The (sigh) Emmys 2006

What kind of a god has a free Mint Condition concert happening the same time as the Emmys??

Granted, the Emmys are no great shakes this year--and I'm not just talking about the 15-second Ellen Burstyn debacle. See the SF Chronicle article, Do the Emmy voters even watch television? by Tim Goodman!

I'm gonna answer Tim's question: No. No, definitely not. No, definitely emphatically not. No, no, no freakin' way do they!

If the Emmy voters and their "blue ribbon panel"--formed, ironically, to keep the same ol' nominees from showing up on the Emmy dance card, when not only did exactly that happen, as so many former winners were in television projects this year, but also most of the newcomers who are keeping this continually more antiquated medium going were completely ignored--had actually watched TV this season, they'd have known that former winner Burstyn's performance was shorter than your standard Geico commercial and not have said that it was as good as the performances that the other four nominees put in relatively exponentially more time to show. Is a quarter of a minute of Burstyn worth as much as an hour or so of Cloris Leachman (imagine the prices Burstyn's agent can ask for in new projects with measurement figures like that!)?

I knew there was some serious Emmy nomination laziness when I heard Alfre Woodard's name as a nominee for "Desperate Housewives." Nothing against Alfre, I love her, and have ever since seeing her as one sexy and saucy woman in "Go Tell It On the Mountain." But Alfre, like Sting at the Grammys, is a Favorite. She has at least two Emmys already, that I can remember seeing her win. But believe me, "Housewives" did not give her anything Emmy-worthy to do. There appears to have been a lot of behind-the-scenes chaos with the series this year, starting with and probably not limited to the recasting of the role of one of her sons on the show. I almost didn't watch "Housewives" when it started because I saw no minority housewife (it took me a while to take a good look at the ad plastered on the side of the buses and see that Eva was Latina). Which is ironic in that the only reason I really decided to watch was the cast--because I realized a show that was bringing back Teri Hatcher (and back to her old time slot, no less!) and Felicity Huffman to ABC, along with Marcia Cross, was probably not going to be a sucky show and maybe I better tune in and find out what's what. Still wasn't happy about there being no black housewife. And really wasn't happy that the first black woman to have any lines on the show was a prostitute--?!?!

But I hung in there, and when I first heard about Alfre, I was thrilled. But her character and storyline were all wrong-headed from the start; if the point was to have a black presence on Wisteria Lane, then why have them in a story that entails them keeping away from the neighbors?!? So Alfre was yet wasn't really part of Wisteria Lane, and, I have to say, that episodes that focused on her story brought the series to a complete, deadening halt. I blame the story, not the casting. If we're not supposed to know who this family is, if we're not supposed to know what they're really doing on Wisteria Lane, if we're not supposed to know why they're doing some of the strange, disturbing things that they do, then why would we care about them at all? Hello, creator Marc Cherry!!! Yes, Marc, you do need to write more of your show's episodes, because other writers don't seem to have known what they were doing (if nothing else, why is there an entire storyline from this season that never aired?!). Even still, I can't decide which is the greater travesty; is it the fact that Woodard was lazily nominated or that Cross ignorantly, although managing to take her character through some of the most maddening (literally) highs and lows on TV this season, was not?

In a bid to keep from watching too much TV overall, there were shows that I didn't start watching until this season--yes, I was one of Shonda's Super-Bowl-come-latelys to "Grey's Anatomy" (but if I'd been told a sista had created it, I'd have been there Day One, Minute One; it's not that the commercials didn't make it sound interesting, as I came to follow the show through the promos--"He's married (gasp)?!?"--but I'm a longtime fan of "Crossing Jordan" and Jill Hennessy and especially the underrated Miguel Ferrer and I was over at NBC following their stories instead of watching my old 80s crush Patrick "Does he ever have a bad hair day?!?" Dempsey breaking Meredith's heart. But I digress.). What a great show. And "House" is another show I was late to, even though it featured two of my favorite are-they-ever-going-to-get-a-chance-to-show-what-they-can-really-do actors, Omar Epps and Robert Sean Leonard. And it was great to see Lisa Edelstein, who I'd watched on the canceled-too-dang-soon show, "Relativity" (and why does no one talk about her lesbian kiss on national network TV?!?). So I was glad to see "Grey's Anatomy" able to take advantage of their post-Super Bowl spot with an explosive (sorry) two-parter that galvanized TV viewers everywhere. Go, Shonda! And the Emmys nominations followed suit.

Or did they? Obviously the Emmy voters got the two-parter to watch in lieu of the whole season (which is the crazy way the Emmys do things). And that was very obviously all they watched. Yes, sure, Christina Ricci and Kyle Chandler were amazing in those two episodes and deserveredly, I guess, got guest performance nominations. But as anyone and everyone who's a regular viewer knows, the real standout guest (supporting?) acting performance to come out of "Grey's Anatomy" this season was Jeffrey Dean Morgan's performance as heart transplant patient, Denny Duquette (I mean, if this guy didn't capture your heart over the season, then I'm sorry, you just don't have one!). And then, strangely, Kate Burton's performance as Meredith's Alzheimer's-stricken mother was designated a guest performance by the Emmy voters. A guest performance??! She's been on there almost every other week since the show began!!

OK. I'm not going to go into the sheer ludicrousness of Hugh Laurie managing to get through every episode of "House" with that tremendous handicap of his--and yes, I do mean having to talk through his sterling English tones in order to vocally wade through the vagaries and contrariness of our "American accent" for months at a time and do not mean the cane he's made to walk with because of the character's bad leg--and not get a nomination for being able to get a performance out of all of that. Because that would take too long and I'm too mad about it. At least the (sigh) show was nominated.

I was jumping for Joy at Jaime Pressly being nominated for "My Name is Earl," as I was afraid no one would see it as Jaime acting. I've noticed Jaime since "Mortal Kombat." No, not the movie, the TV show, "Mortal Kombat." Yes, there was one!! Jaime can act--and sing. The woman has pipes--she was performing with the Pussycat Dolls just a few years ago. So, go, Jaime!

But where was Tichina Arnold's nomination for the "Everybody Hates Chris" show? She is the heart and soul of that show; the actions on each episode derive from what her reaction may be (or, as in the case of the episode when her character's father died, may not be). Tichina is another underrated TV performer--who, as quiet as it seems to be kept, had more onscreen chemistry with Martin Lawrence on "Martin" than Tisha Campbell ever did. Maybe the "combined" power of The CW Network will make sure such a severe oversight never occurs again.

And maybe Keifer Sutherland and "24" will finally get the Emmy attention they both deserve seeing as every single network has a show on this season that imitates the heck out of it!

(And another thing as quiet as it's kept--I can't think of any other show that so completely and effortlessly racially integrated its cast throughout its five season-long storylines so well that no one even mentions it. I still have goosebumps remembering a scene in the third season that had Dennis Haysbert, D.B. Woodside, Albert Hall, Gina Torres, and Tony Todd. I could barely pay attention to what they were saying and doing because I had honest-to-God chills. You NEVER EVER get to see that many great black actors all together like that, all in one scene. OMG!! But, as Shonda can tell you, it's not easy and it's not effortless because the very infrastructure of Hollywood isn't set up that way; casting and writing agencies, right here in 2006, are very much in an "us" and "them" mode. Perhaps it would even be more accurate to say an "us"... and Oh! Right! "Them!" mode. Kudos to "24," in all sorts of ways, are lonnnnnnnnnnng overdue. So if it turns out that "24" wins over "Grey's Anatomy," I can't get too upset because at least they're fighting for the same things.)

(And maybe it'll get Shonda to make "Grey's" better next year. She's such a slacker ;>!!)

And what does Shoreh Aghdashloo have to do to be nominated?? NBC, in effect, had a Shoreh Aghdashloo night this past season, where she was the guest star on that night's "Will & Grace" and on that night's "ER." I guess no one at the network noticed. It's bad enough Aghdashloo's performance in season four of "24" wasn't noticed. Perhaps her performances are too long...

Overall, I don't know what the answer is. The Emmys want to try to convene a better blue-ribbon panel or something--? Frankly, at this point, why don't they appoint a viewer panel, people who have at least watched the shows--? I'm not even a week-to-week regular viewer of "House" or "Chris"--but I know Laurie and Arnold, respectively, should have been nominated for their performances and would've voted that way. Maybe there'd be too great a chance of fraud and corruption--but I bet even the most corrupted paid-off viewer panel member wouldn't have cast a ballot for a 15-second performance! I mean, even that viewer would beg off, saying he doesn't want to look that obvious--!

So you don't give viewers the whole enchilada. Maybe mix it up. Maybe have viewers act in an advisory capacity, and actually tell the nominations board what they thought was special and what they think should be acknowledged. Or better, unacknowledged and passed over.

At least they will have watched the shows.

P.S. And next year, have Stephen Colbert host. 'Cos he'll bring the truthiness--oh, yes, my friend; he will Bring The Truthiness (so the Emmy voters won't have to)!



Originally published on Vox .