THE 5/5 PRE-POST UPDATE: As of right now, this show exists without a host or a writing staff (the strike was on the horizon when I wrote this a week or so ago, and now has fully arrived, which is great, and which I support). That said, Drew is out, but MTV is adamant that they’re going to keep happening, so I’m leaving this up. Without a host and without writers it could turn out to be quite a thing. But, you know, since I don’t know what that means (and, genuinely, do not believe that it’s still going to happen – I don’t think even MTV is that stubborn – but also, here’s the thing about it. Maybe it will stand as a monument to the MTV Movie/TV Awards that could have been.
And now for more silliness. The MTV Movie and TV Awards aren’t even the most famous of the MTV-based awards, but they might be the silliest. They are blast into the void, once every ten years or so something happens at them that makes any kind of news1, and most years I’m pretty sure I’m the only one actually paying attention to them.
1 and we’re only a couple of years out from the COVID safety Sarah Michelle Gellar/Selma Blair kiss reenactment, so I’m gonna guess we’re still basically on mothballs here
They’re making it relatively easy on us this year: the only separation is between things that are scripted and things that aren’t, although they did add a “music documentary” category2, and a category for “kick-ass cast”. Once more the MTV Movie/TV Awards, which were also first across the line of gender-neutral categories, are doing the right thing, which is: swiping the “best cast” category from the SAG awards. Everyone should have a “full cast” award.
2 which I’m in favor of in general, and opposed to specifically here, for reasons I get to down below.
But they did not, of course, change the very stupid categories. You know the ones. They’re still there, safe and sound. Assholes.
Anyway, Drew Barrymore is hosting and they’re officially declaring Jennifer Coolidge a comedy genius. That means we might get another Jennifer Coolidge awards speech, which is just about my favorite kind of awards speech.
Best Reality On-Screen Team
Every year I have to start this thing off by saying: I do not watch any of this. Not because I’m above it or whatever, but because I can barely make it through narrative tv that someone wrote, let alone narrative tv that someone cut together from existing footage of maniacs being maniacs. That said, and despite the fact that I haven’t watched actively in years, the RuPaul/Michelle Visage combination is great, and I’m happy about it.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: RuPaul Charles and Michelle Visage, Ru-Paul’s Drag Race
Best Host
Well, I don’t watch any of this3, but occasionally am entertained by Kelly Clarkson’s cover songs, so she wins.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kelly Clarkson, The Kelly Clarkson Show
3 although I have, at various points, watched Drag Race and The Masked Singer, I just don’t watch either one anymore. This enables the joke below, handily enough.
Best Competition Series
I only watch competition shows where at least one of the judges is likely to use the word “whisk,” so I don’t know anything about any of this. I’m going to do what I always do and give it to Drag Race.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: RuPaul’s Drag Race
Best Docu-Reality Show
You know, most years when I write about the reality shows here, I look up clips of the last season on YouTube and form an entire opinion around them. That seems unfair! But it is, probably, more fair than what I’m doing this year, which is rooting actively for a giant hole to open up in the Earth and swallow all of these people.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Giant Hole, Even the Earth Wants You Gone Season 1: Do Better
Best Music Documentary
I am actively opposed to being exposed to the music of four of the five candidates here. That makes this decision very easy.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Love, Lizzo
Best Song
But…all these songs are awful. Like, I know this category is always going to be pretty thin gruel, but these songs are awful. Just awful. Even when they’re songs by people who are capable of doing better, they did not do better this time. Shame. Shame.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Lady Gaga, “Hold My Hand”
Best Kick-Ass Cast
True story: in 2018 the MTV TV/Movie Awards gave an award called “Best Team”, and I called it for Black Panther4, and, in fact, replacing Chadwick Boseman with The Spectre of the Idea with of Chadwick Boseman does not, in fact, make the cast any less the best part of the movie, except maybe the costumes. So it’s still Black Panther, is what I’m saying.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
4 It went to Stranger Things, because people are stupid
Best Duo
As the resident Only Person Alive who didn’t actually find the second season of The White Lotus that good, I will say: the Italian sex worker ladies were the best part of it, and I would have happily watched more of a show about them. Alack.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Simona Tabasco & Beatrice Grannò, The White Lotus
Best Breakthrough Performance
Wouldn’t Bella Ramsey’s breakthrough performance been as the only good character in the final season of Game of Thrones? I just feel like we’re not being fair to people because everybody likes The Last of Us so much. Anyway. It’s not her anyway. It’s the Metallica dude.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Joseph Quinn, Stranger Things
Best Fight
Oh hey! It’s the part of the awards cycle where I get to never shut up about Andor!
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Escape from Narkina 5, Andor
Most Frightened Performance
Bodies Bodies Bodies: not only the best title of the year, but also the best scared people.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Rachel Sennott, Bodies Bodies Bodies
Best Kiss
I am an old man prone to introspection, and still every year I refuse to dig into why this category fills me with rage. It does, though. I hate it. I mean, for starters, I think I’m annoyed when something that’s meant to titillate the base is then given special space in other things for the efficacy of its base-titillation. But, like, that would also throw out every other category, since that’s what this whole thing is, and I generally like this whole thing. It is, however, terrible. Anyway, you see how this gets more confusing than it’s worth, and it’s easier just to dismiss it and move on.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: I want Harry Styles to win awards for his acting (so that we always remember that we let him do that, and really very entirely should not have), but his acting is uniquely terrible, so I’m happy to let him have all of the marginalia like this, so that someday future generations can say “Oh hey, the One Direction guy was in movies, let’s see what that was about” and then realize that they live in a nightmare hellscape where nobody told him he couldn’t, and then they will know. Also, I almost always give it to the gay one anyway. Thus: Harry Styles & David Dawson, My Policeman.
Best Villain
You know what? I think every year I make a joke about the MTV MTVAs are more than willing to spoil a movie to give an award to a secret surprise villain, and every year it makes me laugh. Combine that with everything I said about awards for Harry Styles, and I’m basically powerless. Several of these movies are better than Don’t Worry Darling, but the math isn’t on their side, see.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Harry Styles (Spoiler Alert!), Don’t Worry Darling
Best Hero
No, seriously, guys. Andor isn’t just good for a Star Wars thing, it’s good for a television thing. It’s so good, you guys. So good.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Diego Luna, Andor
Best Comedic Performance
The fact that the MTV MTVAs just throws movies and tv together with no regard makes this way easier to narrow down. Abbott Elementary is fine, but Nope was genuinely great, and Keke Palmer was genuinely great in it.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Keke Palmer, Nope
Best Performance in a Show
You know, for this being a category full of shows that I don’t actually enjoy as such, this is actually a pretty strong category as, whatever else, it has successfully (mostly) identified the best part of all of these shows, except for The White Lotus, which I’ve already covered. It’s not April Ludgate’s fault, though. Also, she still shouldn’t win.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Jenna Ortega, Wednesday
Best Performance in a Movie
Really, if Keke Palmer weren’t nominated for these things, I would probably have a much harder time, or, alternately, there would be a lot more mention of Michael B. Jordan.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Keke Palmer, Nope
Best Show
The sudden appearance of Yellowstone is amazing, but also probably indicates who it is that, no matter what MTV wants you to think, is actually watching these. That is to say: people older than me. I’m not sure how or why or if that’s true5, but that’s what the inclusion of Yellowstone says to me. Anyway, “best” is a pretty relative scale here.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Yellowjackets
5 and I will, of course, not be looking up the viewership demographics.
Best Movie
So, back years ago, in the early and mid days of this space, I would write about every single nominee, and try to come up with a series of thoughts about the whole thing. The reason for this was that it sort of forced me to consider the sorts of things that were nominated over and over again, from several angles. Since ONAT has always been a space about the way in which the popularity of things was glommed onto6, this seemed like a way to consider things at basically the same level that the folks that put awards shows together were considering them. Anyway, I don’t do that anymore, and the reason is as simple as can be: I don’t have anything to say about most of this. The idea that this pool of movies represents the stock of available choices to the corporate synergy warriors that are getting whatever benefit out of helping promote these things, is kind of insane. And so we end up in the same position most often, which is there’s basically one thing on this list that I think justifies its own existence7, and thus: while I still write about every awards show I can fit on the calendar, I don’t write as much about as much of it, for repetition and sanity reasons. All of which is to say that, occasionally, I am confronted with a list of movies so fundamentally dreadful that I have to stop and be grateful that I no longer write about all of them. Aaaah. So grateful.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Nope
6 I’ve written this – or something very like it – several times, and eventually when I get finished with the redesign it’ll be in a bio space, but that’s, basically, what I’m doing here: popularity is its own sort of thing – the movie that sells the most tickets, the book that sells the most copy, the song that has the most streams, whatever – but my interest is in the industrial components around it. THat is to say, Nope is a great movie that is remunerated however it’s remunerated, but here is MTV to further come along and say “yes, we too, a dying cable network, also like Nope. We probably have a different reaction to, say Keke Palmer in a Jesus Lizard t-shirt than the writer of this piece*, but we are on the same side”. Which is, of course, preposterous. Anyway, my point is: I used to turn this stuff over more to look for something deeper, which I don’t really do anymore.
* even though it’s very much not that kind of website
7 sometimes there’s more than one, but it’s pretty rare, especially in a movie category.
Ohio Needs a Train 