Mariska Hargitay walked into the 2026 Emmys as the first non-comedian to host the show since 2008, and by the time her monologue wrapped, LA Times columnists Mary McNamara and Glenn Whipp were struggling to agree on whether it actually landed.

The show moved to a Monday night this year, a scheduling shift Whipp attributed to NBC holding Sunday nights for football. Hargitay, fresh off wrapping her Broadway one-woman show and two Emmy wins for the documentary "My Mom Jayne," opened with a bit about loving television screens that left McNamara genuinely stumped. "Next I'm eating beef and watching 'Beef,'" Hargitay reportedly said in the monologue, a line McNamara flagged as possibly the strangest Emmys cold open she's seen. She followed it with a riff spoofing Nicole Kidman's AMC theatre ad, telling the room to "zip it, movie lady, it's TV's turn tonight."

There were, inevitably, jokes leaning on how long Hargitay's own "Law & Order: SVU" has run, since her character Olivia Benson is the longest-running one in American primetime drama. Whipp enjoyed those. He was less sold on the running penis jokes threaded through the set, and both columnists agreed the monologue closed on shaky footing, even if, as Whipp put it, it beat last year by a distance.

That's a low bar given who hosted in 2025. Nate Bargatze ran a charity gimmick docking money for long speeches, a bit widely mocked at the time, and McNamara used her opening remarks to hope Hargitay wouldn't try reviving it. She didn't need to worry. The bigger risk with a non-comedian host was always going to be pacing, not gimmickry, and the last time the Emmys tried this route, in 2008, five reality-TV hosts shared the stage and the results were, by most accounts, a disaster.

The undercard drama

Away from the monologue, the columnists flagged a couple of stray moments worth watching for. Megan Stalter apparently turned up every time a trophy was handed out, and her gold outfit drew a passing tribute from Whipp to costume designer Bob Mackie, who the columnists said had died the same day, though CutMirchi could not independently confirm this beyond the live-blog mention. Jennifer Coolidge, meanwhile, got an on-air pitch from McNamara for a future season of "Widow's Bay," sea hag casting optional.

The real suspense of the night, both columnists agreed, wasn't really the monologue. It was whether Gary Oldman would finally pick up a statuette for "Slow Horses," and whether "The Pitt" and its ensemble would run the table the way predictions suggested. Hargitay's opening was the appetiser. Whether she gets invited back depends on what NBC makes of the reviews once the ratings land.