Emmy Awards 2015: Too Soon?

The 2014 Emmy Awards have been handed out (yay! The biggest winner was Sherlock with seven awards!). So that means it is time to start handicapping the 2015 awards. If Monday’s award show proved anything it is that, other than the Movie/Miniseries category, the Emmy awards are highly predictable.

The biggest question is going to be whether Mad Men can pull off a Breaking Bad-type victory lap.  My guess is no, unless the churn out some REALLY superior final episodes.  Breaking Bad has been the Emmy darling for the last couple of years, while Mad Men’s fortunes have waned. The 2014 season of Mad Men was a far cry from the dazzling first season, or any of the subsequent high-quality, but not quite as dazzling subsequent seasons, and it seems a stretch to think that after so long Matthew Weiner can pull some dramatic rabbits out of his hat. Frankly, I thought Mad Men’s best shot at an Emmy in 2014 was Robert Morse winning for guest actor for his marvelous final song and dance number, but perhaps the voters rebelled at his being classified as a “guest” after 74 episodes. That’s almost as silly as calling Orange is the New Black a “comedy” (yeah, OITNB and Frasier are practically twins).

Emmys are about momentum; Breaking Bad rode a hot hand into its final awards season, but Mad Men lost its mojo when it lost to Homeland and it is hard to get that momentum back. Lost won Best Drama in its first season and never got another nomination until its last (and then didn’t win). That’s the thing with the Emmys; you can be entitled to a nomination through inertia, but that doesn’t mean you have the slightest chance of winning.

I never will forget a couple of years ago when Hugh Laurie had some hopes of winning Best Actor in a Drama for House’s next to last season, but Bryan Cranston won for Breaking Bad. When the name was announced the camera was on Laurie, and the look in his eyes said, “I’m never going to win this, am I?” He wasn’t even nominated for House’s final season.

Will Jon Hamm get a final, “Thanks for the memories” Emmy in Mad Men’s last season? It’s possible, but I’m thinking he’ll contend with Laurie for the title “Best performer never to win for playing an iconic character.” Don Draper’s best days are far behind him; his rakish philandering on the gorgeous Betty Draper has been replaced by marital discord more akin to Blondie and Dagwood (if, you know, Blondie and Dagwood had a threesome with Blondie’s best friend; yikes, I just got the visual on that).

If anyone from Mad Men might have a shot at winning next year it could be Christina Hendricks. She was criminally overlook for a nomination her first two seasons, was nominated in 2014 despite not doing much, and the standing champ in the Supporting Actress category in Anna Gunn, who sailed off into the sunset with Breaking Bad. Good roles for actresses are rare, and there are few actresses who have done more with a role than Hendricks has with Joan Harris.

I’m a little leery at making other predictions, not because I can’t tell who’ll get nominated (pencil in nominations for Fargo, Good Wife, Veep, Orange is the New Black, etc.) but because it is unclear if there will be any changes because of the complaints about category abuses. One of the best lines at the Emmys was Seth Meyers’ saying there were comedies that made us laugh, and comedies that made us cry because they were dramas submitted in the comedy category. If the issue merits a mention in the opening monologue, maybe something will change.

Will True Detective be forced to compete in the miniseries category? Will Orange is the New Black and Shameless be forced into the drama category? Will Sherlock (will there be more episodes?) be forced to stop nominating single episodes as a movie? I don’t know.

All that aside, start filling out your office pool now.  Start with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jim Parsons for best actress and actor in a comedy, and work outward from there.

A few more words about Robin Williams

I want to spend a few more words about Robin Williams because a) he deserves it, and b) my memorial was rushed.

One thing that makes me nuts is when there is a suicide by a public figure, and people look for a logical rational reason for a completely irrational act.  Some columns have speculated that the failure of his television series The Crazy Ones was the reason for his decision to take his own life.

The reason why Robin Williams committed suicide is because he had a disease called depression.  If his series had been renewed, he would have made the same decision because of his on-coming Parkinsons Disease. Or because the San Francisco Giants were behind the Dodgers. Or because . . . pick a reason.  There can be no further analysis as to the why of his suicide than the fact that he had a disease whose symptoms included making the decision to kill one’s self.

As to The Crazy Ones, I liked it.  I thought it was smart not to make it all about Robin Williams, who at 62 had slowed a step since Mork and Mindy, but to build an ensemble around him.  The show took some time to figure out what everyone did (it only failed with Geller, who was either smart or kooky or sexy or unavailable as the script demanded).  Adding Brad Garrett as Williams’ neurotic, gay business partner was a nice addition.

The main cast was an excellent ensemble.  Sarah Michele Geller is an excellent actress (she was robbed of at least two Emmy nominations for Buffy; her work in the episode “The Body” is some of the best acting I have ever seen). Comedy is not her forte, but she provided excellent gravitas to play off Williams.  My favorite joke on the show was when Williams said something like “Have I ever let you down?” and Geller shoots him a stern, disapproving glare.  Williams then said, “Oh look, it’s your mother.”

James Wolk had done excellent work being really creepy on Mad Men.  Hamish Linklater did solid work on The New Adventures of Old Christine (and on an episode of Pushing Daisies). It took them a while to find a voice for Amanda Setton, but she eventually became the source of some of the most unexpected punch lines; my favorite was when they were choosing sides for a softball game and Setton’s character caught a ball barehanded and Wolk said, “She’s on our team!” and she replied, “Thanks, but I used to be into girls and they’re too high maintenance.”

The show started off with 16 million viewers for the Pilot, but the number had fallen to 9 million after a couple of episodes.  It ended up with 5.2 million. The numbers were not bad, but the show was expensive to produce and under-performed given the casting of Williams and the imprimatur of David E. Kelly. One can’t blame CBS for cancelling it, but a better lead in and some re-tooling might have saved it if CBS had been interested.

The fallout since Williams’ death has generally not associated him with the failure.  Williams had clearly done all he could, even luring former co-star Pam Dawber out of retirement for a nice guest appearance. It’s not always easy for Oscar winners to move to the small screen; just ask Halle Berry.

It’s been a week since Williams’ death and the public continues to reel.  Because Williams was so beloved and his death was so tragic, I can’t recall the last time there has been such a prolong reaction to a celebrity death. I am reminded of what a dorm mate of mine would have said: these things happens in threes; there was Robin Williams, there was Lauren Bacall . . . and there was Elvis.

In Memoriam: Robin Williams

Let’s do a thought experiment.  Get the ten most brilliant stand-up comedians together and offer a prize of one million dollars for whoever produces the funniest 30 minutes of material, and give them all one year to work on it.  Then, twelve months later, gather them all in front of an audience.  Then, before any of them go on, give Robin Williams 10 seconds notice and a box of stuff from the New York Library Lost and Found.  He would have won hands down; heck, no one would have dared go on after him.

Williams was many things, but he was first and foremost an improvisationist.  Maybe the best ever.  Let’s face it, no one tuned in to Mork and Mindy for the writing.  He then transitioned to film acting, where improvisation skills are usually as useful as a bicycle is to a fish (yes, I realize that’s not original).  In his best roles, he was able to draw on his incredible talent and transcend ordinary material.  In Good Morning Vietnam, Barry Levinson used a long lens on a camera far away from Williams, so he could secretly tape his riffing.  In Aladdin (I think Robin Williams’ best work), he turned the role of The Genie into something beyond Walt Disney’s imagining.

It is no surprise that Williams eventually won an Oscar, as the Academy loved him like its loved no other actor (aside from Jeff Bridges, who got a nomination for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot for Pete's sake).  In 1987 he got his first nomination for Good Morning Vietnam, a film that got no other nominations and is inconceivable without him in the lead.  In 1990 he went against type and played the very quiet role of the doctor opposite Robert deNiro flashier role as a patient in Awakenings, and he copped the Best Actor nomination away from arguably America’s greatest actor.  The next year he took the flashy role of the mental patient opposite Jeff Bridges’ quieter role in The Fisher King, and once again he got the nomination over his celebrated co-star (I think this was Bridges’ best work, yet he got no nomination for Fisher King but one for Rain Man).  It was only a matter of time before he found a role that the Academy could reward him for, and it was for Good Will Hunting.

Of course there were lots of movies his talent couldn't transcend. He couldn't save Club Paradise, Hook, or (shudder) Jack.  But it was never his fault; his timing was always impeccable.  Finding film roles that could incorporate his manic disposition was just too difficult.

When his latest TV series, The Crazy Ones, was cancelled, I didn't weep but I was disappointed.  Sure, the show demonstrated, especially in the outtakes, that Williams had aged, had lost a step comedically. But he was still faster than anyone on the planet with a quip, exuded a warm fuzzy quality that played off well with Sarah Michelle Geller flinty persona, and it had a fine ensemble cast.  Whatever CBS replaces it with will probably be not as good.

The world is a less funny place without Robin Williams in it.  I wonder what Robin Williams would do if he did his own eulogy?  I bet it would be hysterical.

Why ESPN is destroying sports

I apologize for the title of this blog, but I figure a little hyperbole current hurt my numbers.  I watch way too much ESPN, and I “only” watch a little over two hours a day (Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, Olbermann, and Sports Reporters on Sundays, plus some baseball).  I used to watch more, but a) I got a job, and b) Michele Beadle left SportsNation (I hear she’s back, but there’s still a).  But if you watch more than a little ESPN, who begin to see how corporate memes get filtered through every show.  A phrase used on Around the Horn will come from the mouth of someone on Pardon the Interruption, and then later magically appear on The Sports Reporters.  During the Ray Rice fiasco ESPN continually talked about national outrage, when the only source of the outrage I ever heard was ESPN.

But there are two things about ESPN that have finally driven me over the edge, even more than the annual spectacle of child exploitation that is the Little League World Series.  The first is the sport-ification of non-sporting events.  We watch ESPN for sporting events, events whose outcome are determined by the skills of the players.  But an increasing share of ESPN’s programming are not sporting events.  They are events such as National Signing Day, the NBA and NFL Drafts, the NFL combine, and other such nonsense.  I believe that one year I failed to DVR Around the Horn because it was relegated to ESPN2 for coverage of the Kentucky Derby lane assignments.  Covering the Kentucky Derby is questionable enough, but the lane assignments allocated by random chance?  This is sport?

The drafts are like the old line about 50% of advertising being wasted, but no one knows what 50%.  Half of the draft picks are going to be busts or marginal players, but all of them are treated as saviors of whatever team drafted them.  Yeah, the Rams are going to the Super Bowl thanks to that left offensive tackle from Ohio State they chose in the 4^th round.  Sports are won by skill, but winning the ping pong ball bounce to determine draft order for the NBA is based on the laws of probability.

Speaking of the NBA draft, clearly the scheme that’s been around for several years to discourage “tanking” by making the number one pick a matter of probability instead of order of finish has failed.  Every year teams are accused of tanking, and The Philadelphia 76ers are now apparently (possibly) tanking for the second year in a row after selecting an injured player who won’t be able to play for a year.  Obviously, tanking for the highest probability of the #1 pick is nearly as lucrative as tanking for #1.  The odd thing is that since players are coming out after only one year in college, the players being drafted have far less impact than when players came out of college after four years of seasoning.  Anthony Davis is everything the Pelicans hoped for, but they still aren't a playoff team.

My second problem is that ESPN has dramatically changed is the death of the concept of a “season.”  NFL Live is on ESPN every day of the year, even when there ARE NO GAMES BEING PLAYED.  This summer has been filled, not by talk of baseball divisional races or MVP battles, but of where Lebron James and Kevin Love are going, and how Johnny Manziel is acclimating to the NFL.  There used to be football season, a baseball season, and a basketball season.  Now it all one big stew.

And it is getting worse.  Two years ago in 2012 ESPN started tracking where Lebron was going to go when he became a free agent in 2014.  Now that THAT’s been resolved, ESPN has started covering the Washington Wizards’ machinations to lure native son Kevin Durant to their team in 2016.  The 2014 baseball season is taking a back seat to the NBA Hot Stove League in two years. 

I suppose ESPN is a business not run by idiots, so they must be doing this because it’s what their customers want. But they started out as a source of televised games that had previously been unavailable, and now they are dominated by talking heads.  ESPN spends more time showing people talking about sports than showing sports.

Baseball, my favorite sport, gets the short straw in all this.  ESPN loves the apocalyptic nature of the NFL, where every single game is absolutely crucial to the two teams’ chances of making the post-season.  For some reason, the 82 game NBA season fits into the narrative of every game being important.  Everyone on ESPN (save long time skeptic Keith Olbermann) jumped on the soccer bandwagon when ESPN was televising the World Cup, because no sport is more cataclysmic in its coverage than soccer, where a single goal can set off national riots.

Soccer may be the Beautiful Game but baseball is the Thinking Man’s sport, where the long season evens out the odd bounce or bad call.  Momentum is the next day’s starting pitcher.  Scoreboard watching before August is absurd.  Because of the lack of gravitas, ESPN finds baseball coverage outside its wheelhouse.  An April game between the Diamondbacks and the Pirates just isn't that important.

This may also explain why ESPN televises so many games involving mediocre (Yankees) or bad (Red Sox) teams, instead of games featuring good (Brewers) or great (Oakland A’s) teams.  How many times have the A’s been on Sunday night baseball, compared to the Yankees?  Which team has a better shot at making the World Series?  Sports is a meritocracy; you’d think ESPN would feature successful teams, not those hovering around .500.

ESPN pays dozens of people lots of money to predict the outcome of games we watch because we don’t know the outcome.  They make crapshoots like the NBA draft appear to be a matter of skill.  They still mention Tiger Woods, who hasn't won in five years, more than they talk about Rory McIlroy who just won two majors in a row.  They may be the Worldwide Leader, but I’m getting bored.