Emmy Night 2010

Well, the good news is that the Emmy Show itself wasn't bad. Usually major entertainment awards shows suffer from bad writing and drag through long periods of unsufferable boredom, but the 2010 Emmy Awards broadcast was actually written and produced pretty well. It zipped along, and the segments where questions were posed to the nominees on pre-shot videotape, such as "What did your Mother want you to be?" were fresh and witty. The most shocking news is that Jimmy Fallon wasn't a complete bomb. He'll never be really very funny, but luckily, they kept his participation as Host to a bare minimum, so he was able to come across as likable and amusing instead of obnoxious.
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(host jimmy fallon in the opening
musical number with the "glee" kids).
Better news is that some people who actually deserved their awards won them. How's that for fresh and different? But, of course, there were some real head scratchers, too.
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(jane lynch wins for "glee")

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(jim parsons accepts his emmy
from a very excited eva longoria)
In the category of "People Who Really Deserved Their Wins" were Jane Lynch for "Glee" and Jim Parsons for "The Big Bang Theory". Lynch is a superbly talented comedic actor, and we knew from the very first episode of "Glee" that she would win an Emmy for the role of Sue Sylvester. We were right. And Jim Parsons won, finally! Parsons is one of the funniest guys on t.v. in his role as the geek of all time, Dr. Sheldon Cooper. But he failed to win in the past because he suffered from one of the silliest things that drives these type of awards; voters tend to shy away from voting for shows that aren't "water cooler" shows, those shows that everyone is talking about. And while "The Big Bang Theory" is incredibly funny, it's not a show that is on everyone's radar, so voters think it must not be good. Emmy voters are just like any other large populace mass, they vote how they're told to vote by big advertising, big marketing and hype.
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.The big shocker in the comedy category was Edie Falco winning for Lead Comedy Actress for "Nurse Jackie" over Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. What? Falco is not even a comedic actress, and she said as much, herself, when she accepted her trophy on stage, saying, "I'm not really funny". Truer words were never spoken, Edie. But Falco still rides "The Sopranos" wave of Emmy popularity. Note to Edie: When wearing a sleeveless dress, don't hold up an arm and flap it wildly in the air on national television. You've got some work to do before your arms resemble Michelle Obama's.
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(edie falco takes another emmy)

.But maybe the biggest shock of the night was "The Tony Awards" winning for Variety or Comedy Show Writing. Now get this: the writing for The Tony Awards" beat the writing for both Bill Maher and Wanda Sykes' stand-up comedy specials, "But I'm Not Wrong" and "I'm a Be Me", respectively. Are you kidding? The writing for the Bill Maher and Wanda Sykes shows was so funny that even after several viewings, those shows still make us double over in laughter. Where was the great writing for "The Tony Awards", the dumb jokes the hosts tell before they hand out a trophy? Somebody on The Tony Show production staff gave a lot of blowjobs in the bathroom to get that Emmy.
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Also in the "deserved" category was "The Daily Show"'s win over "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" for Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series. Okay, okay, we know that "The Daily Show" wins this Emmy every year, (it's won eight years in a row), and that everyone was anticipating a bitter, train-wreck of an acceptance speech from Conan, (especially us), but come on, "TDS" really is superb t.v., every single night. And come on, you didn't really think Conan's show was funny, did you? Conan's "Tonight Show" was uneven at best, and sometimes, even downright awful. But never fear, after that embarrassing, ego-driven acceptance speech by the "TDS" writer in which he more or less bragged that the show deserved its award, Jon Stewart's show might have just given away the Emmy for next year.
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("the daily show" writer who redefined the word "dick")
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."Mad Men" won its third Emmy in a row for Best Dramatic Series, and hype won over real quality again. We like "Mad Men", sometimes, but we dare you to watch the show and actually be able to stay interested for long periods of time. Meanwhile, two of the most original, riveting shows to come along in decades, "Dexter" and "Breaking Bad" continue to lose in this category. We're not fans of "Lost", so we're not going to join that crazy, fan-driven chorus of "Lost Wuz Robbed" drivel that you're going to read on every blog in the country for the next two days. Give it up, Lost'ers, "Lost"'s writing seemed at times as if a roomful of monkeys were plopped down in front of computers to come up with the storylines for the show, and then it was left to the show's producers and actors to pretend that the show made any sense at all.
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In the "Best Comedy Series", it all came down to "Modern Family" vs. "Glee", and "MF" took it. This was a toss-up; both shows are fresh, funny, well-acted, well-produced, and who knows why "MF" finally won. If we were voting, we would have given it to "MF" as well, simply because its writing was better. We love "Glee" as much as anyone, but sometimes it felt as if the "Glee" writers were making it up as they went along; the writing was uneven at best.
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(jesse tyler ferguson, george clooney and eric stonestreet in a video bit during the show).

.Another well-deserved win was Eric Stonestreet's for "Modern Family". Simply put, this guy is motherf**kng funny! The whole show, "Modern Family", is entertaining, but let's face it, most of the time you watch it, you're just waiting for more scenes with Eric Stonestreet. Well deserved, Mr. Stonestreet, well deserved.
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We thought Connie Britton should have won for "Friday Night Lights", but bigger star Kyra Sedgwick took it for "The Closer". Whatever. Seven-time Emmy winner, "The Amazing Race", finally lost the Best Reality Show award, to "Top Chef". "TAR" had won every Emmy Award given in that category since it began in 2003.
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Two of the most satisfying moments of the night came when the camera showed the sullen, glowering faces of Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Laurie when names other than theirs were called out for the golden trophies. Okay, we're evil, but let's get real, these two get a lot of hype in the press for their talents which is probably not, well... deserved. Less is more, Hugh Laurie, less is more. But the most awkward moment of the night came when Julia Ormand took the stage to accept her trophy for "Temple Grandin", and attempted the "I'm Going to Name the Other Four Women Who Were Nominated in my Category" schtick to show "how honored she was to be in their company", only Julia screwed it up. She got through the first three names, but when she got to Catherine O'Hara, she said, "Catherine O... Catherine O... oh, what's her name? Catherine O... oh well, I'm honored... (blah, blah, blah)." Ouch.
.For once, the show got the "In Memoriam" section right. Jewel sang a soaring, heartbreaking original song about a friend who had died from cancer, while the video montage of actors who died in the past year were given more than the traditionally-given split second of air time. Wow. It was almost like the television academy actually cared about those legendary actors who had passed.
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.(al pacino)

.The biggest winners of the night were "Glee", "Modern Family" and the HBO movie, "Temple Grandin". The biggest loser of the night was Al Pacino's long, unending acceptance speech. Pacino won for playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who famously pulled the plug on terminally ill patients, but yet Pacino was allowed to ramble on on life support for what seemed like hours. Ironic, huh?
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(the real temple grandin

in the red bolo tie)

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Our favorite moment of the night was when the real Temple Grandin stole the show every chance she got. Give this woman her own show, she's even a bigger ham than Hugh Laurie!

Sunday Night T.V. Round-Up

It's summer in t.v. land, which means there's a lot of second-rate crap on the tube. But on Sunday nights, at least, there are three shows which catch our attention, HBO's "True Blood", AMC's "Mad Men" and HGTV's "Design Star". But after watching last night's line-up, we might have to resort to drastic measures to entertain ourselves, like reading a book.

 

First up last night was "True Blood", and we're happy to know that Alan Ball must be reading our blog. Last week we complained that we'd have to wait forever to find out what Tommy Micken's father meant when he said "he owned Tommy", but not so, we found out last night what it meant. The father was forcing Tommy to shape-shift into a dog to make money in dog fighting competitions. Got it. But now that we know, do we care? Hmmm. Probably not. We also desperately pleaded for Mr. Ball to let two men on the show get it on, and lo and behold, Lafayette and Jesus started making out last night in Lafayette's pimped out ride. Predictably, though, the man-on-man mash-up ended right after some very brief kisses, and then the relationship ended for good when Jesus found out that Lafayette was dealing drugs. Meanwhile, while the men on "True Blood" only get to exchange a brief brushing of the lips, the straights on the show get to fuck like rabbits, butts cheeks blaring, in a red mustang in the parking lot of Merlotte's. Thanks a lot, Alan Ball. And while we're on the sex thing, please, oh god, please, would you please let Eric have sex with anyone, man, woman, whatever? That boy has danced around more C&P, (rooster and kitty), this season without ever getting any than anyone we've ever seen. No one deserves that much abuse. On another note, we got to see Alcide the Werewolf naked for about 2.4 seconds, not enough time, and the show ended with Sookie and Bill in real trouble. But then, just a few seconds later, HBO gave it away that Bill and Sookie survive their near-death situations because HBO showed clips from upcoming episodes in which Sookie and Bill are prominently featured. Way to go, HBO, way to negate your own cliff-hanger. Sometimes the networks just can't get out of their own way, can they?

 

Next up last night was HGTV's competition show to find the next great HGTV design show host, "Design Star". We love reality competition shows, and we normally like "Design Star", but there's a big problem with this year's HGTV offering; a big elephant in the room. The designers suck! These are the worst designers we've ever seen. They have no sense of color, how to conceptualize a room plan, how to build anything, how to select furniture; they seemingly have no design skills. Seriously. It's like watching a baseball game where none of the batters can hit the ball. It doesn't make for interesting television, to say the least. HGTV is not helping the show any; they're evidently so bent on saving production money that they're not letting the designers compete in individual challenges, in every episode they force the designers to compete in teams. This doesn't work; you can't really make them be on a team and then complain when one designer doesn't "fight to have his own design plan implemented". Are you listening, Vern Yip? You're a mean, little man, and we wish you'd relax a bit.

 

And finally, we made it over to AMC to watch the season premiere of the two-time Emmy winner for Best Drama, "Mad Men". We had never watched the show until a few weeks ago, when we caught up by watching several marathon runnings of the show. Sorry, but we were reluctant to believe that anything on the AMC network, (a second-rate network which runs third-rate movies), could be any good. And we had always suspected that "Mad Men" was just an excuse to make a show around cool costumes and the Kennedy era as opposed to making it around interesting storylines. We were wrong, sort of, but we were right, too. The writing is just good enough to make one interested in the characters, but there's a feeling that the tone is somehow off. It's almost like the writers are writing about something they've heard about instead of experiencing. There's so much emphasis on drinking and smoking, and unbelievably stilted formality, it's almost as if the show is saying, "Hey, look, we're smoking and drinking and being really formal around each other. Isn't that interesting?" No. It's not. We remember those days, and we don't remember anyone behaving that way. If people had really drunk that much at work, their livers would have fallen out by their third week on the job. The storylines are set up in each episode, but then don't really go anywhere. In other words, the show's writing premises are modeled after the much more successful HBO show, "Eight Feet Under" in which a particular death each week presaged and framed a bigger crises and bigger story within the family which ran the funeral home. "Mad Men" attempts to follow this story structure by introducing a new "ad campaign" each week, but then the writers don't know how to relate it to something bigger going on at the agency or within the characters' lives. You always get the feeling when watching "Mad Men" that nothing meaningful's really going to happen, and it doesn't. As we said, there's just enough interesting characterizations to keep us watching, but at the end of each episode, we always get the old Peggy Lee feeling of, "Is that all there is?". If you'd like to test our theory, take away the 1960's costumes and the cool drinking and smoking, and then decide if the show would still be as interesting. We think it wouldn't be. We will admit, though, that we like the Don Draper storyline; it's probably the only thing that's saved the show, but sadly, again, we have to be honest. As handsome and appealing as Jon Hamm is, we're not sure if he really has the acting chops to pull off such a complicated characterization. If you don't agree, then please let us know the last time Jon Hamm had an expression other than tight lips and cold, dark eyes. He's like watching a wax dummy each week; his face never changes, nor the emotional range of his acting. We'll keep watching "Mad Men", but we're not expecting much to improve at this point.