Emmys Continue the Year of the Underdog
Tina Fey and her gold.
This spring, when the Oscars overwhelmingly rewarded independence and commercial ambivalence by raining gold on “No Country For Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Michael Clayton,” it was clear that there was an expanding gap between commercial filmmaking and the movies that collect trophies. Pundits at Fox News even tried to start an ancillary battle in the culture wars, claiming that critics and the Academy were “out of touch” with most moviegoers. Of course, that was before “The Dark Knight” closed the gap and people started talking about a posthumous statuette for Heath Ledger.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise that the Emmy Awards, ironically hosted by noxious and obnoxious reality TV hosts representing the dark path much of television currently traverses, rewarded shows that relatively few people see. The superlative “30 Rock” won Best Comedy Series and its stars, Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, won the major acting awards for comedy. “Mad Men,” a relatively low-rated AMC show that I and most critics cannot stop talking about even under threat of a gag, won Best Drama, and then Bryan Cranston, star of another AMC show that doesn’t do even the traffic “Mad Men” enjoys, “Breaking Bad,” pulled an upset over the favorite, Jon Hamm. (Cranston, formerly of “Malcolm in the Middle,” is great in this series about a high school teacher dying of cancer who becomes a meth kingpin to pay his family’s debts, but Hamm’s shaded and shadowy portrayal of Don Draper in “Mad Men” should have gotten this one) And Glenn Close won for FX’s “Damages,” which means basic cable and one of the lowest-rated sit-coms on the fourth-place network carried the evening.
So I wonder if anyone else saw the irony in having the awards show run by a gaggle of reality hosts led by Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Jeff Probst goofing around like high schoolers doing a student council skit. They were embarrassing, but there’s always hope that a few “Dancing With the Stars” fans, lured by their Bergeron love, will tune in to “Mad Men” or “Breaking Bad,” or will finally give the genius of “30 Rock” the look it so richly deserves.
Behold, the winners:
COMEDY SERIES
“30 Rock”
DRAMA SERIES
“Mad Men”
MINISERIES
“John Adams”
REALITY COMPETITION PROGRAM
“The Amazing Race”
VARIETY, MUSIC, OR COMEDY SERIES
“The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”
MADE-FOR-TV MOVIE
“Recount”
ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Alec Baldwin, “30 Rock”
ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Tina Fey, “30 Rock”
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Jeremy Piven, “Entourage”
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Jean Smart, “Samantha Who?”
GUEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Tim Conway, “30 Rock”
GUEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Kathryn Joosten, “Desperate Housewives”
ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Bryan Cranston, “Breaking Bad”
ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Glenn Close, “Damages”
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Zeljko Ivanek, “Damages”
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Dianne Wiest, “In Treatment”
GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Glynn Turman, “In Treatment”
GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Cynthia Nixon, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”
ACTOR IN A MINISERIES OR A MOVIE
Paul Giamatti, “John Adams”
ACTRESS IN A MINISERIES OR A MOVIE
Laura Linney, “John Adams”
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A MINISERIES OR A MOVIE
Tom Wilkinson, “John Adams”
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A MINISERIES OR MOVIE
Eileen Atkins, “Cranford”
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What an incredibly powerful snub to network TV, and a testament to the increasingly fragmented nature of entertainment.
It’s kinda sad, in a way, that collective media experiences of the past — whether something as monumental as the moon landing or as comparatively ephemeral as the final episode of “M*A*S*H” — are pretty much extinct. Part of that is due to the widening of mass media, of course, but another part is likely due to the crap that constitutes so much of network TV, at least when compared to what cable has to offer.