Some brief post-Emmy thoughts.
Ryan Seacrest, who’s only real talent, it seems, is his uncanny ability to keep a live event on time clearly doesn’t run as tight of a ship as we all thought. My DVR cut out before the Best Comedy and Best Drama awards were announced (though I guess we can hardly blame the guy entirely, as once the open wrapped he was barely seen. No complaints here, I suppose, though it would have been nice to see Tina Fey’s 30 Rock speech. Aside from missing the ending, I have to say, if you’re going to watch an award show, tape it. Exercising the ol’ four-arrow fast-forward during the endless mini-series/TV movie awards is an absolute blessing. I got through the entire three hours in about 50 minutes.
And speaking of miniseries. Their awards take up so much of this show and yet I have never met anyone who has actually watched one. More after the jump…
Things that worked:
- Lewis Black was surprisingly funny, though maybe it was just because he said a lot of things I (and I assume everyone who watches a lot of television) have been saying for a while now. The New York Times recap pointed out that a lot of this probably had to do with the looming writers strike.
- John Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Green Emmys” bit. It was funny almost exclusively because of the phrase “private jet sandwich” and then showed a picture of three jets stacked on top of each other.
- Steward and Colbert’s response to Ricky Gervais not being present to take home his award: giving it to Steve Carell… who then ran on stage and hugged them.
- The video for the writing nominations for Variety/Musical/Comedy. I don’t know when the shows started submitting these (I do remember in 2001, The Late Show was one of the last to adopt this practice), but it really makes things way more fun. The best were the Colbert crew punching him the face (with Colbert punching himself at the end), and Conan picking up a truck of illegal immigrants.
Things that didn’t work:
- The whole “in the round” thing was just annoying. It made every presenter (except for the freakishly giant Brad Garrett) look tiny — of course this is Hollywood and most of these people are tiny. Still, it didn’t work.
- The Raine Wilson/Kanye Don’t Forget the Lyrics (or Singing Bee… whatever one is on FOX) sketch was moderately funny, but ultimately just wreaked of shameless self promotion — for FOX and for Kanye (hey, man, you won already!).
- FOX suit’s itchy trigger finger with the mute button. Nothing was getting through. Too bad muting Katherine Heigl in the audience couldn’t keep us from seeing her say “Shit.”
- Kristin Bell sitting next to Masi Oka… she should be sitting next to ME.
- That stupid PDA video thing they were doing for the writing awards in comedy. What was that all about? We get it, you’re all rich and have a wide variety of pocket-based entertainment devices.
The awards:
- I’m happy for David Chase, Terry O’Quinn, Tony Bennett, Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, 30 Rock.
- I’m absolutely shocked that The Sopranos didn’t win any acting awards. I’m also shocked that The Daily Show won again and that Colbert lost again to a singer.
- If you’re going to have a reality show category, what’s the point in only awarding The Amazing Race — which has won every year since the category was invented.
- What’s up with James Spader? Seriously.
Honestly, the awards are so meaningless, and ultimately random. One category they’ll do the right thing, and the next they seem to just be throwing darts at a board. Of all the competition shows on television, The Emmys is the worst. Still, as a piece of entertainment it’s not that bad — if you have a fast-forward button.
