Kudos to Mariska Hargitay for serving as the first female Emmy host in 15 years! All those wardrobe changes must have been exhausting. But the actress was charming, confident and honestly game for anything, even though she had to utter corny gags like “if you watched Hannah Montana, it’s now time to talk to a doctor about scheduling a Hannah Mammograma.”

Yey for all those actor awards at the top of the show! Boo to the anonymous party pooper from standards and practices who bleeped the incomparable John Mulaney. From Emilia Clarke who talked in high Valyrian to Marcello HernĂĄndez inviting Harrison Ford, Zendaya, Oscar Isaacs and Matthew McConaughey to dinner, here are the best and worst moments from the 78th annual Emmy Awards.

BEST: Stacking the top of the show with actor award after actor award. Finally, it took a producer like Jesse Collins to figure out the best way to keep viewers tuned in for a good hour, at least, was by showing lots and lots of (mostly familiar) stars.

WORST: Hargitay opened the show with a song celebrating TV screens — TV screens! — while supposedly watching some on a cross-country flight to the Emmys. Maybe the writers should have run that through Chat GPT one more time before subjecting Olivia Benson to that.

BEST: Watching the true romance between Tom Pelphrey and Kaley Cuoco play out live on TV after his well-deserved win for Task.

WORST: The cast of the new Baywatch who were tasked with presenting the award for Reality Competition Program, but first made sure to promote their “saltier than ever” Fox drama that comes with “more action and less fabric.” That last part earned some serious groans from the audience.

BEST: Of course we knew it was coming, but it was still great to see a bearded Stephen Colbert and his staff receive a standing ovation for winning Best Variety Series. No sour grapes from Colbert about his ridiculous cancellation, but he did offer a gentle reminder that shows like his are a “fantastic incubator for young people to come in … that is the future of business that we have to look after.”

WORST: Were Stephen Root and Amanda Peet the lucky recipients of free transition sunglasses in their Emmy baskets?

BEST JOKE: “Dick Wolf’s real name is Richard Penis.”

WORST JOKE: A way-too-high concept skit involving the Special Victims Unit addressing the big question over whether Taylor Swift will be at the Emmys. That was a whole lot of heavy lifting to do, just to show that NBC got Tay Tay to cameo as a cop.

BEST RECOVERY: At least it ended with Hargitay and Swift staring silently at the camera while flanking a fluffy cat. Now that was funny.

BEST: Katie Dippold finally revealing what so many other winners don’t have the balls to admit. “No one will ever step foot in my home without seeing this,” she said of the writing Emmy she won for Widow’s Bay. “I will create a system of mirrors so that no matter where you stand in my home, this is going to be in your direct eyeline.”

WORST: Someone screwed up with the size of the type on the teleprompter so a wheelchair-bound Michael J. Fox had to ad lib before he was able to deliver his speech for receiving the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award. He talked about the important work of his foundation but made sure to keep it light by making jokes about Lola Falana.

WEIRD: A commercial hawking Nutrafol hair growth ointment ran as an inset video while we could still see a blurred image of the live Emmy stage. Did they pay more for that? If so, why? Does someone want Emmy to have more hair?

BEST MOMENT FOLLOWING A NOT SO GREAT ONE: The goodbye to Catherine O’Hara was far more heartfelt than Reba McEntire’s singing tribute to Dolly Parton, which should have been packaged with the In Memoriam segment, anyway.

BEST: Anytime the camera cut to the Hacks table so we could see Megan Stalter painted head to toe in gold to look like a real-life Emmy statue.

HELL YES: The reunions were somewhat underwhelming during the first two hours, but the arrival of Jaclyn Smith, Cheryl Ladd and “three time Emmy nominee” Kate Jackson from Charlie’s Angels was a delightful detour before The Pitt accepted its second consecutive win for Best Drama.

HELL YES, PART DEUX: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, back on TV for the first time in 12 years.

WORST: Bleeping John Mulaney during his otherwise epic monologue about “men being men” before presenting the award for best actor in a drama. Why do we care that he appeared to talk about going down on someone? Mulaney was on a freakin’ roll: he read from Frank Vincent’s 2006 book that was checked out from the Glendale Public library, for Pete’s sake!

BEST: Sally Field using her acting win for Incredibly Bright Creatures to take a not-so-subtle dig at the ongoing saga that is Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. “We matter, our voices matter, our diversity and unique storytelling matters. We can’t let those voices be silenced, compromised or merged.”

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