Hate-Watching the Emmys

There are three certainties in life: birth, death, and kvetching about award shows (for those masochistic enough to watch)

I watch because I have to. I watch like it’s my job. (Well, it is my job.)

But I’d probably watch the Emmys — and the Golden Globes, and the Oscars, and sometimes even the Grammys and the Tonys — even if I didn’t have to, because of the promise of what’s in store. I admit it, I am happy to cleave to my naïveté at moments like this, believing that I’m watching good work being rewarded, that I’m watching my favorite talents celebrate their peers. But no sooner does the host emerge on stage then my cynical side bitch-slaps the naif, and I find myself pining for the spectacle of Tina and Amy gussied up in ball gowns working their twenty-first-century Lucy-and-Ethyl shtick, and hope that it’s enough to get me through the next three hours.

At least halfway through, I could switch over to Breaking Bad’s penultimate episode — I won’t spoil it for you, except to say LANDREW!!! I mean, TODD! (I strongly recommend you read Heather Havrilesky’s take) — which I, of course, did, so I could redeem my evening, fast-forward through the commercials and that excruciating Carrie Underwood butchering of the Beatles (what the … and, more importantly, why???), and find out how my favorites fared (um, not so well). Because the real fun in wading through three hours of this dreck is the post-mortem kvetch-and-quibbles. And so here are mine. I’ll keep it brief — this, for long-winded me, is an exercise in restraint (and the most exercise I’m likely to do all week):

1. Why do I always fall for the early upset trick? When Tony Hale (Veep) and Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie) won their respective Best Supporting Actor comedy awards, I really believed we were in for an evening of upsets, of the best sort. As in, we wouldn’t be subjected to another year of Modern Family triumphs, following the sitcom’s most unwatchable season. And it almost — almost — bore out. Tony beat out three Modern Family dads! Merritt Wever beat out two Modern Family moms! And yet, that moribund show took the top honors — over 30 Rock’s balls-to-the-wall season and the brilliant, acid Veep. How? How?!?!? I will waste not another breath on Modern Family because … Tony Hale. The man is a comic genius, and for those who don’t watch Veep, they were treated to a glimpse of this when he slipped into Gary Walsh mode, to attend to his ”boss,” Selina Meyer, a.k.a. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, as she accepted her Emmy, delivering the second-best speech of the night.
2. The best speech boasted the fewest words. That would be the one by Merritt Wever: “Thanks so much. Thank you so much. I gotta go. Bye.” Now, if it couldn’t be Jane Krakowksi — and why in God’s name could it not be JANE KRAKOWSKI? I mean REALLY, you couldn’t have given Jenna Maroney the Emmy, on this, your last chance to redeem yourselves? — then to Merritt it shall go, for pushing a half-hour drama into the comedy category single-handedly. That woman can do more with a push of an office chair than the writers on that show can do with their proverbial pens — she and Edie are goddesses.
3. We get it, the Emmys love the gays. Look! Neil Patrick Harris sings! He dances! He makes jokes about same-sex desire and his love of musicals! Let’s underline all of it with a hot-pink highlighter pen by making him do reject numbers from Smash. And have Sir Elton pay tribute to Liberace. And Michael “gay for pay” Douglas make top-bottom, two-hander jokes as he accepts an Emmy for PLAYING Liberace. The only redeeming moment — second, really — from that self-described arbitrary mid-show numbah was Sarah Silverman (who looked foxier than ever, by the way) inserting a “vagina” into the song, a word that tests the mettle of all men, gay and straight.
4. AND, if the Emmys really loved the gays, then why didn’t Sarah Paulson win for American Horror Story: Asylum? Because not only was her Lana Winters one of the boldest, most complex female anti-heroes I’ve yet to see on TV — and a lesbian, to boot — but Sarah Paulson’s bewitching performance brought a level of humanity and intelligence that made viewers fall in love and feel faithful to her to the bitter end. Lana Winters haunts me to this day, especially that finale where she gets all Sapphic Barbara Walters, to the point where I found myself devouring that entire mini-series a second time — immediately after watching it on its first run. And I’m a working mother of a toddler, so I had to steal that time. But I gladly did so for the pure pleasure of watching her and Jessica Lange go head-to-head. I felt toward her the blind loyalty that Walter White fans feel toward him, would follow her to the ends of the Earth. I can only hope American Horror Story: Coven gives Paulson as rich a role, so she can get what’s hers next year.
5. Speaking of Walter White, let’s talk about notably weird upsets: Jeff Daniels over Bryan Cranston, really? For Newsroom, a show people love to hate-watch? I love Jeff Daniels, but this isn’t his moment. And how do you overlook Michelle MacLaren’s direction of “Gliding Over All,” that most masterful of cliffhangers? That episode alone yielded an encyclopedia’s worth of critical analysis. Walt Whitman would certainly tip his fedora to her and Vince Gilligan if he could.
6. And while we’re on the subject of things White: I know this isn’t news, or even new, but this broadcast somehow felt whiter than usual. Sandra Bernhard said it best, I think, when she tweeted, “And now for the black part of the evening,” referring to the three or so minutes when trailblazing Emmy winner Diahann Carroll (the first African American woman to do so, forty-four years ago) appeared onstage with Emmy nominee Kerry Washington (who did not win, despite Carroll’s impassioned plea that she should), to present the best supporting actor in a drama to Bobby Cannavale, and another few minutes when Don Cheadle delivered a remembrance of the JFK assassination. The camera panned over the audience, a sea of glistening white faces. Welcome to Planet Hollywood.