2013 Emmys roundup: W-R-O-N-G

     "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan accepts the 2013
     Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series.
     Photo Credit: Reuters, ATAS, CBS

Just as the title indicates, these Emmys were pretty much nothing but wrong, in a few senses of the word. As a piece of televised entertainment, this was an especially weak Emmy telecast, stuffed with bad, time wasting musical performances that only occasionally had some connection to television. And on the awards side, all of the trophies they gave out were either wrong in the "just plain wrong" sense (Jeff Daniels, Gail Mancuso, etc.) or were wildly pleasant, left-field choices that I imagine did an even bigger number on my yearly predictions than usual.

It was interesting to hear Grantland's Bill Simmons describe being in the theatre for the actual show. While the overly long and inconsequential Elton John performance was unbearable to those of us watching at home, the actual audience in the Nokia Theatre welcomes this sort of visual stimuli to pass the three hours they're stuck in their seats. While I felt the dance routine choreographed by the nominees in the Outstanding Choreography category to be an interesting idea that was poorly executed, I understand why that's a nice break from giving out trophies to the celebrities who actually attend the event, and especially to those who found out early in the night that they hadn't won.

Steve Levitan (and if there is one thing I am most furious about in this entire telecast, it's that we came so close to making it an entire year without having to listen to him giving ANOTHER speech upon his mediocre show being hailed as the second coming of Christ in 22 minute form) called attention to the somber, deathly tone of the show, and he wasn't wrong for doing so. I understand why people don't like the necrology because people are always left out and always will be no matter how many award shows we live to see. But paying specific tributes creates two problems: as mentioned, the repeated reminder of death casts a shadow over an event that is ultimately a celebration. There's nothing wrong with life being the thing you're celebrating, but the tribute segments meant the somber feeling was inescapable. If you pay all tributes during the "in memoriam" segment, you can fade to commercial and then come back with the wacky stars of "The Millers" and pretend that nothing happened. This made jarring tonal shifts a constant component of the telecast.

The second is that even more than the complaints of people left out of the necrology, this creates such a disgusting popularity contest out of death. Jack Klugman's son was understandably disappointed that the Academy chose not to give his father a specific tribute during the show, and Larry Hagman, arguably the biggest TV star of the 1980s, didn't get one either. For the Academy to give the thumbs up to creating a situation in which it was now a competition to see which lost icons were more worthy of attention than others is so ridiculous and dumbfounding that it could only come from the same organization that votes for the Emmy awards. And on the note of death as a popularity contest: I happened to catch Emmy host Neil Patrick Harris on "The Talk" late last week, where he specifically mentioned that he didn't like it when the audience can be heard clapping at varying levels for celebrities of varying levels during award show necrologies. He assured that any noise from the theatre would be muted during the actual telecast, and of course, come Sunday night, we got to hear about 6,000 people remember to continue clapping for agents and studio executives they didn't know while the applause escalated for talent who worked in front of the camera. Just a disaster.

Simmons also mentioned that during commercial breaks, clips were shown of past Emmy acceptance speeches. A nice tribute to television, which the Emmys seemed to be sorely lacking this year. I actually found myself missing the way the show used to separate the night by categories, if only because we didn't get the "Year In (Comedy/Variety/Miniseries/Reality/Drama)" montages of actual TV clips from the past year that we've gotten for the last few telecasts. I also understand why people didn't like that the extended tributes to James Gandolfini, Cory Monteith et al. also did not feature any clips of the actors performing (or in the case of Gary David Goldberg, clips from the shows he worked on), though if you couldn't tell, that's not my biggest gripe about how those were handled.

Neil Patrick Harris proved to be a somewhat problematic host. His reputation as a song-and-dance man who opens awards shows he doesn't even host (like that weird duet he did...by himself to open the Oscars that one time) precedes him, and I think it was an interesting idea to say up front "I'm not doing that this time." But all of the comedic bits about him saying that weren't funny in the slightest. Even his opening monologue, which wasn't intended to be all that funny so that the past hosts could berate him for doing such a bad job, never turned a corner into anything actually entertaining.

Show highlight: Even though she's great on "Veep," I wasn't all that happy to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus repeat. I would have much rather seen Laura Dern or Amy Poehler pull off a surprising but well-earned victory. But the moment of the night was easily seeing the "Veep" cast all in-character as Louis-Dreyfus accept her award, with fellow Emmy winner Tony Hale standing right behind her, holding her purse and reminding her what to say, while nominee Anna Chlumsky sat in the audience on her phone.

Show lowlight: "Hi, I'm Elton John. Here's my latest single. It kind of reminds me of Liberace, a guy who HBO made a movie about this year but has actually been dead for 25 years. Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, please stand perfectly still for these next six minutes as I play the song in its entirety. As I play, be sure to put your ear right up to the television. You might be able to hear all the speeches that will be cut off for the rest of the night."

The results of my predictions after the break...

The five dummies you meet in heaven

     "30 Rock" cast, from left to right: Jack McBrayer, Tina Fey,
     Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski, and Tracy Morgan.
     Photo Credit: NBC

I am not very old at all. In my ~20 years, I have really only ever lost two people that I consider close to me: my grandfathers, one of whom died when I was 4, and the other when I was 16.

You might be surprised to learn that losing someone close to you isn't much fun. Despite being told to remember the good times, you spend a lot of time dwelling on "what ifs" - the time you wish you had spent with a person, and the conversations you never had.

Right before my paternal grandfather died in December 2009, my English class was assigned a speech. We were asked to interview a family member or close friend, preferably over the age of 50, about an event in their life that we could write out as a story and then tell to the class. My mom suggested I talk to my grandfather about how he got his driver's license back in the early 1940s (long story short: he scared the tester so much with what a bad driver he was that the guy actually passed him because he refused to ever get back in a car with him). My family and a number of our relatives had tickets to go see the Guelph Storm play their annual Teddy Bear Toss game that upcoming Saturday, and while doing some research on the time period on Monday, I thought that going to that game and going out for dinner would be a perfect opportunity to ask him questions about that story.

Well you can guess what ended up happening. There was no story or hockey game on Saturday. There was a funeral on Friday. I never got to hear that story, and I still regret that I felt like I had as little as six days to wait to hear it. That Thanksgiving, he had told my brother to come over some time so he could teach him about electrical wiring, and I know he also still feels bad about never getting around to that.

Something that draws me to television so much is that I really, really hate change. I have never liked it, and for the most part I think it's because major change in my life has never been the result of my own determination. I have never been able to experience the kind of change where I choose to move into a new house, or quit a job and move on to pursue some bigger career opportunity. My change has been new schools and living away from home because that's what you do when you reach certain ages.

Yet through any kind of change in my life, and no matter how much I might not like the show very much anymore, the paper pushers at Dunder Mifflin were still there every Thursday night. I was still able to watch Dr. House crack inappropriate jokes every week. And when my own family isn't around every day, the Simpsons can be as good a substitute.

And there is one TV show - just one, as far as I know - that has been on the air, and I have been a viewer of, while I attended each of the three schools I have ever been enrolled at. It was on during my final year of elementary school, all four years of high school, and my first two years of university. For some reason, one of the biggest constants in my life has been this ridiculous satirical TV comedy that is both really intelligent and yet probably most well known in the larger popular culture for catchphrases like "I want to go to there" and "Blergh!"

Tonight, after seven seasons and 138 episodes, "30 Rock" takes its final bow on the NBC television network. I have been a viewer of "30 Rock" since Tuesday, October 10, 2006, when I sat down to watch its very first episode premiere (a day early here in Canada). That was a little more than 329 weeks ago - more precisely, it was 2,305 days ago. I have been alive for 7,219 days. That means "30 Rock" has existed for roughly 32% of my life. And in terms of how long the show has existed in this period in which I have been the copious TV watcher who types before you, I imagine the number shoots somewhere into the 80-90% range.

"30 Rock" is not my grandfather. It's not a relative or a close friend. It's not a person whose funeral I will attend. But with the incredible sadness I feel about the show ending, tonight's one hour finale might as well feel like a funeral to me. Probably the Monty Python Graham Chapman funeral to be specific, but still.

I remember thinking a couple years back that I had never really watched a TV show from beginning to end, as it aired, at least not for a show that lasted for any substantial amount of time. I was pretty sure that "House" would be the first show I could say that about, but I bailed on the last couple seasons once the show became an unbearable chore to sit through each week.

And so for the first time, I'm confronting the conclusion of a television show whose first episode I can really vividly remember watching live so many years ago. I'm also realizing that I've been fortunate enough that it's probably also been two or three years since one of the shows I watch week to week has even been cancelled (continued RIP, "Better Off Ted"). The end of "30 Rock" doesn't bring tears to my eyes (though who knows what's in store tonight), but it also does feel like I'm losing something that's been a part of my life for so many years. It's made me look back and realize that I took the show for granted season after season, letting episodes pile up on the DVR and not understanding how lucky I was to be able to watch this show for one episode, let alone seven seasons. As ridiculous as it might sound, for someone like me who geeks over TV so much, it does feel of a piece with not picking up the phone and talking to my grandfather more often, and the failure to realize that even the things that are a part of our lives for so long don't last forever.

In the remaining few hours before the finale, I'll be rewatching some classic episodes, as I've been doing for the past week or so, and wondering where the time has gone. And at 9pm tonight...well, I was gonna say that at 9pm tonight, I'll probably sit quietly and think about the fact that "Parks and Recreation" and "Cougar Town" and "Arrested Development" are still on the air, and that at least "30 Rock"'s 8pm timeslot will be filled by the delightful "Community" next week. But I think I'm probably gonna end up DVRing the finale and then staring at the list of recorded shows, finding five more minutes at a time to put off facing this weird end of an era for a kid who has been obsessed with TV for so long that he's been watching "Mad Men" since he was 15. *Then* I will go through my version of the five stages of TV grief outlined above.

And then...it'll be Friday, February 1. I wait for the next time I lose one of my favourite shows. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But we're talking "30 Rock". So I think the more appropriate term would be "respawn".

2012 Emmy nominations post-mortem: The surprises, the snubs, and the shameful

     Kerry Washington of ABC's "Scandal" and late night host
     Jimmy Kimmel present the nominations for the 64th Primetime
     Emmy Awards.

The Primetime Emmys sting of disappointment every year, and this year they stung even earlier. Not long before the nomination announcements, Nick Offerman from Parks and Recreation Reads Tweets From Young Female Celebrities had to bail on announcing because of a travel delay. In the end, though, I was glad that the actor giving the funniest performance on television did not have to get up so early in the morning to announce to the world that his own show, the best comedy on TV, was being ignored in favour of shows that move at a glacial level in terms of character development and humour, like The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.

I could write long, generic paragraphs about what I liked and didn't like, but I'd better go through the major awards category by category, so as to keep my thoughts under control and in their proper places. I'll also make note of who I think should win (as in who I feel is most deserving and who I want to win) and who I think will win. I have nothing to say about the miniseries and movie categories, so why waste time trying to write about them? A combination of joy and disgust after the break.

My hypothetical 2012 Emmy ballot

The nominations for the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards will be announced in a little more than 32 hours, so before that, I reveal my hypothetical Emmy ballot for I guess record's sake, as well as which nominee I'd vote for to win. I stuck to acting and series categories because I feel like there's too much to sort through with writing and directing categories and the variety and reality categories bored me. Onward...