Last year, the Television Critics Association Awards were hosted by Ron Effing Swanson himself, Nick Offerman. So perhaps the only way to top that in terms of finding someone capable of making very dangerous things was to recruit Bryan Cranston from “Breaking Bad” to emcee this year’s awards.
The nominations were announced last week – Cranston is up for individual achievement in drama (which he previously won in 2009), just as Offerman had been nominated for the individual comedy award last year (and split it with Ty Burrell) – and the (non-televised) ceremony will take place on July 28, in the middle of the TCA summer press tour.
Cranston joins an eclectic list of past TCA Awards hosts, including Conan O’Brien, Bob Newhart, Wanda Sykes, The Smothers Brothers and Dax Shepard. And he’s already familiar with telling jokes at the event.
The winners are told in advance if they’ve won so they can make room in their schedule to come to the ceremony, while the losers don’t have to bother. But every now and then you get a situation where two co-stars are nominated, and the one who doesn’t win will show up to applaud the one who did. Back in 2001, Cranston lost to “Malcolm in the Middle Wife” Jane Kaczmarek, but he came anyway to support his co-star, and even pretended to be in the dark about the whole thing when he leaped onto the stage at the start of the ceremony with a ridiculous smile plastered on his face as he said, “I really like my chances tonight!”
Hopefully, he doesn’t blow us all up if he loses to Claire Danes.