There’s nothing about Mariska Hargitay that doesn’t make me happy so I can’t be objective. 

But in every way possible she was the perfect host for Monday night’s 78^th annual Emmy Awards.

Awards shows these days are a mixed bag of… a lot. 

A lot of excellence, a lot of earnestness, a lot of self-aggrandizement and self-importance, and a lot of guilty and guiltless (Note: depending on who you are) fun and glamour.

Or simple disgust at the indulgent spectacle of it all.

It becomes difficult spending time dissecting who deserved what and how swiftly the show moved, or if evenings like this should even exist, when every day we’re being told humanity as we know it could be murdered by the end of the decade by rogue A.I. bots that, in less than a year, will at the very least be able to take over the internet and do things like freeze everyone’s bank accounts and launch their own drone attacks at will.

At least that was the latest of what I read and heard in the last few days from the experts working on this stuff.

So you will excuse me if I confess that Mariska (Note: I feel as if we’re friends), aka Olivia Benson, the bad ass cop she’s played on Law and Order: SVU for 28 seasons, gives me comfort.

Especially in nearly a dozen pitch perfect designer outfits and amid lots of big shiny gold stuff on pedestals that have nothing to do with the Oval Office.

See, even when Mariska’s Olivia is not able to stop the bad things and the bad people, she makes you feel better about life and about yourself by being fully present when you’re with her. 

Positive, alive and hopeful.

Of course, I’m talking mostly about Olivia and not from personal experience with Mariska.

But when an actor plays a character a lot of their qualities become one, especially the good stuff. 

So after watching this year’s Emmy-winning documentary Mariska directed, produced and starred in, My Mom, Jane, about long deceased Hollywood actress Jayne Mansfield, the mother she barely knew, it’s hard not to see the best of Benson each time she’s onscreen.

Not to mention, that’s what the people I know who’ve spoken to and worked with her say. 

The fact that we get her to guide us through yet one more awards show, well I say, let’s just… take the win?

Was it bizarre to see her jamming, singing and dancing in various locations and with various stars, among them her buddy, Knicks superstar, Jalen Brunson, in the opening number, I Love TV Screens, done to the tune of the classic, I Love Rock ‘n Roll?

You bet it was. 

But, she sold it.  Even when it ended with her entering the theatre on a horse and being lifted in the air by a bunch of men with TV sets instead of heads.

I LOVED it and thought, well, at least she’s game.  My husband, who actually is the one who spoke to Mariska on the phone and liked her a lot, thought, more than anything, it was “brave.”

Well, we need a little bravery right about now. 

In so many things. 

Don’t we?

The award winners had a large smattering of brave, too.  The new Apple comedy series, Widow’s Bay, a very strange send-up of a seaside supernatural thriller packaged as a kind of post-modern sitcom, led the pack with 14 wins, including best comedy, actor and supporting actor and actress, as well as writing and directing.

Though Jean Smart became the first leading comedy actress to win the Emmy for every season (five) of her series (Hacks) and tied the all-time record for most wins by a female performer with her eighth award.

On the drama side, The Pitt continued its reign as best drama as well as lead actor for Noah Wyle.  But writer Vince Gilligan won the writing award for his highly original, and in my mind brilliant, pilot script for the intellectually apocalyptic Pluribus, and its star Rhea Seehorn scored best actress. There was also the first major category win for Slow Horses in directing, and limited series went to the dark comedy/tragedy DTF St. Lous. 

Sally Field, who started her career in light TV comedy only to become a leading Oscar-winning dramatic actress, won for a heartfelt performance as an older woman who helps a grieving young man and an octopus in the unusual and touching streaming telefilm, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

So, yes, a mix of oddball, traditional and sort of…strange.

And who says the Emmys do not reflect the current world we live in?

As for the show itself, it was also a mash-up of old and new, weird and welcome, current and frozen in time. 

But this, in turn, reflects the expansion of television thanks to streaming, the internet and technology.  No longer do you need to appeal to a wide group.  You can stay on the air with a niche market of viewers who you don’t have to convince to buy a particular brand of car or cleanser.

Where else can you see the cast of Fox’s upcoming reboot of Baywatch (Note: Who asked for that???), alongside a moving, heartfelt speech by Michael J. Fox, now in a wheelchair, wittily accepting the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for the foundation he started supporting Parkinson’s disease research, the reunion of three of the four sort of frozen-in-time stars of Charlie’s Angels (Note: 1976-1981), and the late Catherine O’Hara’s three film and TV kids (Home Alone’s Macauley Culkin, and Dan Levy and Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek) saluting her, amid an In Memoriam segment of those who passed away in the last year, as Noah Kahan sang Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water and Jamie Lee Curtis eulogized Rob Reiner? 

Wait, I left out the Dolly Parton song Reba McEntire sang in tribute to Dolly Parton, Appalachian Memories, the free speech declaration made by Stephen Colbert for his now defunct insurgent talk show yanked off the air by CBS and that pre-filmed cameo by Taylor Swift as a new cop on the set of SVU with its current core cast, which ended with her holding one of her cats that, in real life, she named Olivia Benson.

None of it quite makes sense or has universal appeal.  But at this moment that’s the case with not only TV, but the universe.

So the fact we had Mariska popping up periodically, bejeweled or joking or staring us down in buoyant sincerity seemed about as impeccable of a respite one could get in the outlandish surrealness of our uncertain new world.

At least until…well, you know.

Click for a complete list of Emmy winners.

Mariska Hargitay – “I Love TV Screens”