The Sundance Grand Jury Awards are generally thought to be meaningless — the political preferences of industry elites. The Sundance Audience Awards, however, are regarded as meaningful indicators of genuine audience favor. Which means that in the case of this year’s U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, the audience is composed of shallow, easily seduced dingbats. Giving it to Josh Radnor‘s happythankyoumoreplease, a thoroughly artificial, Woody Allen-with-a-lobotomy 20something sitcom, affords no other conclusion.
L.A. Times reporters Mark Olsen and Steven Zeitchik have written that upon accepting the award, Radnor, “better known as the star of TV’s How I Met Your Mother, thanked ‘the people at my day job, for giving me time to do this. I come from the fertilizer of network television.'” (Radnor was echoing a remark made earlier in the evening by co-host David Hyde Pierce.)