2014 Emmys: Watch Seth Meyers’ Opening Monologue
Fans of Seth Meyers from 'Saturday Night Live' and his still-young stint as host of 'Late Night' know that this is a performer perfectly suited for hosting the Emmys. Capable of leaping between sweet and sarcastic at a moment's notice while barely changing his signature dry delivery, Seth Meyers opened the 2014 Emmys ceremony with a monologue that could have come straight from one of his own shows.
As is typical with most Emmys hosts, Meyers bounced between being complimentary of television and eviscerating it, celebrating the artistic medium of the night while taking every opportunity to kneecap it. Naturally, the best jokes were at television's expense. Surely the heads of the major cable networks weren't laughing when he talked about the rise of streaming services, making the traditional channels the Justin Bieber to Netflix's One Direction. The best joke of the routine found Meyers comparing the massively successful HBO to the guy you knew as a kid who grew up into something special -- how were you supposed to know that the guy who played 'Poltergeist' every day would grow up to make 'Game of Thrones.'
In the end, Meyers ended on a dryly sweet note, comparing television to the reliable booty call. Yeah, it was that kind of monologue.