The Joke From The MTV Movie & TV Awards That Is Turning Heads
The MTV Movie & TV Awards are to the Oscars and Emmys what a senior prom is to a black-tie ball: Same fancy clothes, but a lot looser, more lighthearted, and with more junk food involved. Sure, the basic award categories for best movies and shows are there, but so are categories like Best Kiss, Best Fight, and Best Villain. Social media is included in the mix (Breakthrough Social Star), and reality shows are put into specific subcategories like Unscripted Show and Reality Cast. And no way are you going to see an Emmy award winner get slimed while accepting their award, as Scarlett Johanssen did when husband Colin Jost dumped a bucket of the stuff on her head.
The 2021 awards took place as a two-part event, with traditional movie and TV show awards presented on May 16 and trophies for "unscripted" shows awarded on the 17th. Nikki Glaser hosted the second event, which featured such memorable moments as Nikki and Brie Bella explaining, via Instagram, the proper way to flip a table ("lift with your legs!") and the "Jersey Shore" cast admitting to being "a little drunk" (via Instagram). But the most oh-yeah-they-went-there moment of the night was Glaser's parody of a segment that's normally made for tears rather than laughs.
Ellen DeGeneres was roasted for the end of her "reign"
One traditional element of major awards shows is the "In Memoriam" segment, where tribute is paid to the industry giants who died in the previous year. Poignant music is sung in the background as a montage of photos and clips of the stars plays on the screen. The Unscripted portion of the MTV Movie & TV Awards offered a very different take on the memorial homage. As described in the Daily Mail, Nikki Glaser introduced the segment by saying, "I'd now like to take a somber-slash-awkward moment to acknowledge all that we've lost in the world of unscripted entertainment this year." Then the familiar black-and-white photos began to appear...but they memorialized such losses as "Joe Giudice's Passport" (the former reality star has been deported) and "Chris Harrison's Handwritten Notes" (a nod to Harrison's departure from "The Bachelor").
The most pointed jab, though, was the card announcing the passing of "Ellen's Reign of Terror, 2003-2021." The "reign," of course, referred to the allegations from former staffers on the show that Ellen DeGeneres created a "toxic work culture" on her show in which racist remarks and microaggressions were common, and that DeGeneres herself was a "mean" boss who made staff chew gum before talking to her and banned meat-eating in the office (per BuzzFeed). The host recently announced her decision to end her talk show after the 2021 season.
As The Things reported, viewers had a good laugh over the sly segment. One remarked on social media, "Brilliant... The former supposed Comedian will be seething.. Ms Nice supposedly has been exposed!"