FOX
The good news first. Well, at least it’s potentially good news. Jane Lynch is the host of the next primetime Emmy awards! Yes, I liked Neil Patrick Harris too, but apparently he can’t host everything all the time and he was good enough to endorse Lynch on Twitter and he has a point. Lynch is personable, she’s a good stage performer, she can do gracious and she can do funny and in general I can imagine her handling all the shifts in tone and mood that make up hosting a modern awards show. Plus she’s taller than most people, so: stature!
Now the possibly worrisome news: in the announcement, Lynch says, “I’m looking forward to singing, dancing and sporting my finest tracksuit”—a reference to the signature wardrobe of her Glee character, Sue Sylvester.
It was a joke. I’m hoping. Please it was a joke?
Now I don’t imagine that Lynch would agree to something as cheesy as doing the entire awards in character—nor that even producer Mark Burnett, not know for the subtlety of his work, would plan that either. But the awards are on Fox this year, and I could see the desire to give Glee fans what they want, while also providing the network some promo, by having “Sue” give the opening monologue or sketch, or some other section of the awards.
Nothing against Lynch or Sue—well, yes, I do have something against Sue. She’s a funny character and Lynch plays her brilliantly, but she’s overused on Glee and in pretty much everything used to promote Glee. Over the show’s second season, Sue, though she had her moments, became a symbol of the show’s problems: taking something that was popular and giving fans far too much of it, at risk to whatever baseline reality the show had.
Of course, the Emmys are not Glee. My more practical problem is that, even with a performer as talented as Jane Lynch, I can’t really imagine a way for a performer to host the awards in character and have it not come off unbearably corny. Unless that character is a Muppet. Insert Sue-as-Big-Bird joke here.