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Techtite's TV Reviews! |
"Thanks to a ridiculous round stage, at least half of the audience had to spend three hours staring at James Gandolfini's butt. Unless you're Mrs. Gandolfini, that's not cool." ---from the review
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The "Honorable Mentions"...No review can cover all the moments of a three hour awards telecast. Here's some of the things worth mentioning that didn't make it in the review. ---Note to Macy's; if you want to show us how many celebrities are at your store, show them one at a time. The oft- repeated commercial of all celebrities, all the time, shopping at Macy's, seemingly lasted forever. ---Note to writers: always prepare a good speech! The writer for The Office said something about not being a "little red hen" and lost us. ---GOOD Idea: showing each talk show host's memoriam to the late Tom Snyder. BAD idea: preceding this poignant, heartfelt piece with a slapstick collage of nearly every political joke by every talk show host since the Reagan administration. Apparently, talk show hosts love to joke about Bush, love to joke about Hillary, love to joke about Al Gore, but gosh, they really miss Tom Snyder. Indeed... ---Best Joke at Absentee's Expense: Jon Stewart's "Ricky Gervais couldn't be here tonight so instead I'm giving this award to my friend Steve Carell." Steve's jovial run to the stage shouting "We did it! Wooo!" made the joke even better. ---Best Visual Gag That's Funnier Than The Joke: host Ryan Seacrest mused that the TV series Weeds had "an amazing after party! ...isn't that right, Paula?" Abdul's coy smile made the whole joke worth it. ---Best Playful Jab To the Round Stage: Jon Stewart quipping, "What a great show THIS PART of the audience has seen tonight." ---Best Perception Award: to anyone who can explain to us what the heck it was that poor Robert Duvall was TRYING to say, when praising "above, you know, above the border there, the five Chinese girls were really the magic potion that held this thing together." ---We're Glad They Didn't Censor YOU Award: Jolie Fisher asked co-star Brad Garret what he thought of her cleavage-baring dress. Quipped Garret: "You should see it from up here!" ---Terry O'Quinn, as Best Supporting Actor (Lost), had a "Locke"-style quip during his speech when musing what it must be like to "bake up a sheet of cookies on [Desperate Housewives] and get one of their checks!" ---In case you wondered what Sally Field said that was cut: "If [women] ruled the world, there'd be no ***damn war." Think about that when watching the upcoming movie about Queen Elisabeth's "golden age," which, to follow Sally's logic, was the most pacifistic era the world's ever known. |
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The 58th Annual Emmy Awards
First things first: the round stage. Talk about reinventing the wheel. The intended idea: an audience with no "left" or "right," unified as one. That's a pretty nifty idea, guys. Why not try selling this idea to the people behind the stage, while they're forced to stare at James Gandolfini's butt for three hours? As long as there is a "front" stage, there is a back. Some imbecile seated nominees, for The 58th Annual Emmy Awards, in the back. What was someone thinking here?
At least Emmy loves Roots. The whole cast of that classic 1977 mini-series was reunited on stage, for a standing ovation. Emmy also loves Tony Bennett, giving "Tony Bennett: An American Classic" honors for the program itself (Best Variety/Musical Program) and director Rob Marshall. They even had a separate musical number starring Tony Bennett and Christina Aguilera. These were all nice moments; perhaps the only moments that cannot, somehow, be completely ridiculed at this year's telecast. No, wait; the moments were still viewable by only half of the audience. The other half had to watch everyone's butts, like they did all night long. Well; I tried. There's no way to ignore this year's flaws.
Fortunately, Lewis Black was also a guest presenter, offering the funniest yet most brutally honest monologue of the evening. Among the quips we can all identify with: what is the point of interrupting a tense moment of our favorite show, by reminding us "what's on next" at the bottom of the screen? As Black mused; do they expect us to stop watching and go get a pencil? For that matter: what is the point of final credits, if they are squeezed to the side of the screen, so you can't even read them? These are the sort of television jokes that Emmy night should be filled with.
Best comedy was a hard sell this year. They gave it to 30 Rock, which is cool, I suppose. When accepting the award, Tina Fey herself mused that the series should thank its "dozens and dozens of viewers." That's the sitcom world in 2007; the Emmy winner is barely watched and Family Guy is celebrating seven seasons on the air. Top honors went to Sopranos, as Best Dramatic
Series. In the
words of the last song ever played on Sopranos: Emmy clearly "paid
anything to roll the dice just one more time," because no way
can you tell me the final season of Sopranos was terribly
satisfying.
If there's one thing the telecast itself did correctly, though, is to not take its three hour "limit" too seriously. The under-half-hour overtime was hardly detrimental and was simply a sign of how someone, somewhere, was having too much fun to pay attention to the time. If only I was one of those people having too much fun, everything would have been okay...
Opinions? Speak your mind in Techtite's Letters Page!
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Burnout
Near
Miss
Small
Crater
Large
Crater
Deep
Impact
Of course, what should I expect from an
award show introduced by Family Guy? "Stewie" and "Brian" tell us how ABC
has stupid
sitcoms, NBC has humorless sitcoms, and CBS is
devoid of any good shows at all. Yet the only "problem" these FOX
caricatures found with their host network was...Sanjaya? Ah, yes. Brilliant television, FOX has.
Where else is Vanished cancelled, while a
sardonic baby and his S.O.B. dog celebrate a 7th season on the air?
Presenters
were good only if they ignored the teleprompter. Take, for example, Kyra
Sedgwick, Glenn Close, and Mary Louise-Parker, who praised powerful
women roles on TV...only to jovially ridicule Mary for her role as a
drug peddling soccer mom. Maybe they should've asked host Ryan Seacrest
how well that joke would work; he tried the
exact same joke, two hours earlier. You would think
that if three actresses were to extol how "powerful" their characters
are on TV, they could at least remember what was said two hours ago.
And
the Emmy went to...? Katherine Heigl's win as Best Supporting
Actress in a Drama was made more memorable when the
camera caught her mouthing "S**t!" seconds after her name was
announced. Upon coming on stage, she continued her refreshing humility
by musing that even her own mom didn't think she had "a chance at hell
at winning," She later praised mom saying ''This [Emmy] is because of
you. I wouldn't want to be here without you.'' That, my friends, is Emmy
gold.
Not that all speeches were as golden. Sally Field
(Best Actress, Drama) seemingly felt her Emmy "belonged" to a higher cause. Her Emmy "belonged" to all the actors of her show. It
"belonged" to
all the writers of the show. Yet even more, it "belonged" to all the
mothers of America, whose children are fighting in war. Of course, none of these people will ever get
to hold Sally's Emmy, so it's hard to not see this speech as the cliché
bunk that Sally Field always spews forth, whenever someone stupidly awards her
something. Your Emmy is very nifty, dear, though it's just another Emmy.
Get off the stage please.
Yet it was
the last time they could honor a show which has, in no small way,
totally changed television for all time. We also must give some praise
to the Broadway cast of Jersey Boy, whose salute to Sopranos
was a show stopper. Immediately afterwards, the whole cast of the series come on stage
and bowed, to a standing ovation. It was a very honorable moment..although it
did douse the "spark" of the moment, when they came on stage again, for their Emmy. What can I say:
they wanted to honor Sopranos one
last time, and they did, though it's a shame that Heroes had to
be snubbed to do it.