Saturday Night Live and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver each came into Monday’s Emmy Awards on a long winning streak. Thanks to being thrown into a new category together, at least one of those streaks was bound to end.
SNL’s six-year streak fell as Last Week Tonight took home the Emmy in the newly created category of scripted variety series. The category came into being this year thanks to a rule change that grouped Last Week Tonight with sketch comedy shows SNL and A Black Lady Sketch Show. The change moved Last Week Tonight out of the talk show category it has dominated in recent years as the Television Academy decided it is materially different than programs like Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, CBS’ Late Show With Stephen Colbert and NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers.
Despite the change, though, Last Week Tonight won an outstanding series Emmy for the eighth straight year. After thanking the show’s staff, Oliver also said, “Thank you to our lawyers, who are angry with us all the time.”
Oliver also had some fun with the “play-off mama” bit at the awards, filling the remainder of his acceptance speech with names of players from Liverpool FC before host Anthony Anderson’s mom, Doris, rose from her seat to say his time was up. Per Anderson’s instructions at the top of the show, Oliver closed with “Thank you to Jesus and my family.”
Per TV Academy rules, scripted variety series are “programs that are primarily scripted or feature loosely scripted improv and consist of discrete scenes, musical numbers, monologues, comedy stand-ups, sketches, etc.,” as opposed to a variety talk series that’s predominantly made up of host-guest interviews. Last Week Tonight also airs weekly, while four of the five variety talk series — all but The Problem With Jon Stewart — are nightly shows.
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