Michael LownEmmy Recap: The Ups and Downs (Mostly Downs)
August 30th 2010 13:31
I'm gonna admit it that I don't get nearly excited for award shows and red carpet events like I did when I was a kid. Nowadays, it's next to impossible for me to get that much of an interest. For that reason, I made up my mind early on that I was going to skip the Emmy Award Ceremony that aired last Sunday night, only to turn it on periodically for some of the more major awards. However, somewhere around 8:20 pm, with nothing else better to watch (and, admittedly nothing better to do), I turned on the ceremony and was treated to the greatest example of "same old, same old": you get the same glitzy production with a couple of bad jokes thrown in and no major shocks throughout the whole show.
Some of the winners ranged from painfully obvious (Bryan Cranston winning his third consecutive win, while Mad Men won it's "god-i-actually-forget-how-ma ny-times-it-won-this thing' consecutive win) to modestly obvious like Jane Lynch (if you thought she wasn't going to win best supporting actress, welcome to the planet earth) and Modern Family (it's win as best comedy series would've been more of a surprise if the whole ceremony wasn't show dedicated to kiss its ass the entire run while giving the previous winner, 30 Rock, a bad case of the cold shoulder). There were some pleasant surprises (Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad and Jim Parsons of the Big Bang Theory), but the only really surprise in the acting category itself was Archie Panjabi win as best supporting actress in drama series The Good Wife, mainly due to the fact I had no idea who the hell she was until tonight.
Others winners of the night included Edie Falco, Al Pacino, Claire Danes, as well as Tom Hank's miniseries The Pacific, and the HBO movies Temple Gradin (a film which I've never seen, but looks to be the exact kind of award-baiting crap that the voters go crazy for), and You Don't Know Jack.
As for the ceremony itself, it couldn't have been any simpler. You have the same scenario we've been accustomed to for years: the same good-looking presenters going through some bad-comedy routine before mercifully going to the nominations. Good examples of this included Will Arnet and Keri Russell (who seemed embarrassed by the extreme crappiness of their joke) along with the cast of True Blood, with Alexander "holy crap, is he really that tall?" Skarsgard awkwardly standing next to newlyweds Anne Paquin and Stephen Moyer. Probably the only funny bit the whole night was the sketch involving the cast of Modern Family, which I'm pretty sure was not written by the ceremony's team of writers.
Not helping in the comedy department was Jimmy Fallon, the night's host. In an obvious attempt to help promote his late night show from NBC (who a desperate after the whole Leno/Conan fiasco a few months back), the only thing that Fallon was able to show was his ability to constantly snicker at his jokes (an trait he's had since his tenure over at Saturday Night Live), and his skills as a decent singer, which included walking up and down the audience aisles with a guitar while everyone else in the theater does their best to be amused by this lame gag. This all culminated in awful bit with Fallon impersonating Elton John and Green Day while paying "tribute" to the shows that have had their series finale. This was so bad I actually had to walk out of the room to try to get out of my mind.
Another thing that surprised was that the thing was actually how the show was able to stay on time this time around, surprising considering how all award shows have the tendency going into overtime. Actually, it's not so surprising considering how their grand plan for this was making the award speeches as short and quick as possible. While I'm not the biggest fan of award speeches, some of these people will never get this kind of fan and attention again. Don't they deserve to have their fifteen minutes of fame sink instead of having some assistant director wave them off (it was actually kind of funny seeing how some of the winners reactions were to that). You'd think that the directors and writers would cut the real excess fat, which includes pointless montages (you could save yourself twenty minutes with that alone) and the ten minute session of "Hollywood kissing it's own ass over how great they are" during George Clooney's whole Humanitarian Award speech squeezed in the middle of the ceremony.
Overall this Emmy ceremony was just as bland, unfunny, and forgettable as the previous. It's a good thing I ranted about this now. By tonight, I'll probably have forgotten the whole thing.
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