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THE DISASTER CALLED THE EMMY TELECAST  THE EMMY ...it was a meltdown Sunday night! |
Three Hours of Tedium
Wasted Everyone's Time
of TheColumnists.com
The only way any person watching Sunday night's 60th Annual Emmy Awards telecast on ABC could have ended the evening happy was to go home with an Emmy and a notarized permission slip from the TV Academy to hock it at a pawn shop the following morning.
EGAD! What an awful show that was! Aware that this will signal significant brain damage to many readers, I'm confessing that I've watched maybe 25 or 30 of these telecasts over the years--and this, believe me, brethren, was the absolute worst!
The person who dreamed up the idea of having five hosts of "reality" programs collectively serve as hosts of the Emmys Sunday night deserves to be expelled from the TV Academy and banished from public life the way Donald Rumsfeld was booted out of the Bush administration.
I didn't even smile once during any of their attempts to be funny. Howie Mandel, who used to earn a living as a comedian, was NEVER funny in his life. Sunday night he wasn't just unfunny, but was obnoxious to boot. And Heidi Klum? Well, if George Romero wants to do yet another remake of "Night of the Living Dead," he should seriously consider her for a role. She has gone beyond mannikin and is now pure zombie. And the fashions she wore? They resembled grave wrappings. Ugh!
Want to hear about another highlight? How about Josh Groban singing a medley of all the worst TV theme songs of all time? Here's a guy with a big, marvelous voice. What kind of crackpot decided he should sing bits from "The Simpsons" and "South Park" theme songs? I would have listened if he sang more than two bars of "The Love Boat" theme, but definitely not the themes from "The Jeffersons" and "Happy Days." Yikes! This was the dumbest idea in Emmy history. It was like watching Fred Astaire break-dancing on "American Bandstand." Yuck!
And that dreadful "reunion" of stars from "Laugh In"! There they were, opening those little doors in a wall and reading nominations. I could possibly understand Ruth Buzzi and Joanne Worley accepting any excuse to be on TV again, but Lily Tomlin should be ashamed of herself. I have been thoroughly gratified to have survived 30 years without having to hear anybody say, "Sock it to me!" Now I have to start all over again.
Don Rickles was always a gamble. He could humiliate himself without prompting, but his appearance Sunday night, obviously in his dotage at 82, was just plain sad. Along the way, he managed to win an Emmy for Best Performance in a variety program for his "Mr. Warmth" special.
And who decided we'd be impressed to have Oprah Winfrey come out at the start of the show to give what amounted to the keynote address? What a bore that was! But I guess it was a lot cheaper than paying somebody to create a lively thematic dance number that would have started the show off with a bang.
No, this was a devastatingly awful program that dribbled on interminably. The list of awfulness events beggars the imagination. And nobody has done anything to get rid of the worst things about the Emmys, like 30 "producers" coming on stage to accept awards at the same time. Or categories that mix bewildering assortments of competition into one slot. Or people who win six years in a row in the same category.
Now is the time to terminate the Emmys as a TV event. It should be an industry event where winners can thank everybody without hearing the orchestra start playing "get off, you dummy!" cues before they've even covered the people who did catering on the set. Television now has so many channels that half the viewing audience has never heard of the people and shows that win. Mediocrity is celebrated so blatantly that nobody much cares anyway.
But YOU want to know who won? OK. Here are the major winners in brief:
Best Drama: "Mad Men."
Best Comedy: "30 Rock."
Best Miniseries: "John Adams."
Best Competitive Reality Show: "The Amazing Race."
Best Reality Host: Jeff Probst of "Survivor."
Lead Actress, Comedy: Tina Fey of "30 Rock."
Lead Actor, Comedy: Alec Baldwin of "30 Rock."
Lead Actress, Drama: Glenn Close of "Damages."
Lead Actor, Drama: Bryan Cranston of "Breaking
Bad."
Lead Actress, Movie or Miniseries: Laura Linney of "John
Adams."
Lead Actor, Movie or Miniseries: Paul Giamatti of "John
Adams."
If the ratings for this 60th anniversary edition were as poor as they've been in recent years, maybe the networks finally will get the message. Nobody wants to watch this anymore, so just give us highlights next year. That ought to fit neatly in between commercials somewhere.
RON MILLER is the former national president of the Television Critics Assn. and was a TV columnist for Knight Ridder Newspapers and the San Jose Mercury News from 1977-99. He has written for TV Guide, both U.S. and Canadian editions, and is currently the TV columnist for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The Emmy image is courtesy of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. All rights reserved. This column first posted Sept. 22, 2008.
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