Monday, August 28, 2006

In Search of Excellence

So I watched the Emmy Awards last night -- not because I'm particularly fascinated by celebreties and their award shows, but because I was taping an episode of Big Brother 7 for my daughter and nothing else was on that I hadn't seen before. Plus, I was completely unmotivated to get up and look for the remote.

The fashions at award shows don't really interest me, either. First of all, you have a lot of unnaturally thin women walking around in clothes nobody would ever really wear anywhere. Second, even if the real women in the world had the money to buy those clothes, they're only made to look good on people with a body fat index in the negative numbers. And, of course, there's the price. Even the knock-offs that go on sale the next day are more money than I like to spend on clothes. I don't see the point, you know? Even if you have $67 Million moldering away in your bank account, why would anyone spend a hideously stupid amount of it on clothes? I don't know . . . maybe it's just me.

But anyway, the Emmys.

Yeah, I agree that the plane crash bit was in seriously bad taste, considering. Maybe somebody should have thought it through before airing it. Then again, if there hadn't been an opening, half the people blogging about the plane crash bit today would have complained that the Emmys were boring. It was a no-win situation if you ask me.

Conan could have explained that the opening had been ditched because of the crash in Kentucky, but that would only have started the mad search for copies of the ditched sequence. You know how we are out here in TV watching land. Tell us something exists that we're not allowed to see, and we'll make damn sure we see it anyway.

I was torn when it came to the Best Actor in a Comedy award, but it's the only award I really cared even a little bit about. I think Tony Shaloub is brilliant as Monk. I love the subtleties he puts into his performance, but I also think that Steve Carell is brilliant in "The Office." If Shaloub hadn't walked away with his third Emmy this year, I'd have been okay with Carell getting it.


Yeah, I liked the acceptance speech by the guy who listed the people he did not want to thank. Not thanking his former teacher was hilarious. I'm sure we all had a few teachers in the past who discouraged us from doing something. Not all of us get the chance to throw that discouragement back in the teacher’s face on national TV.

Okay, and I experienced a momentary disappointment when Keifer Sutherland walked away with the award I thought should have gone to Chris Meloni, but it was gone in a flash. I just don't get worked up over these things. Besides, I've had a soft spot for Keifer ever since my oldest daughter developed a raging crush on him back in the early days of his career. And I guess I did think that Jamie Presley should have won as best supporting actress in a comedy, but I can’t even remember this morning who actually did win.

I watched, but I guess I didn’t absorb a whole lot of what happened. I don't know when I stopped giving more than a flying hoot about award shows. When I was younger, I thought watching the Academy Awards show was pretty great. It was kind of a family event, as I recall. Maybe I'm just older and wiser now. Or maybe there are so many awards given out now, none of them mean much. 

Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for encouraging excellence, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with healthy competition. I'm not one of those people who thinks we should all receive awards just for existing. In my opinion, we spend too much time these days encouraging mediocrity.

I don't think the world will see great things in the future if none of today's kids are allowed to achieve greatness because we're so worried about hurting the other kid's feelings. But I digress. The point is that when you have 10 or 12 chances to be named as "best actor" for your role in a particular show or movie, isn’t the honor diluted a bit? That's my question of the day, I guess: Does it mean as much to be named "best" at anything when there are a handful of other "bests" running around at the same time?



Photo by Tomascz Szkopinski

1 comment:

Mark Baker said...

My only comment is about Kiefer. After five nominations for his roll in 24, I was thrilled to see him finally win. I think he's great in that show.