Monday, September 24, 2012

Emmy Night Has Come and Gone

It always drives me crazy that the Emmy voters love shows and especially performers I don't, and they love them over and over and over again. John Larroquette, Cloris Leachman, Rhea Perlman and Michael Richards, I'm still looking at you. Yes, I love Ed Asner. So his pile of Emmys plus all those wins for fabulous West Wing, fabulous Hill Street Blues and fabulous Mad Men are fine by me. They're almost enough to make me think there is merit in the Emmys, after all. Almost.

Last night, with Jon Cryer nabbing Best Actor in a Comedy... I am definitely tipped over onto I Hate the Emmys side. With that one award, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences showed exactly how irrelevant they are. So very, very.

That's why I'm not going to talk about who won what. Except for Cryer and the Homeland wins and, as always, handing out statuettes to the random movie stars who dropped by (Kevin Costner and Tom Berenger, this time), it was pretty much the same as last year. Feel free to find whatever it was I said about last year's awards and just lather, rinse, repeat.

Let's talk about something more fun. The fashion! As always, the Tom & Lorenzo site has a terrific rundown of who wore what, with big, glossy photos, good and bad. They noted all the yellow on the red carpet, and that was hard to miss, what with Julianne Moore, Julie Bowen and Claire Danes all winning and all showing off neon yellow in different shades.

I liked how Moore looked in her big, sweepy Christian Dior gown that was the color of lemon meringue pie, and Bowen looked great on camera, too, in a fitted dress that was more of an acid yellow shade.

Claire Danes... Not so much. Her dress was a strange, dark mustard yellow that doesn't look good on anybody, plus it made her hair look green, like she'd been swimming in too many chlorinated pools. The dress itself was shapeless and baggy and not at all flattering. Yes, I realize she's pregnant and trying to camouflage it. But there are better ways to do that than wearing a sack dress in a hideous shade.

In the end, I'd say the battle of the yellows goes to Julianne Moore. With that fire-red hair set off against lemon yellow, with the way her skirt moved and flowed, she was a showstopper.

My favorite dress of the night, though, was on Ginnifer Goodwin. It was a strange orange flocked thing, and I hate orange as a rule. But this looked great. Different, eye-catching, fun. And totally her.

Others who looked fab include Amy Poehler, snazzy in a sparkly black dress with lots of cleavage, and Tina Fey in a stunning purple Vivienne Westwood gown with a Byzantine bodice.

Well, now that I've refused to talk about the awards and summed up the fashion, what's left? Jimmy Kimmel. He was aw'ight. Not that funny. Some of the bits were painful. Same old, same old.

John Stewart's swearing was probably the most entertaining thing that happened all night.


  1. Nicely said, Julie. I try not to jump on the "but they award the same things/people every year" wagon, but it was impossible to ignore that this year. It's not that the ultimate choices are hideous or untalented, but the aggregate message was "I can't be bothered to actually, you know, watch any TV, so I'll just vote for whatever I know has already been judged award-worthy and be done with it." Tom Berenger and Kevin Kostner are movie stars slumming on TV, so they must be good. Julia Louis-Dreyfus? -- hey, I loved her in that thing she used to do, she's always great, sure why not? Jon Cryer was gracious and tactful during a hard situation last year, he's a good guy, let's reward him. and on and on.

    Almost nothing felt like somebody actually paid attention and thought for themselves. "Homeland," OK. That was a bright spot (including Claire Danes and Damian Lewis). And Tom Bergeron for reality host. That's about it.

    And it all goes back to the stupidity of nominations, of course. We've actually been in a wonderful period for comedy series, but you'd never know it by the ignoring of "Happy Endings," and "Community," and anything about "Parks and Recreation" aside from (belatedly) Amy Poehler. Oh well. Whining is so unattractive, so I'll shut up now.

  2. I realize that it isn't a new complaint. I've been complaining at least since John Larroquette! And every year with Alec Baldwin, overlooking Steve Carell, and then the last two years, we got Jim Parsons, and now this year, Jon Cryer... My patience is OVAH.

    Unless they decide to give something to Ed Asner again, that is.

  3. It's true. But thinking back before the John Larroquette era while there were repeat winners, they weren't so relentless or inevitable. I decided to look back at the 7 years The Mary Tyler Moore Show was on the air to see who was winning in comedy.

    1971: Jack Klugman, Jean Stapleton, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper.

    1972: Carroll O'Connor, Stapleton, Asner, Harper. OK, 3 repeats, but then

    1973: Klugman, MTM herself, Ted Knight, Harper.

    1974: Alan Alda, MTM, Rob Reiner, Cloris Leachman.

    1975: Tony Randall, Harper (for her own series), Asner, Betty White.

    1976: Jack Albertson (Chico etc), MTM, Knight, White.

    1977: O'Connor, Bea Arthur, Gary Burghoff, Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman).

    And for series, All in the Family won the first 3 of those years, then MASH once, then MTM for its last 3 seasons. So yes, some recurrence, but the streaks didn't go on forever, and there would be others in between, as if people were actually paying attention to who was good that year.

    Then, because Julie and I get verklempt at the thought of Lou Grant (which ran the next 5 years), I'll mention that in those years, Ed won twice for playing Lou, Nancy Marchand won 4 times for Mrs. Pynchon, and the series itself won twice (with Rockford Files winning once and Hill Street Blues arriving in the last two of those years and getting lots for its actors too).