A lackluster affair, the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards were emblematic of an entertainment industry that doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going.

Though it aired on CBS on Sunday night, the broadcast began as if it were on NBC, with a sketch that could have aired on “Saturday Night Live” about Philo Farnsworth — a real historical figure who is one of the inventors of television — premised on the idea that TV would evolve into … nonsensical mediocrity.

I’ll always prefer self-satire over self-congratulations. Nothing is more insufferable than a roomful of celebrities intoxicated by their own vanity and perceived importance, and anything that undercuts that is welcome. But host Nate Bargatze is not a TV star, so it came off as making fun of them rather than us (television’s popular crowd). It’s a depressing commentary about the state of the industry overall.

And so, some observations of Hollywood’s biggest night for the small screen. If it felt like a muted affair, well … maybe that’s appropriate to the times.

The host

Bargatze is a stand-up comedian who is familiar to many, and perhaps unfamiliar to just as many. That’s a departure from the recognizability factor of previous Emmy hosts because it’s a gig that asks a person to serve as mayor of television for the night. So I’ll just say it’s “interesting” that the Television Academy decided to go with a guy who told Esquire earlier this year: “Everybody has lives, everybody has kids, everybody has stuff to go do. They don’t want to sit and worship your art.” Isn’t that precisely what the Emmys are for — one night for audiences to do just that?

Bargatze’s low-key amiability masked a lot of that hostility, but not entirely. His disinterest meant he wasn’t doing a hard sell, or inflating the importance of the night. Even so, there’s laidback and then there’s just somnolent. Welp.

It’s also conspicuous that Bargatze has no real presence on television aside from his standup specials and two appearances as host on “SNL.” To put a finer point on it, it’s very unusual for someone who hasn’t made their mark on TV to serve as master of ceremonies for TV’s biggest night. I kept thinking: But what do you have to do with television?

Which is perhaps why there was a far bigger reaction when Stephen Colbert first took the stage early in the broadcast (his show would nab a statue later in the night). The enthusiasm that greeted him is probably due to the drama surrounding the cancellation of his late-night talk show, which will wrap in the spring (and may or may not have been politically motivated to appease the current presidential administration), but also because Colbert is a credible avatar for mayor of television. “While I have your attention,” he said, “is anybody hiring?”

Tying speech length to Bargatze’s Boys and Girls Club donation was a dud

This was Bargatze’s running bit throughout the broadcast — his only bit, in fact — and it makes you wonder why the show even needed a host at all. Why hire a stand-up comedian if he’s not going to do any jokes?

Speeches less than 45 seconds would add to the donation amount; those more than 45 seconds would subtract from it. It’s one thing to encourage winners to keep their speeches brief. But the speeches felt rushed as a result, while the awkward bits from presenters (including Bargatze fixating on whatever the current dollar amount was) ate up time that could have gone to … you know, the winners. The host and producers of the broadcast are supposed to be professionals who understand the balance between keeping an audience engaged and sticking to the clock, and instead they punted with a vibe that was very “Just take the damn award and go.”

Maybe it was a way to discourage winners from saying anything political.

By the way, the $350,000 we were told would ultimately be donated? Probably not even close to covering the catering bill at any of the streamers’ post-show parties, if we want to keep it real about how money gets spent in Hollywood.

New people went home with awards

Emmy voters tend to pick the same winners time and again, but this year’s awards offered a break from that. “The Bear” went home empty-handed (appropriate; Variety noted earlier in the night that star Jeremy Allen White would not be in attendance because his best friend was getting married — you made the right choice, Jeremy!) and I will shed no tears that the same was true of “The White Lotus.” The big awards went to new shows — huzzah! — with “The Studio” winning for comedy (oh look, a show that’s actually attempting comedy; I think it’s unwatchable, but Hollywood loves nothing better than navel-gazing) and “The Pitt” winning in the drama category (a terrific show, no complaints).

It was genuinely lovely to see so many actors who aren’t necessarily household names among the winners this year, including Katherine LaNasa for her role as the no-nonsense charge nurse Dana Evans on “The Pitt”; Tramell Tillman as the inscrutable midlevel corporate manager on “Severance,” as well as his co-star Britt Lower (a Heyworth, Illinois, native) as the half-scheming, half-sincere worker who has had her personality split in two; Cristin Milioti as the crime family scion who is not to be underestimated in “The Penguin”; and Hannah Einbinder’s vulnerable-snarky comedy writer on “Hacks.” (Einbinder was the one winner to make a point of acknowledging world events by signing off with: “Go Birds, (expletive) ICE and free Palestine.”) Jeff Hiller also won for “Somebody Somewhere” and his speech had perfect comic timing: “For the past 25 years I have been like, ‘World, I want to be an actor!’ And the world was like … ‘Maybe computers?’”

So much is crumbling around us, not that anyone used their platform to acknowledge that

But I do appreciate that the Television Academy carved out time to spotlight the value of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which recently had its federal funding cut) and affirm that the academy — “and all of us in this room” — must continue to champion programming that can “broaden horizons, challenge the status quo and bend the arc of history towards justice.” Of course, if a small chunk of people in that room donated even just a tiny fraction of their net worth to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it wouldn’t be going out of business.

“In moments like this, neutrality is not enough,” said the academy’s chairman Cris Abrego. “We want to be voices for connection, inclusion and empathy.” It’s surreal that these feel like radical words in this moment. Lots of claps and nodding of heads from a collective group of people who have been strenuously neutral these past several months. That neutrality extended to the speeches from Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, who were given the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award. As the critic Isaac Feldberg put on social media: “How do you accept the Emmys’ humanitarian award while saying absolutely nothing of substance about any specific, meaningful cause? The answer’s in the question, of course.”

Related: Should we read anything into the choice to feature country artists for the musical portions this year? It didn’t even feel like a comprehensive theme tied to anything, just someone’s idea of what would play as “Americana.”

It’s television. Not content. Television.

I hate that at some point we all collectively started referring to the screen entertainment as “content,” as if Hollywood were in the business of churning out widgets. When Lorne Michaels accepted the Emmy for “SNL’s” 50th anniversary special, he underscored this point. He’s been in the job too long, as have most in Hollywood’s current gerontocracy — it’s wild, considering the industry used to be famous for being run by young hotshots — but he’s also old school enough to make this observation: “I want to thank the academy for continuing to keep the word ‘television’ in their name. As long as it’s in there, we’ll keep showing up.”

Viewers, however, may not feel the same loyalty.

When the camera landed on Bargatze standing in the audience for a short bit, people could be seen coming and going from their seats as if a live television show weren’t happening at the same time. Just zero discipline about asking folks to stay in place, even for a minute or so, and at least pretend that they are rapt by the proceedings. It’s telling when even photos from the broadcast provided by wire services are dull. But if the Emmys can’t muster any excitement about television, why should anyone else?

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