Review: The 60th Emmy Telecast

Sunday (Sept. 21) night's 60th Annual Emmy Awards concluded two minutes early and I'm fairly certain that all 40 people with the patience to stick around to the end were mighty grateful.

Pundits had already been bemoaning the show's inevitable low ratings for weeks, complaining that mainstream viewers with no awareness of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Damages or even 30 Rock wouldn't bother tuning in to see them honored. So producers responded by giving those few dedicated viewers one of the sloppiest award shows in recent memory.

I wasn't in the Nokia Theater on Sunday afternoon (Pacific time), but I wonder if there were any early walk-outs as the five-headed MC-ing team proved that just because you can pick up an Emmy nomination for hosting a reality show doesn't mean that you should be hosting an Emmy show. Ryan Seacrest, Tom Bergeron, Jeff Probst, Heidi Klum and Howie Mandel stood in the center of the stage and spent nearly five minutes bantering about how they had no material. They weren't wrong, but why did anybody think that this was a viable way to hook viewers?

The entire gambit of letting the Emmy-nominated hosts handle the show proved a dud on nearly every level. None of them were funny and because there were so many of them and each of their egos had to be stroked, the bloat kicked in almost instantly. Say what you will about Seacrest's solo turn as host last year, but he -- like the reality show Mussolini he is -- kept the trains running on time. Instead, we were left with Mandel remembering his time on St. Elsewhere, Probst looking confused and lost on some vintage set and a hideously misogynistic bit in which Bergeron and Shatner stripped off Klum's tear-away tux, making it manifestly clear that while the male hosts were being honored for their skills, she was only worth recognizing for her legs.

And, really, why were we paying so much attention to these reality show hosts in the first place? After a year in which the industry was crippled by the writers strike, were the producers trying to make a point by glorifying these allegedly unscripted marvels? For a category in its first year, a category very few people thought actually represented the best in reality hosting (Cat Deeley was robbed!), to take a central place at the end of the show, before only the outstanding comedy and outstanding drama, was a bit of a travesty.

Thanks to the "We've got nothing!" opening and a series of clip packages and extended on-stage bits, the show was running long immediately. There were a few pleasant enough diversions, including Ricky Gervais' tribute to the Emmy acceptance speech (and his "tension" with Steve Carell) and Steve Martin's introduction for Tommy Smothers, but a Laugh-In tribute seemed to go on forever. There will be split opinions on Josh Groban's rendition of snippets from dozens of TV themes. I thought it was the most personality Groban's ever displayed in his life. I know at least a couple critics, though, who thought it was excruciating. And who could argue that Groban needed to take a stab at the theme from The Greatest American Hero?

Either way, the show was less than half over when it became clear that presenters were having their normal teleprompter banter cut out to speed things up. In terms of comedy brilliance, that's no loss, but it was lethal for the pacing of the show, which became rushed and choppy and then confused when people like Don Rickles were allowed to go all Don Rickles, time-be-darned.

Throw in a number of technical glitches -- lighting and mic snafus -- and I was growing increasingly impatient. This just wasn't an example of the Television Academy putting its best foot forward for this anniversary year.

As 2008 is an election year -- you may have heard something about it somewhere -- there were several speeches urging people to vote, including a direct plea from President Bartlett (or maybe Martin Sheen). While a woman most recently seen impersonating Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin (Tina Fey, whose wins for acting, writing and producing on a comedy series have to be unprecedented, right?) got to make three separate speeches, nobody mentioned the names "Obama," "McCain" or "Bush" the entire evening (Palin's name was mentioned in the awkward opening). Smothers made an impassioned (albeit typically halting) speech about peace, Stephen Colbert advocated in favor of a prune and John Adams scribe Kirk Ellis was cut off in the middle of a lamentation about the lack of articulate politicians in our current climate. The mostly unspoken political edge was another awkward distraction within the telecast. Conservative viewers will whine that those darned Hollywood liberals were up to their old tricks, while liberal viewers will wonder why those darned Hollywood liberals were so quiet and toothless. Nobody will be happy.

At least the awards contained a few pleasant surprises in addition to the Emmy voters' typical banal embrace of Jeremy Piven and The Amazing Race. I was especially pleased by the wins for Zeljko Ivanek, the writing staff of The Colbert Report and Barry Sonnefeld's direction of the Pushing Daisies pie-lette. On the speech front, I thought Rickles' acceptance was a stand-out, as were all three of Fey's acceptances.

A final question before putting the disappointing Emmy telecast to bed: It was nice to see Mary Tyler Moore, star and producer of several of the small screen's finest sitcoms, presenting the outstanding comedy Emmy along with Betty White. That was appropriate. How, then, did we end up with outstanding drama series presenting by none other than the legendary Tom Selleck?

It was that kind of night.

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