TV REVIEW: 2010 EMMY AWARDS

Let's Call It a Mixed Bag

By: Josh Moorhead

August 31, 2010

It started off with a lot of hutzpah and the excitement of possibilities. It slowly slogged down into tedium. This year’s Emmys ended up feeling like more or less a lost opportunity — pun perhaps intended, at least for this guy. In all fairness, things started out with a bang that probably made people nationwide want to leap from their couches and recliners. Jimmy Fallon’s opener was strong as they come in the form of the ultimate episode of Glee, where he and some of their cast, as well as Tina Fey, Jorge Garcia, Joel McHale, Jon Hamm, and others got their giddy wailing voices on for a rendition of “Born to Run.” It transitioned from pre-taped segment to live onstage extravaganza. Fallon didn’t rest for a moment from the time it finished, strapping on a guitar and doing a monologue about the evening’s event and recent TV news, taking a specifically choice dig at NBC about this year’s infamous late-night fiasco. Want to know where the TV industry sides? Conan was in attendance. Jay was not. Ruh-roh Scoob.

Herein lies the trouble. Some of the biggest possible story-lines that could have emerged from the night were side-stepped. Conan didn’t win for his version of the The Tonight Show. Honestly, minus Lost‘s possible swan song statue grab, this may be the only reason I and others watched. Instead, the award for Best Variety Series went, for the eighth year in a row, to The Daily Show. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In a while, Daily Show and Colbert Report might be taught in classrooms as essential parts of our era and will definitely be covered in the Communications halls of colleges for decades to come. I’ve gone on before about how political bent or right or wrongness aside, these shows are important. But like Al Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman and oh, I dunno, not anything before that, sometimes awards are given out as condolences, compensation for past oops-es, or larger posthumous congratulations or notices. Conan really should have won for this reason. His taking to stage and grabbing the Emmy on NBC for the show they canceled in the worst way possible would have been historic, at least in the context of these things…

“These things” being awards shows. Especially in the midst of the great recession, it’s harder to relate to the be-tuxed and be-jeweled rich and famous as they pat themselves on the collective back for a job well done. It’s curious, at least, how the Emmy’s have a category awarding the Best Award Show. To anyone whose job or wages have been cut at the local auto plant, it might as well all be as real-world relative or helpful as a girl having an imaginary tea party. But it’s not that such categories don’t make sense, and that some form of congratulations isn’t deserved. The amount of work that goes into any show is daunting, particularly one like a live awards telecast or the opening to an Olympic ceremony, for example. For all the griping about how celebrities get payed bank to “do nothing,” many of them work as hard or harder than anyone else.

Let me peel back the illusion by a smidgen. Glee, which won an actor trophy as well as a director trophy, most notably, was hard back at work on Monday morning before I was…and I clock in at 7:00 a.m. Joel McHale, who was at the Emmy’s, acted in commercial spots during it and still managed to host E!’s The Soup the previous Friday, had Community shooting again just as early, and the dude is still jet-setting across the country to do stand-up. Of course, these people make a lot of money in the process, but they’re still busting arse. And the Emmys that get handed out to the people we see on the show are maybe more reward for the people we don’t — the PAs, the set builders and dressers, the office assistants who pull 14-hour days on a half-hour weekly… It’s still work; it’s just different.

That said, it’d be nice if the returning soldier from Iraq this week got the fanfare that the Emmys did. Or person Y in city X for working doubles and pinching pennies just to put dinners on the kids’ table. Then again, in reality, person Y and the returning Iraqi soldier still have their favorite celebs, shows, entertainments — which, in their own way, are necessary (see Daily Show), so the wheel goes round and round.

Getting back to the rungs on that wheel, let’s observe Mr. Pacino. He won his second Emmy for his second HBO project, You Don’t Know Jack, a biopic about Jack Kevorkian. One of the biggest surprises of the night, for me anyway, was that Dr. Jack was in attendance and just how public perception seems to have changed in the 15 years or so since he dominated headlines. Art is good for marking the time this way, but by the time the show got to these categories, the drama and mini-series stuff, a.k.a. as more accents and Brit actors were showing up in clips, the show was dragging and had lost its initial rocket propelled take off to settle into orbit. Potential surprises and narratives gave way to the old guard and the typical, which were mostly for the tele-file anyway. Temple Grandin, another HBO telepic, did big, but how many people have seen it? Lost went away completely empty-handed which, admitting my bias, seems almost impossible, at least in the directing category, where Jack Bender lost for the finale to Dexter. But I’ve never seen Dexter, so how could I know? That’s the thing with the Emmys — after a while, it’s a little too specific, there’s just too much to see, and so much that’s chosen doesn’t have the widest breadth of audience. The Oscars have suffered from this too and have expanded their Best Picture category to include some blockbusters, but indies still rule the day.

When it was all said and done, even the Emmys’ best chance to capture the audience, the Best Comedy category, was an inevitable split. It has been an exciting year for television, but Glee and Modern Family split right down the middle, leaving half the Emmy-watchers unhappy. Modern Family won deservedly, but Glee could have just in the same way. There’s always next year, where the Emmys will be challenged to stay fresh again as the same projects are nominated in the same categories with many of the same winners. That’s the other problem with the Emmys — nothing’s new. Top Chef winning Best Reality Show was a “huge shock” apparently, but to who? Only so many people follow the Emmys and the industry that closely. Mostly people want their tastes to be rewarded, and when they aren’t, the whole shebang can begin to taste sour.

NBC did give it their best shot. It was the first time I watched since Conan hosted what seems like a different world ago, and Fallon is an inherently likable, good-natured talent. Hopefully more audiences follow him to his version of Late Night. But over all, let’s call it a mixed bag. It’s kind of a strange time for glitz and for TV as it grows more and more specific. In a way, that’s why Modern Family is a deserved win — it’s a rare, uniting, feel-good family show that, like oodles of shows before, is “saving the sitcom.” And NBC didn’t do much but save the audience from last year. They added a few hundred thousand viewers and got the accolade of being the most-watched Emmys in four years, but still about the same. Call it all an “eh.”