So you saw most of this play out, right?  On the carpet, we saw the dresses.  Sofia Vergara’s teal – a colour which I already think is kind of alarmingly muted – is tamped down to almost depressing.   But it fits her like no other actress’s dress ever does.  And other than the mincing down the stairs (time for E! to look into a dumbwaiter, maybe?), she looked comfortable.   

Bowen crashes the interview (I have almost zero comment on her pink Little-Bo-Peep creation, except to say she’s done better, like that slinky business at the Emmys that she got eviscerated for),  and everyone wonders if they like each other or not.  Did you all catch the moment with Seacrest where Vergara said “mmm, Joooooooooooliiiiiiieeeeeee” in the most suggestive way possible, and then disapparated?  And Bowen had to sputter and lie that they’d seen each other naked and then do a commercial for Jergens to cover over her blushiness?  

There are only two kinds of people who do that kind of thing where the stakes are really high: those who are friends, and those who want to mess each other up.  I can’t help thinking these women are of the first – usually in Hollywood the plan for those who hate each other is icy, polite indifference.

When I saw them up onstage, my perspective changed a little.  Bowen was clearly joking when she pulled Sofia away from the mic but... I did wonder whether we were exploiting Vergara’s tendency to exploit herself.  She really does talk like that, and apparently she really does mess up words, and there will come a time when maybe we’ll have had enough, and Bowen was trying to prevent that time from coming too quickly?

But that was before I saw her Twitter.  Look at this!  She’s excited to see Madonna – AND dehydrated onions!  And her niece’s K Mart jewellery! (Lainey: her Twitter is HYSTERICAL. Read it in her voice and it’s like its own half hour comedy.)

This is too wacky to be calculated, and it doesn’t feel like it is.  Not like a Zooey, for example.  Vergara is who she is, and there’s no veneer.   Which makes it a lot easier to take, right?   So maybe Julie Bowen likes playing the straight, uptight, something-like-Clare-Dunphy foil to Vergara’s wackadoodle?  There’ve been far stranger combinations in this town.  Plus, the truth is it wouldn’t work the other way.  Crazy-Bowen and her long-suffering friend Vergara?  

Please.  I’d turn the channel, and so would you.  They got a good thing going.