Eventually, someone is going to write a complete oral history of the MTV VMAs and one of the later chapters will be titled, “How the Mighty Has Fallen.” What was once a pop cultural juggernaut, where big-name stars showed up just for fun and exposure and the chance to wear a meat dress, has shrunk down to what feels like a sad, pay-for-play operation. Generally speaking, you can tell who’s winning by whether or not they bothered to come; if you see Ariana Grande’s name but you don’t see Ariana Grande, then she’s gonna strike out. If you Lisa looks shocked to hear her name, she’s acting (and, weirdly, with more ability than she was ever asked to display on The White Lotus). A few of the musical performances mercifully still felt big, but everything else felt small and disposable, like this was just filler between football and Big Brother.
Inexplicably, it didn’t seem to matter. When the VMAs aired on CBS and MTV last year — the first-ever simulcast — they only scraped together 5.6 million viewers; this year, that shot up to a comparatively whopping 8.4 million, its best showing since 2015, back when, yes, people actually cared and MTV still occasionally showed videos. This is probably good news for CBS, because the Grammys have decamped for ABC, leaving a hole for a prestige live music event that the VMAs should be able to fill — if they can keep the night from feeling like it’s following a script. They invented a special award to get Taylor Swift in the house, and then gratefully handed her the last trophy of the night, her last chance to “win” something; they called Madonna’s name as many times as they could to keep her in the building. It sucked out any sense of surprise. If Madonna is THERE, she is not getting swept. Money likely changed hands in one direction or the other.
Of course, the ratings may owe a small debt of gratitude to the football game that made the VMAs feel like an afterthought. CBS had to hold the show for 21 minutes because the Ravens vs. the Cowboys was a banger and it ran long. Supposedly the show merely aired tape-delayed and in fact started inside the Peacock Theater as planned, which is for the best, as we suspect you don’t have Madonna teed up and ready to go for very long before she wanders away or tells you to go fuck yourself. But while the Ravens lined up the winning field goal on CBS, MTV was stuck airing a pre-packaged clip show of previous VMAs hosted by noted musical superstar Donnie Wahlberg, overlaid with a crawl asking everyone to please be patient. Perhaps MTV and CBS would be well-served by returning the VMAs to the August time slot they periodically experiment with, when the only football is pre-season and famous people have nothing else to do but show up. There was, after all, a time when the VMAs waited for no man, no matter how many people on Draft Kings had money on his right foot.
Most Awkward Blocking: Part of that “How the Mighty Have Fallen” chapter will cover the fact that this program no longer has a live red carpet show, even though they could air that on MTV while the football is footballing on CBS. (Also, it’s a BAD sign when even E! isn’t coming to your party.) Instead, Paramount streamed the Los Angeles KCAL 9 red carpet show which was... look, we’re not going to dunk on the local entertainment reporters. They have no budget, they were extremely game, and they were stuck in a back corner where few celebrities dared to tread. The vibes veered very Public Access and they were unable to chyron any of the people to whom they were speaking, which made the entire endeavor a real mystery for the kind of Olds like us who bother to turn on KCAL in the first place. Worse, there was occasionally an ASL interpreter with a celebrity, and — although she did her very best — she was unfortunately generally placed at an angle where, crucially, her hands were blocked. This is not on the KCAL reporters, but it is on their producers: After the first time this happened, someone needed to edit your set-up. Not being able to clearly see the hands of the ASL interpreter is basically like turning off the microphones: totally unacceptable.
Worst Red Carpet Moment: One of the reporters asked French Montana how he got his teeth so white (?) and his response seemed to be a garbled insinuation about... blow jobs? It was inexplicable and semi-incomprehensible but also still horrifying. We (of course) Googled “French Montana white teeth” in case he has some hit song about this subject that we’re unaware of due to being extremely old and instead learned that French Montana has done a lot of spon-con for custom dental work in Turkey. He could have just said that!
Most Heartwarming Red Carpet Moments: Every time the red carpet reporters asked someone who they were most excited to see, EVERYONE said Madonna. Literally EVERY single person name-dropped Madonna. It’s possible that Madonna is the only person anyone remembered was performing but this is also proof that the youths still care about history! Learn it:
Dumbest Headlines: This is not the fault of MTV/CBS/Paramount, nor any one publication. This is solely because Google SEO/AI Slop overlords demand a constant diet of articles answering questions that people might be plugging into their computer at any moment to drive traffic to their publications so they can stay in business. But we saw SO many headlines along the lines of Travis Kelce Is Not Attending the 2026 VMAs with Wife Taylor Swift: Here’s Why. Because he’s literally in Florida playing a football game, AS THAT IS HIS JOB. Eventually, a youth working at one of these publications is going to snap and write and publish a piece that reads, “BECAUSE THEY’RE GETTING DIVORCED” before leaving the building and never coming back.
Most CBS-y Detail: Last year, the final award of the show was sponsored by Burger King, leading to the PA announcer getting to say the glorious words, “Burger King congratulates Ariana Grande on her Video of the Year win.” This year, that sponsor was car insurance company The General. On one hand, The General does have a memorable half-sung tagline, which makes sense for a music-focused awards show. On the other, as we’ve often said, you truly know you’re at least middle-aged once you find yourself having a sincere conversation with a peer about insurance.
Greatest Truism About the VMAs: Much as with the Grammys, the VMAs are mostly about the musical performances and hardly at all about the awards, and this is one of the reasons they are ever worth watching— even if they’re never going to reclaim the apex of their popularity. The George Michael tribute was great, Raye is radiant and has tremendous pipes, Shaboozey is ALWAYS a good time, Bruno Mars is not incompetent (even if all his songs sound the same now, and his was pre-taped from Miami), Madonna pulled it together with her second song in the opening set, and the final performance — by, if you really want to feel old, GENER8ION and Yung Lean — was choreographically ASTONISHING:
Worst Production Decision: If the performances are key, why not more of them? Don’t get us wrong, we won’t kvetch about a two-hour award show, but as a celebration of the year in music it does feel thin and flat. Last year’s VMAs had 13 performances, although four of them were some kind of tribute medley, either by that singer (Ricky Martin) or about them (Ozzy); that only left 9 slots for current acts, but at least they were all under that roof. This time, we only got nine performances TOTAL, two of which were tributes, one of which wasn’t in the building, and one of which had to have been pre-taped because Kacey Musgraves — who sang “I Will Always Love You” for Dolly Parton — also had a concert in Nashville the night of the VMAs (!!) and does not appear to have missed it. This leaves shockingly little room for actual nominated acts, and if you want further confirmation everyone is faking this thing, check out Sienna Spiro gamely acting overwhelmed and stunned when she won Best New Artist despite being the ONLY one of the three nominees given a spot at the mic during the telecast. At least the Grammys gives them a medley.
Worst Performance Decision: The show’s love of tributes made it all the weirder when Nirvana won the Video Vanguard Award, but did not perform. Yes, they’re missing a very crucial member of the band. But the three remaining Nirvanites do perform occasionally without Kurt, most recently for both the Fire Aid benefit and SNL50 in 2025. We appreciated the video package the show put together -- it was another sobering reminder of how influential the VMAs and MTV itself truly used to be -- but it would have been cool to see Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear tear it up out there. Maybe Dave’s turtleneck was too tight to truly allow him to let loose.
Worst Fashion Decision: Madonna may be a legend, but the woman is still 68 years old, and she clearly COULD NOT spend the entire night in heels anymore. (Relatable.) As the night wore on, she hobbled to and from the stage like a woman with a bad hip and blisters. Obviously no one tells the Material Girl what to do, but some knee-high Doc Marten boots would’ve taken care of that problem AND looked pretty badass with her leotard. Will no one think of her arches?
Worst Performance Overall: To be frank, we were going to suggest Teddy Swims, who sang “Careless Whisper” with admirable aplomb until he got to the falsetto line, “And NOOOOOOW, who’s GOOOOnna DANNNNCE with MEEEEE?” WHICH HE JUST SKIPPED. This is sacrilege. However, we also thought Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter together on this eve did not mesh. Madonna looked robotic and low-energy, and at one point, they cut to a shot of her hauling herself up the stairs looking annoyed without even bothering to lip synch (we know it was her turn; we could hear her voice). Maybe she hates that song; it IS pretty mid. Or maybe she was smarting from having bet the under in Ravens-Cowboys.
Best Performance Overall: We’re also giving this to Madonna, with an honorable mention to the George Michael crew, although we wish Adam Lambert would shriek a tiny bit less. Madge’s second song, “Danceteria,” absolutely slaps and does not need Madonna even to do much for that to be true. She hauled out a lot of dancers, her pal Debi Mazar, her cinematic doppelganger Julia Garner (still waiting for that movie, apparently), and Charli XCX, and threw a HUGE party on that stage. They should’ve cut the dreary first song because this was an outstanding high-energy opener, and also, anyone hanging in there at home or a sports bar after the football likely would’ve enjoyed seeing Madonna dry-hump a dude in a fake bathroom stall WAY more than whatever those writhing wood nymphs were doing there.
Biggest Existential Question: Mary J. Blige taught us that there is no hateration or holleration in this dancerie, but what of the danceteria? WHAT OF IT.
— H&J
Y’all, Edward Cullen Might Get an Oscar Nomination
Go back and watch Twilight, and then let it wash over you that Robert Pattinson may not only receive an Oscar nod, but would DESERVE it. In many ways, he and Harry Potter co-star Daniel Radcliffe did the same thing: took their early good fortune to the bank and used it for the freedom to make interesting career choices and develop their skills. That landed Radcliffe a Tony and at least one award for the Weird Al movie, although they should have invented more to give him; for Pattinson, it might get him short-listed for his work in The Odyssey, but absolutely should hit pay dirt for Primetime.
(Light spoilers throughout, inasmuch as you can spoil something that’s based on real events and has a long Wikipedia page.)
In case you have missed all the stories about how peeved Chris Hansen is about this movie: Primetime is the story of To Catch a Predator, Hansen’s Dateline hidden-camera segment that spun out into its own show in the ‘90s. Specifically, it begins with NBC programming chief Jeff Zucker — who plays HIMSELF in this movie, and seemingly intentionally not in a flattering way! — telling Hansen that he kinda hates this whole concept, but America loves it, so they’re giving him his own show and pitting it against Lost. After that, the operation intensifies until the infamous suicide of one of its targets.1 We concurrently spend time with his producer Andie, a.k.a. the always brilliant Merritt Wever, and the newly hired lure Dan, in the brilliantly cast form of Skyler Gisondo, whose picture may appear in the dictionary under “amiable goober.” Basically, this is a rare semi-biopic — not a life story; just a slice of it — where the subject is not only still alive, but not involved, and frankly kind of convinced they’ve made him out to be a bad guy. Hansen hates this movie. He reportedly bought ad space before screenings depicting himself standing in a kitchen a la the Predator stings, calling the film a “Hollywood fantasy,” and promoting his streaming service. That did not appear in front of the movie when I saw it, which I’m kind of bummed about; he also gave Pattinson’s performance a D. What I really want to know, though, is how Stone Phillips feels about Primetime. The Dateline host appears only a few times, in the form of actor Bill Heck doing a tremendous impersonation of Phillips’s handsome blandness. “I’ll be watching… from Afghanistan,” Phillips intones, by way of congratulating Hansen on his primetime slot, and Hansen regards him at all times with barbed envy. I give that whole side plot an A; in fact, for a movie that is about a possible jerk catching terrible predators, it’s more darkly comedic than you might expect.
And, sorry Chris Hansen, but Pattinson was fantastic. I am not sure the movie itself is, but all the actors excel,2 including Alex “Bill S. Preston, Esquire” Winter, Bokeem Woodbine, Phoebe Bridgers, Tony Revolori, and Jonathan Lipnicki — yes, the Jerry Maguire kid, in a role where you might want to avert your eyes for one crucial and well-telegraphed moment, because it may conflict with your memories of him being pint-size and saying, “Do you know the human head weighs 8 pounds?” But the whole thing hinges on Pattinson, who plays Hansen as a compelling mix of a man who wants to do good, but also cannot resist the compulsion to feed his own ego and protect the heroic image he has of himself. The central question of the movie is whether the ends justify the means — if Predator is catching predators, does it it even matter how they’re doing it? — and every twitch of his face and tightening of his jaw and gleam of his eyes, every self-important rehearsal of his “lines,” every speech about the importance of their work, effectively paints Hansen as someone who has chugged his own Kool-Aid and yet also isn’t wrong to want to get these people off the streets. Actually, the more I think about it, you could probably draw a line between Pattinson’s work as Edward Cullen and as Chris Hansen. We get lots of close-ups, lots of brooding looks, lots of intensity, lots of bone structure. It’s just the upgraded, purposeful, refined version. And not for nothing, but Edward really isn’t thrilled when adult werewolf Taylor Lautner imprints on his baby daughter, so he and Chris Hansen would’ve had a lot to discuss. Oh, and they have this theme in common too:
I’ve read some criticism that the movie appears to feel sorry for the marks themselves, mainly the last two — that they are painted as pathetic rather than predatory; tragic figures who blundered into a bad spot. I struggled with that a little, too, though I don’t believe the movie did that intentionally. I think that was meant to be us seeing them through the eyes of Decoy Dan, who is not sympathetic to them, but is a merry little naïf who just wanted his friends to see him on TV and got pulled into something entirely different. Primetime doesn’t make Hansen as evil as the trailer makes you think it will, but his obsession — with the work and with himself — does become unhealthy. There’s a point where he’s telling Dan about his Emmy-winning work saving trafficked children in India, and how Predator is a similar crusade against The Animals Within. That work is real, but Pattenson’s portrayal of mania and intensity and ego are such that you certainly wonder for a second if he’s built all this on a lie. Merritt Wever flirts with quitting for more sanitized pastures but can’t go through with it, because the drama of the darkness is too alluring and much more her speed; likewise, we see the wild-eyed hunger of Matthew Maher (Our Flag Means Death) as a producer who zealously spends all his time live-chatting with various targets to get them to incriminate themselves and come out of the woodwork. Decoy Dan, in contrast to all of that, tries to buy in and emulate Hansen and even channel him, but crumbles under the weight of the emotional and ethical toll of doing the job. He earns his SAG card, and it’s bittersweet. A dream achieved, but at what cost?
I’ve never actually seen To Catch a Predator, but I assume Primetime’s depiction of its episodes is accurate — and honestly, I had the most questions about that. Often, they would show the faces of their decoys and even identify them as such, which seems totally counter to what you would do if you hoped to entrap more people. Aren’t your future predators WATCHING this show and paying attention to what they need to avoid?!? I mean, I’m thrilled that I am not in the headspace of these people to know what they would or would not do, but surely you would pixelate their faces if you wanted to use them in city after city? Yes, I have notes on a 30-year old television program. But laying out the methods and the accomplices in detail every week seems like it would’ve given the show a short lifespan anyway.
After all that, Primetime doesn’t quite land the plane. At no point does it surprise you with where it’s going, and in fact, it suffers from the truth of what seems to have happened while shooting the fateful episode, “Tonight on Dateline, This Man Will Die.” The Predator team corners a small-town district attorney in Texas but cannot push it over the finish line by having him appear at one of their live sites. Per the movie, they involve local law enforcement, which decides to go get him based on the texts alone, and suddenly both a film set and a stakeout is taking very loud place in the man’s front yard. These are baffling choices — it goes exactly as you assume, and seems impossible that anyone thought it would happen any other way, or that Hansen EVER thought for a million years Decoy Dan would get this man out of his house to do an interview — but they do seem to have been the real choices. Thus trapped, the movie lets it play out, and then just…ends. You hear Stone Phillips read that teaser that ended up being the name of the episode, but we never experience any fallout, emotional or otherwise. We simply leave, and cut to a year later, when Decoy Dan receives his SAG card. But Dan should not have been the ending of the story; its center is Hansen, and for him to fade away felt like abdicating in the exact moment we needed another beat.
Kevin had seen the documentary, Predators, and concurs with the general consensus that it’s excellent and probably a more thorough portrait. But I typically come away from awards season with SO many movies that I watched because I’m a good soldier who does her homework, but which I never want to experience again — Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Emilia Perez, and oh my god, The Brutalist, I would actually like to bill the universe for the time I spent on that movie. Primetime, I would revisit, in no small part to the caliber of Pattinson’s work. In fact, while I suspect he wouldn’t win due to how far everyone crawls up Christopher Nolan’s anal canal, were I an Oscar voter, R.Pattz sits ahead of Matt Damon Plays Matt Damon Playing Odysseus. Besides which, I am wholly on board with five actors who’ve played Batman getting Oscar nods.3 You’re up next, Will Arnett.
— Heather
Do You Hear What I Hear?
HUGE NEWS:
In an absolutely delightful turn of events, The Gilded Age is releasing a Christmas album. This IS what you do when your cast has approximately eight thousand Tony winners, because unlike a Christmas album from essentially any other show currently airing, this one sounds like it’s going to be extremely good. “I Wonder As I Wander” by Audra McDonald? “O Holy Night” by Denée Benton and Jordan Donica?4 Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector reading “Twas The Night Before Christmas,” because neither of them can sing but they can read the shit out of a poem?5 Take my money! No, literally, I do want to pre-order that but I don’t know how to do that anymore.
— Jessica
In Case You Missed It
Last Call
— Lindsay Lohan is producing and starring in a new Netflix romance with Henry Golding. Per Deadline: “From screenwriter Eric Champnella and set in 2008, Return to You follows a powerful but lonely female attorney (Lohan) who mistakenly receives a very emotional DVD sent by a dying woman to her husband (Golding). With only the clues from the DVD as her guide, she sets out to find him.” This sounds VERY much like someone saw the success of Voicemails for Isabelle and was like, “How can we do EXACTLY THAT but not with voicemails???” Also: I think we all thought Henry Golding was going to be bigger than he currently is after Crazy Rich Asians, but I support Lilo figuring out a way to cast increasingly hot dudes as her own love interests, a.k.a pulling a Mindy Kaling. Obviously, we will watch this and report back. — J
— This is just an example of an overwritten headline that amused me: “Barbara Palvin Gives Birth, Welcomes 1st Baby With Husband Dylan Sprouse.” Because she MIGHT have given birth and then been standoffish and rude to the baby. Clarity wins!!!! — H
— Good for Elliot Page, who covers New York magazine shirtless for an issue about men’s style. It’s incredible seeing him come into his own with such joy and confidence and bravery; he has always been a tremendous actor, but he’s particularly wonderful in his pieces of The Odyssey. Somebody please hire this man. — H
Aside from this being based on a true story, the movie itself makes this outcome so obvious that I don’t think it’s a spoiler even if you didn’t know (which I, in fact, did not).
Anna Faris gives a weird turn as Hansen’s wife, and I can’t tell how intentional that is, as her vibe these days is Odd Duck.
SIX if you count Colman Domingo, who played Bruce Wayne in a drama podcast. The others are Michael Keaton, George Clooney and Christian Bale (winners for Syriana and The Fighter), and Batfleck (winner in writing and for Argo). Somehow Val Kilmer didn’t get nominated for The Doors.
What is “It’s Been Real” that Donna Murphy is singing, and why does it sound like a cut scene from her seminal work Center Stage?! — H
And it’s a THREE-PARTER? Are there cliffhangers?!? -H
Headline cliche I cannot abide:
X “is breaking his silence about ____”
(Basically, he just said something)
Kristen Stewart also took her early-career blockbuster money and has used it to make interesting artistic choices, though maybe not always with the same degree of success as Radcliffe and RPattz. I love all of them for it, though. Let more actors be weirdoes!!