2010 Emmy slots: Just another beauty contest
posted 8-5-2010 - 11:23 pm

 
So: are we surprised and disappointed again this year by the nominations? Yup. You bet. And there will be much carping about who made it and who didn’t, and about the voting system itself. Again. And no effort made to fix and of the voting system’s flaws. Surprise.

I’m talking about the prime-time Emmy nominations (I don’t watch soap opera, so I couldn’t care less about the daytime awards. Sue me). Truly, if there’s a difference here between the Emmys and the Miss America pageant, it’s not much.

Yes, The Pacific leads in the number of nominations – congrats to powerhouse HBO yet again – yet all of The Pacific’s actors were snubbed. How the hell did THAT happen?? The actors and the writers are what made this ambitious, well executed miniseries fly. Partly at fault here is the fact that whereas the Emmy voting system has separate categories for best film and best miniseries, it lumps the two formats together when it comes to best actors/actresses and best supporting categories. Very unfair: the actors in a miniseries have to sustain a character over several episodes, whereas those in a film have to do it for an hour and a half to two hours. It's a different kettle of fish. Second, never forget that Emmys and Oscars are as much or more about popularity and momentum as they are about merit. How else to explain the nominations of Jeff Bridges for A Dog Year and Ian McKellen for The Prisoner? It's not that either performance was bad; they were both serviceable, but that's far from excellent. Bridges was coming off his Oscar high and phoned in his role, whereas McKellen was just being McKellen; he nearly sleepwalked through it with both hands behind his back. Sure, we love him, but it was nowhere near his best performance, let alone one that deserved recognition more than those of, for example, James Badge Dale and Joe Mazzello in The Pacific. And the remake of The Prisoner was, overall, a dud.

The best actress in a dramatic series nominations are another example of popularity playing more of a part than merit. Yes, January Jones and Connie Britton have done well in and contributed significantly to their respective series, Mad Men and Friday Night Lights, but theirs are the weakest performances in a group that includes some major forces to be reckoned with – Glenn Close and Kyra Sedgwick. And the omission of two other such forces in this category, namely Holly Hunter for Saving Grace and Khandi Alexander for Treme, is simply glaring, rude and inexplicable unless you factor in popularity. Without the popularity factor, one might be tempted to conclude the Emmy voters were either blind, deaf and dumb or just being stupid in excluding Alexander in particular. Her performance in Treme dwarfs anything and everything Jones or Britton have done all year.

Similarly, based on merit, I would have excluded Lost altogether from the best dramatic series and writing categories given the patent absurdities to which the show had descended in the last few years. Expecting the viewership to swallow one or two maguffins during the life of a series is enough, but a whole barrelful each season is just too much. Lost just kept getting more and more senseless and unbelievable up to the very end. Clearly, there's an audience out there for that kind of absurdity. That doesn't mean it should be rewarded with Emmys, however. And the show's last season really wasn't one of its best; just because the show didn't get a win during one of its better seasons doesn't mean it should get a pity vote this time, let alone a win.

Besides, even absurd plots can be better written and more credible than Lost’s were, the obvious example of that being Fringe. Yet Fringe doesn’t get Lost’s inexplicable ratings (perhaps because fantasy absurdities are somehow more acceptable to a wider TV audience than sci-fi absurdities; go figure). So it's obvious that ratings, not merit, had something to do with Lost's nominations for best dramatic series and best writing.

Another example: talk show host Conan O'Brien gets a sympathy nod while Jay Leno gets snubbed. You can say it was justified given Leno's earlier-slot fiasco when he went primetime, but the truth is that O'Brien isn't much of an improvement over Leno. He's just more popular at the moment; but he's got nothing on Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, or Bill Maher as far as comedic talent or performance goes. Next to that trio, Conan's just filler. And Dave Letterman isn't what he used to be.

Treme, on the other hand, was robbed. Blind. And mugged, too. You could say Treme experienced its own kind of Katrina backlash: its excellent, deserving actors and writers were ignored altogether. We're talking David Simon here, the guy most TV critics say wrote maybe the best TV show ever with The Wire, and his writing in Treme, though different from The Wire, is still brilliant.

And the actors? Between them, the riveting duo of Khandi Alexander and Melissa Leo dominated the screen, and when they weren't on, John Goodman and Clarke Peters were chewing up the scenery. Goodman did get nominated for a supporting role in HBO's biopic of Jack Kevorkian (also nominated for 14 other Emmy slots), but he gave a better, edgier performance as the angry, frustrated, and ultimately doomed Creighton Bernette in Treme. Peters, meanwhile, lent his Mardi Gras Indian chief a burning indignation, gravitas, and slumbering menace alternating with protectiveness and principles that fleshed out beautifully what could have easily been a two-dimensional character. Any time Peters was onscreen, you couldn’t take your eyes off him.

The omission of Khandi Alexander in particular has to be the year's biggest snub. No one who actually saw her in Treme could deny her. Which makes you wonder: did the Emmy voters actually see any of Treme? I'm guessing many didn't.

And therein lies a serious, long-standing problem for both Oscar and Emmy voting: those eligible to vote might be obligated to watch all the relevant performances, but there's no way of ensuring that they actually do – and even if they did, no way to ensure that popularity and momentum won't rate higher than the performances. All the helpless viewers can do is watch, and hope.