On Sunday night, the Video Music Awards found enough time before a mid-ceremony commercial break to pay tribute to Robin Williams.
To use MTV’s own words, the “heartrending,” “touching” photo montage was a “short, sincere, and memorable moment.”
Here is the tribute, in its entirety:
Of course, not everyone was as impressed with the handful of still photos and Coldplay song as MTV itself. Time magazine, in a less-than-favorable review, pointed out something you might have noticed: MTV’s entire tribute is twenty-three seconds long.
Or, to put it in current terms, barely long enough for a Kardashian to send a text message.
And, even more to the point, that the whole thing (if “whole” is an adjective you can use to describe it) seemed rather offhand and out of place in an otherwise meticulously-synchronized ceremony.
As The Independent noted,
It would have been less offensive to do nothing…[the network] shoved together a 20-second slide show featuring random images of the star that looked not unlike a PowerPoint presentation cobbled together by a seven year old about 10 minutes prior to broadcast.
It’s hard to ignore the first part of that statement in particular. Williams had no connection with MTV, other than the fact that he spent his life as an entertainer. And that is a tenuous connection at best.
Monday night’s Emmy Awards broadcast, by contrast, knew it had to pay stirring tribute to Williams. After all, the man got his first big breaks in the entertainment industry playing a quirky alien on Happy Days, which then became the late 70s television sensation Mork & Mindy.
The show delivered, big-time. First it went to Williams’ long-time and dear friend Billy Crystal for some earnest and heartfelt memories; then, when the tears began to fall, it rolled out a handful of particularly energetic clips from Williams’ appearances on television and stage.
Here’s NBC’s Emmy Awards tribute:
