Stuff I Learned From Watching the Emmys
1.) Jon Stewart not only can do topical stuff daily, he can do it on the fly- like this whole fucking awards show!
2.) When you shut out CBS in Outstanding Drama Series, it will put in its resources in making sure its SHOWTIME subsidiary gets honored.
One of the major notable trends of the nominations was that there was a complete absence of network dramas thanks to FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS ending and THE GOOD WIFE, a well-oiled machine as it is, looking a bit stale compared to its cable counterparts. But it also left an opening for network honchos to concentrate on their cable subsidiaries more than ever before. Enter Les Moonves who goes from holding the network drama flag to making sure freshman show HOMELAND got a chance to not just dethrone MAD MEN but be the first honored series on SHOWTIME ever.
Do not get me wrong. HOMELAND was good television. It seems like the people behind 24 got to spread their wings to make a more interesting, appealing show than the restriction yet overextended life network television would have brought to it. Well-acted, intensely directed and written, and a part of the zeitgeist of America without too many of the moral gray areas that the superior BREAKING BAD has going for it. I would have given BREAKING BAD the series nod for Season 4 an EMMY for what HOMELAND received but Damian Lewis and Claire Danes are worthy winners. And hey, Mandy Patinkin (holla!) should have gotten nominated too.
3.) The Emmys will acknowledge the hip talked about shows but keep a distance unless part of those shows include an English actor of stage and screen prestige.
Two programs that got the internet buzzing be it for criticism or positive reception, HBO’s quarterlife crisis comedy GIRLS and ITV cum PBS Edwardian soap opera costume drama DOWNTON ABBEY, both got a bunch of nominations, acknowledging the good work by both only two honor Dame Maggie Smith in a really undeserving BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES Emmy. Yes, the Dowager Countess deals the zingers aplenty- a trope not terribly original in any TV genre format. I could not help but be very cynical of her selection being just a Lifetime Achievement Award than being better than Christina Hendricks in MAD MEN, Anna Gunn in BREAKING BAD, or Christine Baranski and Archie Punjabi in THE GOOD WIFE.
What exactly was the whole point of putting poor PBS, terribly limited in finances, on a blow-out Emmy campaign if it just meant acknowledging somebody for their work that they would have given to her anyway had she just read the phone book? The second series was a messy and soapy in the worst sense but Michelle Dockery did fine work as did the not-nominated Elizabeth McGovern (who I would have put in over Smith).
GIRLS is a more understandable in that there is still, after it has long finished its incredible first season, an air of the reflexive backlash to the show getting ordained immediately by the press. At this point GIRLS has been misunderstood by more people who saw ads from a marketing campaign that twisted the context of certain scenes (e.g. “The voice of my generation” line that did not include the context of our heroine Hannah Horvath being on opium when she said those infamous lines used in the marketing of GIRLS) than people who actually watched an episode. That and the raw quality of the show’s sex scenes (how the third-wave feminist blogs like Jezebel.com did not embrace this show’s portrayal of body image is beyond me) and that it was for a certain age group of a certain area of the country (New York) likely alienated predominantly Los Angeles voting block. You may argue about SEINFELD or SEX & THE CITY getting Emmys but those shows were still broader and more accessible. Could GIRLS ever win its major categories or will it be closer to LOUIE in getting writing and directing nods in the future and that will be its biggest awards while its broader more accessible cousin (but kindred spirit) show NEW GIRL can be the young, hip show that will eventually supplant MODERN FAMILY in the major Comedy categories?
4.) Amy Poehler’s self-deprecating, endearing stunts make her worthy of Emmys in itself. Can she please host?
Seriously, every year it seems the Best Actresses in a Comedy series thanks to Poehler’s participation, as well as fellow SNL alums in Kristin Wiig, Tina Fey, and Julia Louis Dreyfus, bring life to a category that is being dominated by the safe, increasingly uninspired MODERN FAMILY that thankfully stuffs the ballots for Supporting than Lead categories.
5.) The “shocking” awards of the night go way of low-to-middle brow, uninspired, lazy choice rather than a middle-to-high brow inspired choice. Essentially, it went exactly the way the other winners were outside of a few categories in Drama.
Is it safe to say that Jon Cryer winning was the shock of the night? Everybody including him was shocked- mostly because of the unbelievably over-extended penance and goodwill he has received for now anchoring that Charlie Sheen still haunting the country on over a dozen cable stations in syndication.
There were no real shocks. GAME CHANGE, a fine enough regurgitation of the 2008 election from a Republican perspective that managed to make McCain look ‘stoic’, winning over a pretty lousy and dubiously submitted ‘Mini-Series or TV movie’ categories is a bit surprising that it won something besides Julianne Moore getting rightfully honored. It was not a really strong year for the category with THE HOUR and APPROPRIATE ADULT each stupidly being shut out.
Shockingly, in a boffo era of television the TV movie and mini-series categories are barely filling out even when placing British export series falsely under the pretense of a mini-series that got more noticeable when two American programs, MISSING and AMERICAN HORROR STORY, did the same thing. Maybe the next step is making pilots that were initially scrapped as series to just be broadcast as a TV movies?
You also could barely tell that television is in a really excellent place in Comedy, especially when one show has monopolized their categories. The nominations of NEW GIRL, Merritt Wever in NURSE JACKIE, GIRLS, LOUIE, PARKS & REC, COMMUNITY’s “REMEDIAL CHAOS THEORY” episode all essentially just won by virtue of the fact their shows were nominated. Louis CK winning for writing was his Emmy, even if there is the whole issue of the fact that episode, this is subjective, was neither the best piece of writing from that show nor the best in the category. Can the Emmys ever return to have the shock and unpredictability of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT beating EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND? There seemed to a lot of boredom and banality toward MODERN FAMILY winning than really fervent backlash. Will there be new great comedies (there looks to be plenty of ‘nice’ comedies out but nothing really under the faux-groundbreaking pretense that MODERN FAMILY had been bizarrely ordained with in its first episode) or a currently existing show like NEW GIRL, HAPPY ENDINGS, or PARKS & RECREATION becoming the show for people tired of a three-time winner to ride on and dethrone MODERN FAMILY? Who knows, but if MAD MEN can go from the cat’s meow to empty-handed in a less than a calendar year then let’s work it over to the Comedy side.
6.) How much do Emmy Episodes Submissions mean? Anything? Did it cost certain people on a couple of AMC programs awards?
So let’s break this down: Each Outstanding Drama and Comedy Series has to submit six episodes to Emmy voters. Each acting nominee needs to present one. That can cover more than half a show on cable’s run which goes to show how powerful the cable dramas are in terms of awards prestige over network dramas but shows at the same time how broad and flexible comedies can be where there was a great mix of network comedies involved. That VEEP managed to get an OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES nod but not a writing nod despite submitting six of its eight episodes for series shows the general weirdness and inconsistency of the Emmy awards. MODERN FAMILY gets zero writing nominations but still their six episodes is good enough for a three-peat. So do submission episodes mean anything?
I feel like in perhaps Dramas it does but like I mentioned before, in Comedy, the inconsistencies because of one show’s monopolization brought an incredible imbalance to the whole category which leaves OUTSTANDING WRITING ‘as the hip show ghetto’.
The drama category this year was for some a ‘repudiation’ of an ‘inconsistent’, ’ too dark’, ‘too dour’, ‘too Megan Draper’ season of MAD MEN which to me is one of the dumbest armchair quarterback reasoning I have heard yet (and this comment will be directed to NPR’s Linda Holmes who rightfully got slammed by her own inner-circle of television writers). MAD MEN was going down thanks to its sister show BREAKING BAD getting equal prestige and as mentioned before, CBS/SHOWTIME synergy left an opening to an already well-praised, respected freshman show to take over as the new kid on the block. That and it had a great pilot and great finale that each got awards, and pilots generally do get Emmy nominations.
I mention whether or not episode submission choices could why a show like MAD MEN still does not have Emmy wins for acting. Last year, Elisabeth Moss and Jon Hamm submitted the stunning episode, “The Suitcase” that had them on equal-footing in the episode. Even though neither won last year, they both should have, it was almost a textbook example of an Emmy episode. This year had Moss, Hamm, and Christina Hendricks each submit “The Other Woman”. That just did not seem like a wise decision. Jared Harris submitted “Commissions & Fees” and even if that did not win him an Emmy it was the right episode to pick as it was all about his character Lane Pryce. Although the Peggy-Don elements of “The Other Woman” show are a good underscore of Peggy leaving the agency for herself while Joan essentially is now married to the agency, it was simply not their episode to submit. It was Christina Hendrick’s episode to submit and hers alone. Moss and Hamm could have both submitted “Far Away Places” because they had equal-footing with their co-stars, Jessica Pare and John Slattery, but “The Other Woman” was a Joan episode. Having Emmy voters look at that episode besides its writing and Christina Hendricks did no favors for any of the parties involved.
There was also the race between co-stars Aaron Paul and Giancarlo Esposito in BREAKING BAD that may have come down to episode selection. Paul wisely chose “END TIMES” while Esposito chose the ambitious “HERMANOS” with a performance that him nearly speaking in Spanish the whole time which for a non-native speaker like Esposito, was certainly challenging but not “the Gus episode” in the way “SALUD” or “BUG” or dare I say, “FACE OFF” was for BREAKING BAD fans like myself. It may have been too much of a reach for Emmy voters too with voters looking at subtitles as opposed to Jesse Pinkman in a huge moral dilemma of whether to kill his teacher or not.
7.) For character actors nowadays, the key to get awards is to write.
This was noticeable when Nat Faxon (BEN & KATE) and Jim Rash (COMMUNITY) won an Oscar for their screenplay in THE DESCENDANTS but seeing little Danny Strong (who had memorable, but brief appearances on BUFFY, THE GILMORE GIRLS, and MAD MEN) won for adapting GAME CHANGE, it showed a possible new trend. Considering the new breed of method actors is to cut into these characters actors work that now includes television in addition to film, maybe this is a wise career path for TV character actors.
8.) You can spell synergy without the letters A-B-C… or can you?
Good lord, you could tell which network this was on last night. Not since FOX had that hosting by committee that had all of them plugging their shows has their been something this blatantly infotainmentmercial about it. Jimmy Kimmel’s IN MEMORIAM segment was a lampooning tribute to his ABC late night show and MODERN FAMILY showcased the devil child known as Lilly #2 in ways more scathing than you could even say about Matthew Weiner did to the Megan character on MAD MEN. Again, can Amy Poehler and her SNL alum buddies host this thing, network synergy be damned?
