” as she [told The Washington Post](. “That informs my point of view.” It’s a fascinating, engaging point of view. More than that, the show is really fun to watch. So, uh, bon appétit. Hahahahahaha Jeremy Piven This week, the service Cameo, which allows you to pay for a video message from a celebrity, advertised a new and potentially exciting feature. And that is how I learned that Jeremy Piven was charging $15,000 for a [10-minute Zoom call.]( [Alternate text]( In any case, if you are someone who actually paid and did this, please contact me so that I can devote the next three months of my life to learning every single detail about you and what led you to this point. “50 Shades of Separation” A friend sent me [this tweet](, and it made my head spin for at least 10 minutes. [Alternate text]( Almost as good is the [commenter]( who followed up, “50 Shades of Separation.” In any case, Dakota’s house is fantastic, her [Architectural Digest tour]( of it is even better, and none of this, beyond being a brief distraction, is important in the least. Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. Wear a mask, you godforsaken fucking assholes. [Image] - The Politician: Bette Midler! Judith Light! So much better than season one! - Perry Mason: Not at all like the old Perry Mason. Who cares? - Search Party: Season three is kind of...brilliant. - Sherman’s Showcase Black History Spectacular: One of the funniest things I’ve seen this year. [Image] - You Should Have Left: Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried, 27 years apart in age, are a married couple. Nope!!! Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2020 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.