Getting incensed over Emmy nominations is like getting incensed over your child’s story about Godzilla vs. Uncle Pete vs. Malibu Barbie. They are supposed to be only moderately fathomable, and you really can’t do anything about the illogic except smile and pat the Emmy voters on the head.
As Emmy nominations go, this year’s exercise in television-profession group-think was somewhat more conservative and less surprising than even the group’s usual Reaganesque impulses to keep rewarding the same series and actors, year after year, warranted or not.
The first-year show “Ally McBeal” being one of the most nominated comedies was a mild and welcome upset, but the culture’s designated feminism killer had done well as a comedy at the Golden Globes in January, perhaps cuing Emmy voters. And the award-dispensing Academy of Television Arts & Sciences loves “Ally’s” producer, David E. Kelley, as much as they apparently love the title character’s insecurity and upper thighs.
As for the sprawling Tom Hanks-for-HBO project “From the Earth to the Moon” taking the most nominations, 17: If you spend $65 million to make 12 television hours that will be closely associated with Mr. Big Movie Star, and you don’t garner 17 Emmy nominations, regardless of how much your storytelling tension waxes and wanes, you ought to be sent back down to cable access to start over. I am already dreading the series of acceptance speeches, where Hanks will struggle to hold back tears but ultimately, artfully, fail.
Still and all, although I recognize that any hierarchical list is as much an argument provoker as it is a legitimate and inviolable ranking, I have some issues with the Emmy nominations, released last Thursday to set the stage for the 50th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards show, airing Sept. 13 on NBC.
(That program, by the way, will not only be extra long — four hours, to accommodate the anniversary hooha and jumpstart the fledgling couch-sore treatment industry — but it will also be hostless. This is a new strategy by the producers, meaning either that Magic Johnson wasn’t available or that last year’s emcee, the Serious Newsman Bryant Gumbel, will be remembered as the fellow who killed Emmy hosting.)
Here goes:
Laugh If You Will: Two of the five nominated series for outstanding comedy, “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Ally McBeal,” are laugh-track free. (Burst of applause.) The near-ubiquitiousness of canned laughter in television comedy is one of the peeves I am constantly petting, so this is good news. From these two nominations, we can deduce that many people who work in television do indeed understand that Americans are a race of people capable of figuring out when something is funny.
For Sure: Like, ohmigod, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” got nominations in both hairstyling and makeup. Inevitably, a hairstyling nod went to HBO’s Don King movie. And, of course, “McBeal” won a costuming nomination. When so little fabric is able to generate so much talk, honors must descend, even if hemlines do not.
Humor Me: “NewsRadio” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” would have been nice additions to the best-comedy list for their fresh, first-rate and underappreciated work. And my collar perennially reddens when voters don’t have the gumption to classify the classic-but-animated “The Simpsons,” TV’s best remaining comedy, alongside the live-action entries instead of in animation. But with “McBeal” and the departed “Sanders” strong choices, what would you knock out? Four-year winner “Frasier”? “Seinfeld,” in its last year? I’d drop “3rd Rock from the Sun,” still good hammy fun but straying a little too far from the aliens-illuminating-weird-things-about-Earth-culture premise that made it such a giddy delight in its early episodes.
Michael Eisner on Line Two: Wouldn’t you like to be Angelina Jolie’s agent? The daughter of Jon Voight earned best actress and supporting actress nominations in the movie and miniseries categories for playing the druggy supermodel of the title in HBO’s affecting “Gia” and the vivacious post-Lurleen wife of George Wallace in TNT’s terrific miniseries named for the Alabama doorstander.
Apples v. Oranges: Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program pits Billy Crystal, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Tracey Ullman, Michael Crawford and Garth Brooks. Geez, I sure liked the hat guy’s monologue, but that Leno fella has a way with a show tune.
Drama Queens: Voters did recognize the best hour of series television I saw all year, “The Subway” episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street,” with a writing nod for James Yoshimura’s existential gut-punch of a script and a guest actor nomination for Vincent D’Onofrio as the man pinned, fatally, between train and subway platform. And they did give departing “Homicide” star Andre Braugher his second best drama actor nod.
But the series itself, television’s finest drama, got the big snub in favor of the more formulaic, “NYPD Blue” and “ER.” “The X-Files” and “Law & Order” deserve their spots on the list, but the second-year “The Practice” was an unwarranted surprise.
Point to Ponder: “Yo Yo Ma Inspired by Bach” earned exactly as many nominations, two, as did “Xena: Warrior Princess.”
