Emmys 2017: Stephen Colbert sings about treason, tears, and 'Stranger Things' in opening number

Everything is better on TV … especially when Stephen Colbert is hosting the Emmys. The Late Show host, himself an Emmy nominee) kicked off his first-ever Emmy emcee duties with a hilarious song-and-dance number that highlighted his musical theater background. A pre-ceremony visit from Anthony Anderson from ABC’s Black-ish and Mom star Allison Janney — where they kibitzed about all the troubles facing the world, from rising sea levels to HBO’s planned Confederacy series — prompted Colbert to strike up the band as he made the case for the greatness of television with the help of such stars as Chance the Rapper and the This Is Us trio of Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, and Sterling K. Brown.

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A well-known geek, Colbert also got culty with some of his shout-outs, including a rare cameo from the animated star of the FXX cartoon series, Archer, and a pas de deux with Millie Bobby Brown, breakout heroine from Netflix’s Stephen King/Steven Spielberg homage, Stranger Things. (As he sang: “Stranger Things is much less strange than our reality.”) And, of course, there were several tuneful gags at Donald Trump’s expense. Crashing the Veep set, Colbert confessed he’d love to vote for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character, Selina Meyer, and the fictional veep turned POTUS (and maybe POTUS again?) made a strong case for her reelection, arguing, “Imagine if your president was not beloved by Nazis.”

The host also spied on a Trump-Putin meeting from the backseat of a car driven by The Americans supersleuths, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. And for his grand finale, Colbert took the stage alongside dancing handmaids from Hulu’s much-nominated The Handmaid’s Tale, singing, “Look on the bright side, handmaids, at least your health care’s free!” Given real world headlines, is it any wonder that the world looks better on TV — even the Republic of Gilead?

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