Stray thoughts after Sunday’s Prime-time Emmy Awards:
– Warming the Heart’s Cockles: Why did “Law & Order” finally win as best drama, after its sixth nomination in the category? A few factors might explain this most heartening Emmy moment in some years, even including Sunday’s mandatory visit from, and even more mandatory standing ovation for, Christopher Reeve.
The first and most hopeful interpretation is that the show’s unflagging ability to tell powerful, intelligent stories, for six years and through a variety of actors, finally penetrated.
But the best guess is that a couple of stunts by the show in the past year-and-a-half finally got the voters–who tend to reward popularity first–to actually watch Dick Wolf’s only moderately popular drama.
The first was a crossover episode with the only TV drama series that’s better than “Law & Order,” NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street” (unnominated, as usual) in February, 1996.
The other was the three-part episode “L&O” did this March, when it got a chance to fill in for “ER” Thursdays at 9 p.m. Not only was it brilliantly written crime solving, but it also treated Emmy voters’ favorite subject: themselves. The show’s detectives and prosecutors had to foray out to L.A. to solve and prosecute the murder of a movie executive. The show’s scathing take on show-biz culture was–no other word for it–thrilling to watch.
– Other Emmy-Winner Back Pats: To Chris Rock, who has blossomed from his days of underuse in “Saturday Night Live’s” traditional, constricting “the black guy” role into one of our keenest social observers. To Gillian Anderson of “The X-Files,” for demonstrating that a self-contained woman can also be emotionally rich, and for earning Emmy recognition for one of TV’s most influential shows. And to David Milch, head “NYPD Blue” writer, for finally getting a statuette signifying that his dialogue crackles with street realism like almost no one else’s.
– Host with Most: Bryant Gumbel is also available for bar and bat mitzvahs and is willing to do some cruise-ship work in amenable climates.
– The Littlest Trophy Case: There is no Emmy voting pattern more maddening than the willingness to abundantly nominate–and then ignore–“The Larry Sanders Show.” Garry Shandling’s dead-on satire of a late-night talk show, which runs on HBO, earned 16 nominations this year, the most of any comedy. Shandling, who did present an award (to Rock in the category of best special), was appropriately sarcastic about it all, quoting Mr. Rogers in insisting that it’s all about being nominated, really. He should know: His show walked away with no Emmys, bringing the “Larry Sanders” record of epic frustration to 62 nominations, one win.
– Skip the Clips: When will awards shows learn that video montages rarely work? Sunday night, we got collections showing moments of social responsibility, physical comedy and encounters with aliens. Stripped of their context, none of the scores of snippets had the slightest impact.
Better, slightly, were the broadcast’s illuminations of what goes on backstage, although I think we all understand the makeup process by now. And the show gets credit for trying to make light of the ritual introduction of the accountants, although having them dancing didn’t quite work.
– A Clarification: When the Emmy nominations were announced in late July, HBO had the most nominations, the first time a non-Big Three network bested the field. But a few stragglers, honors announced in August, did end up boosting NBC past HBO, 92 nominations to 90. NBC also ended up winning the most trophies in the competition, taking 24 to HBO’s 19.
– The Dennis Franz Memorial? It was nice, and not undeserved, to see “NYPD Blue’s” Dennis Franz win again, his third time in four years, in the talent-laden best drama actor category. But it may be time for Franz–and for the four-time best comedy winner “Frasier,” now that I think about it–to pull a Candice Bergen and gracefully step out of the competition in the name of giving someone else a chance.
Besides, honoring Franz for his work on “Blue” missed his best thespian efforts of the season. On a prime-time Martha Stewart Christmas special, Franz pretended to drop by the Stewart compound. There, hanging out in the kitchen with the home-decor mogul, he pretended to be interested in a packet of mulling spices plucked from a cider. THAT was acting.
– Pinpoint Prognostication Results: How did the darts do? After going 0-for-10 their first year, and 6-for-10 last year, my pointedly close-to-random method of predicting winners in leading Emmy categories tallied a respectable 4-for-10 record this year, or twice as good as the odds would have had it.
The darts I tossed at slips of paper correctly picked Kim Delaney and Franz (“NYPD Blue”), Michael Richards (“Seinfeld”) and Hector Elizondo (“Chicago Hope”) as winners from among five nominees in each of their categories. The darts also proved they knew a little something about Emmy voting absurdity, correctly predicting none of the “Larry Sanders” nominees would win.
