Okay, here we have the first half of the 2022 HCA TV Awards and this was only the second edition of this awards ceremony, so it was still very new and fresh. Interestingly enough, they decided to split these awards into two major categories. The first would be broadcast and cable and the second is all about streaming. Definitely a very unique road to take. If it is one that makes sense, everybody has to decide for themselves. Here we have the first chapter or half then if you want to call it that, but it is actually more than 50% because this ceremony was slightly longer than the elaboration on the streaming awards. Those also made it past the two-hour mark, but this one here even crossed the 2.5-hour mark or came really close. HCA stands for Hollwood Critics Associaton by the way, but I guess almost everybody knew that. There is also a theatrical release ceremony for this critics association and I am not talking about the one in Los Angeles. These folks here have their own. They are indeed doing quite a lot. If you take the two television awards ceremonies from 2022 and add up the running times, then you will see that we reach an amount that is not too far away from the five-hour mark. If this is the right decision, is debatable of course. Maybe for 2023 or afterwards, they will only do one show again for both broadcast/cable and streaming. Time will tell. They also had to different hosts here. I preferred the one from the streaming even and not comedian Dulcé Sloan who was hosting this first half of the duology. I already had a hard time with her admittedly after she kept mispronouncing the word "association" all the time. I mean come on. This is basic English. It is not that difficult. I even looked it up and checked if I was wrong as I am not an English native speaker, but nope it was indeed her. Difficult to believe honestly as she is not 16 or so. The rest of her hosting was also not great gently-speaking. I did not find her remotely funny and would not visit a comedy show where she is the main attraction. Hopefully, they can find somebody better for the 2023 edition.
As for the winners here, I am not sure if I am in favor too much. Some were tolerable, others were not. The Cosby documentary I have always perceived as mainstream attention seeking, so never a good day if this wins something. We also need to look at the course of events at the courtroom. Isn't he a free man now? He is not facing the same as Weinstein or R. Kelly, but that is another story. "This Is Us" winning big is also a curiosity. What I have seen from the show seemed to have a great deal of pseudo drama to it, so maybe it is true that the real quality is with streaming right now. Kinda fitting that "This Is Us" has not been a big factor at the Primetime Emmys or Golden Globes lately. And I am writing this as somebody who has adored Mandy Moore for years, if not decades, so it was kinda nice she got this special award here, which was almost a lifetime achievement award already and she is not even 40 I think, so very early. But yeah, her career has gone on for more than half her life, so this makes up for it again. She got the award from her on-screen husband by the way. If she ever comes to Germany or rather Berlin and plays a concert here, I would probably go and get a ticket. Her dress this night was kinda Asian-themed. This even came to my attention as somebody who never really cares about the outfits and fashion designers who made them, but I am a bit into Asia, so this caught my attention. "Abbott Elementary" was also a solid winner that night and I cannot say too much about this show, only that honestly in terms of scenes and extracts I have come across so far I did not find it particularly funny and will surely take some time before I give it a watch. There is tons of other stuff on the watchlist that I am more curious about. "What We Do in the Shadows" seems like a fun show though. I liked the film back then, many years ago already too and really nice to see they managed to transform this into such an awesome show, even with other actors at the center of the story. Good vampire television is always appreciated and with that I mean actually good stuff, not overrated nonsense like "True Blood" or "The Vampire Diaries".
The big prize in the drama category was a tie in fact. You don't see that too often, but it shows that the critics really like(d) "Better Call Saul" because that was one of the two winners and this show honestly always gets nominated, but never really wins. Especially big. But yeah, Bob Odenkirk also took home the award and, like I just stated, he never really did so anywhere else, so no surprise that he said this was his (new) favorite awards show ever here. Another trophy for the show went to Giancarlo Esposito. I must say I do not dig "Better Call Saul" as much as "Breaking Bad", but I am happy for the old "Breaking Bad" guys finding some attention here, especially Esposito and Banks, even if the latter of course did not win. Esposito also got a career achievement award, which was surely among the highlights of the night. Cool speech there and he has definitely been longer in the industry than I remembered. Nice to see him as a young actor. And boy, even Rhea Seehorn won her category here, now that was quite something. In general, there were really many nominees in the categories, eight at least, maybe more even. Perhaps it was a bit too much. I think five or six is pretty accurate, more than that (and also less) is not the best decision. On the comedy front, "Abbott Elementary" was doing really fine, won both female acting awards, even if the supporting trophy did not go to the icon from this show.
On the male side, Bill Hader and Henry Winkler were triumphant. The latter was there, the former "only" recorded a video message where he said thank you because he was apparently already busy working on the new season of "Barry". I guess this included writing then as, like I stated, Winkler was there at the ceremony. I am okay with Hader winning though. I think I did not like him too much in the past, but this has changed. Curious to finally watch his show too. In the limited or anthology categories, we also had two familial faces go home with the awards. Oscar Isaac and Sarah Paulson have a long history of (television) screen projects and especially Isaac I adore a lot because of his Coens movie, so always cheering for him. The nominees in these categories were really special too, so many Academy Awards winners included there even. Oh and Daniel Radcliffe from Harry Potter was present too. The supporting categories there were dominated by the folks from "The White Lotus" and this was not too long ago before the series started competing at other awards shows in the drama series category. Coolidge stayed successful there and Chastain by the way, who lost here, received awards from other bodies then. I think this is mostly it then. The only show I have not yet mentioned really that also won fairly big here is "Yellowjackets". So much to watch, so little time. If you want to watch or even rewatch this event, you can effortlessly do so because the HCA uploaded the full broadcast (of both ceremonies) on their official Youtube channel. I would not really recommend doing so. The outcome was simply not good enough for that I must unfortunately say. For neither of the two, even if the streaming event was, partially because of the superior host, the better one from the duo, but not a lot better either. The one thing that can be said in favor of both though is that they had really many big names present. This did impress me. I basically came across this critics association not too long ago when I watched the 2023 film awards event from the HCA and I was shocked that almost nobody was there and it was all critics present. Here in 2022 for the television awards, it was very different. Good for them. We will see if they can attract the big names for the 2023 small screen event then too and we will also see if they split it in two again.
Before I get to the end of my review, let me think what else we can talk about here: Oh yeah, the inclusion of dogs in here was nice too. There is a lot more of this at the streaming awards then, but hey here it was also better than nothing. Aside from that, you will again find a handful stunning women during the broadcast, but this is almost always the case at these award shows and it is not just the very pregnant Mandy Moore here. I must say with her I am not really sure if she is as caring as she acts or just pretends a bit there and I did not have these doubts in the past, but oh well, it was still nice to see the "A Walk to Remember" shots during her segment especially. Will always love that film, probably more than she does actually if we look at what she had to say on the audio commentary she did for the movie. Garret Dillahunt is another welcome inclusion for sure and he presented together with Martha Plimpton and I am not sure if I understand correctly, but they are working again together? Would be neat. Their comedy show in the past was nice and I also always think that Dillahunt looks pretty young for his age. So with these notes I guess I finish the review on a bit of a high note, even if the show itself is not really a success and easier to be found on the other end of the scale unfortunately. That's why my suggestion is to skip the outcome. It is also pretty embarrassing how long it went (probably a bit too long) and yet they did not get in all the awards here, but discriminated against some categories and artists by excluding them. Big no-go.
As for the winners here, I am not sure if I am in favor too much. Some were tolerable, others were not. The Cosby documentary I have always perceived as mainstream attention seeking, so never a good day if this wins something. We also need to look at the course of events at the courtroom. Isn't he a free man now? He is not facing the same as Weinstein or R. Kelly, but that is another story. "This Is Us" winning big is also a curiosity. What I have seen from the show seemed to have a great deal of pseudo drama to it, so maybe it is true that the real quality is with streaming right now. Kinda fitting that "This Is Us" has not been a big factor at the Primetime Emmys or Golden Globes lately. And I am writing this as somebody who has adored Mandy Moore for years, if not decades, so it was kinda nice she got this special award here, which was almost a lifetime achievement award already and she is not even 40 I think, so very early. But yeah, her career has gone on for more than half her life, so this makes up for it again. She got the award from her on-screen husband by the way. If she ever comes to Germany or rather Berlin and plays a concert here, I would probably go and get a ticket. Her dress this night was kinda Asian-themed. This even came to my attention as somebody who never really cares about the outfits and fashion designers who made them, but I am a bit into Asia, so this caught my attention. "Abbott Elementary" was also a solid winner that night and I cannot say too much about this show, only that honestly in terms of scenes and extracts I have come across so far I did not find it particularly funny and will surely take some time before I give it a watch. There is tons of other stuff on the watchlist that I am more curious about. "What We Do in the Shadows" seems like a fun show though. I liked the film back then, many years ago already too and really nice to see they managed to transform this into such an awesome show, even with other actors at the center of the story. Good vampire television is always appreciated and with that I mean actually good stuff, not overrated nonsense like "True Blood" or "The Vampire Diaries".
The big prize in the drama category was a tie in fact. You don't see that too often, but it shows that the critics really like(d) "Better Call Saul" because that was one of the two winners and this show honestly always gets nominated, but never really wins. Especially big. But yeah, Bob Odenkirk also took home the award and, like I just stated, he never really did so anywhere else, so no surprise that he said this was his (new) favorite awards show ever here. Another trophy for the show went to Giancarlo Esposito. I must say I do not dig "Better Call Saul" as much as "Breaking Bad", but I am happy for the old "Breaking Bad" guys finding some attention here, especially Esposito and Banks, even if the latter of course did not win. Esposito also got a career achievement award, which was surely among the highlights of the night. Cool speech there and he has definitely been longer in the industry than I remembered. Nice to see him as a young actor. And boy, even Rhea Seehorn won her category here, now that was quite something. In general, there were really many nominees in the categories, eight at least, maybe more even. Perhaps it was a bit too much. I think five or six is pretty accurate, more than that (and also less) is not the best decision. On the comedy front, "Abbott Elementary" was doing really fine, won both female acting awards, even if the supporting trophy did not go to the icon from this show.
On the male side, Bill Hader and Henry Winkler were triumphant. The latter was there, the former "only" recorded a video message where he said thank you because he was apparently already busy working on the new season of "Barry". I guess this included writing then as, like I stated, Winkler was there at the ceremony. I am okay with Hader winning though. I think I did not like him too much in the past, but this has changed. Curious to finally watch his show too. In the limited or anthology categories, we also had two familial faces go home with the awards. Oscar Isaac and Sarah Paulson have a long history of (television) screen projects and especially Isaac I adore a lot because of his Coens movie, so always cheering for him. The nominees in these categories were really special too, so many Academy Awards winners included there even. Oh and Daniel Radcliffe from Harry Potter was present too. The supporting categories there were dominated by the folks from "The White Lotus" and this was not too long ago before the series started competing at other awards shows in the drama series category. Coolidge stayed successful there and Chastain by the way, who lost here, received awards from other bodies then. I think this is mostly it then. The only show I have not yet mentioned really that also won fairly big here is "Yellowjackets". So much to watch, so little time. If you want to watch or even rewatch this event, you can effortlessly do so because the HCA uploaded the full broadcast (of both ceremonies) on their official Youtube channel. I would not really recommend doing so. The outcome was simply not good enough for that I must unfortunately say. For neither of the two, even if the streaming event was, partially because of the superior host, the better one from the duo, but not a lot better either. The one thing that can be said in favor of both though is that they had really many big names present. This did impress me. I basically came across this critics association not too long ago when I watched the 2023 film awards event from the HCA and I was shocked that almost nobody was there and it was all critics present. Here in 2022 for the television awards, it was very different. Good for them. We will see if they can attract the big names for the 2023 small screen event then too and we will also see if they split it in two again.
Before I get to the end of my review, let me think what else we can talk about here: Oh yeah, the inclusion of dogs in here was nice too. There is a lot more of this at the streaming awards then, but hey here it was also better than nothing. Aside from that, you will again find a handful stunning women during the broadcast, but this is almost always the case at these award shows and it is not just the very pregnant Mandy Moore here. I must say with her I am not really sure if she is as caring as she acts or just pretends a bit there and I did not have these doubts in the past, but oh well, it was still nice to see the "A Walk to Remember" shots during her segment especially. Will always love that film, probably more than she does actually if we look at what she had to say on the audio commentary she did for the movie. Garret Dillahunt is another welcome inclusion for sure and he presented together with Martha Plimpton and I am not sure if I understand correctly, but they are working again together? Would be neat. Their comedy show in the past was nice and I also always think that Dillahunt looks pretty young for his age. So with these notes I guess I finish the review on a bit of a high note, even if the show itself is not really a success and easier to be found on the other end of the scale unfortunately. That's why my suggestion is to skip the outcome. It is also pretty embarrassing how long it went (probably a bit too long) and yet they did not get in all the awards here, but discriminated against some categories and artists by excluding them. Big no-go.