Last night, I finally got around to watching the Tony Awards only to discover that for once, my trusty TiVo had failed me. It recorded the first half but with lotsa breakups…and the second half, not at all. I'll find a good copy of it one of these days but I did watch a few of the segments online.
This is the "In Memoriam" segment which, if I were producing an awards show, would be retitled "In Celebration" and we'd have a peppier "up" tune that said, in some manner, "Isn't it great that we had these talented people in our world?" Folks always complain about these spots because (a) they leave someone or several someones out who should be in and (b) they keep taking the camera off the screen to show a singer…but the segment isn't about the singer. It's about the people on the screen.
I dunno who they might have overlooked but they managed to have a singer — a good singer — and still do justice to the people on the screen. In fact, what I was able to see of the show itself looked pretty good. Ariana Debose is an incredible talent. I was just hoping the show would stink so badly that some high-level executives would see it and say, "My God! Give the writers whatever they want…just get them back!"