Creative Arts Emmys 2016: RuPaul, ‘Shark Tank,’ ‘Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown’ among night two winners

The Creative Arts Emmys were split up over two nights this year, which is primarily great news for people out there who enjoy sleep and don’t want to spend extremely long periods of time at an awards show. There were a lot of trophies to hand out, but for the sake of this article we want to highlight a few that we find particularly notable for a few different reasons.

Reality Host – RuPaul, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” This was tremendous. RuPaul went from longshot nominee to winner in a category that tends to be exceptionally boring and predictable. Hopefully, this change means that something could happen in the also-dreadful Reality Competition Series category, which mostly just exists to give trophies to “The Amazing Race” — a show we love, but also not a show that needs to win every year.

Structured Reality Program – “Shark Tank.” It’s not the show’s first win, but it is tremendous to see that it continues to generate such attention. We’ve seen multiple editions of this format (originally “Dragon’s Den”), and we will argue with anyone that the U.S. edition is the best for both entertainment and also success stories.

Informational Series or Special – “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” Bourdain’s series is a revelation for us, mostly because of his interest in seeing the world through the eyes of its people, and occasionally its food. While we rarely write about it on the site, it’s one of those shows we watch simply for the sake of doing so, and not with the pressure of having to write about it later.