Well, this didn’t have a happy ending.
Actor Adam Pally, of “Happy Endings” and “The Mindy Project” fame, got kicked offstage Sunday while presenting at the Shorty Awards, a ceremony that celebrates social media producers, influencers and content.
The “Most Likely to Murder” star found the concept of the award show so dumb, he couldn’t help but rip it apart for a solid (and, OK, pretty funny) 10 minutes.
“Thank you very much for having me tonight at the Shorty Awards, the ‘waiting at the DMV’ of award shows,” Pally said as soon as he walked onstage (check it out at the 2:36:20 mark in the tweet below or here).
“I do have a few questions about what is happening tonight,” he continued. “I guess I’ll start with, ‘What is going on?’”
Pally then spent a few minutes alternating between dead-eyed recitation of apparently prepared copy, and incredulous reactions to what he’d just said.
“This award honors those brands that have the best yearlong presence on Instagram,” he said. “So I’ll be giving an award to a brand. Considering how many brands are putting all of their resources into Instagram, it’s wildly impressive. Is it?”
“These innovators use Instagram to promote their style and personality, to crowdsource, to launch a new product or service, and to even reignite an old-school brand,” he went on. “So, once again, I’m giving an award to a company. I’m 36.”
After some very telegenic people from GoPro came up to accept an award Pally had likened to a “glass vagina,” the stage lights abruptly went dark. When they came back on, Pally, still onstage, joked:
“Just now, when people thought that they had turned the lights off on me because I have become, like, the villain of the Shorty Awards? I just want to let you know that they didn’t turn the lights off on me. It was just another seamless production value.”
“I guess I’ll finish this shit show up,” he added. But he experienced a breaking point when he realized he was about to introduce an “in memoriam” segment, not for respected industry figures who had passed away, but for defunct social media platforms.
Pally’s response to this realization looked a little like this:
Eventually, Pally regained his composure and informed the audience: “Tonight we pay tribute to those who are not with — we’re going to do an ‘in memoriam’ for a bunch of, uh, I dunno, like Myspace or some shit.”
And that’s when Pally’s brash but hilariously honest critique of the Shorty Awards was quelled.
To watch the train wreck in its entirety (and, really, you should), check out the tweet above.