The Emmy Awards: A Gunfighter Recap

I am sitting at my desk, listening to The Electric Light Orchestra play "Turn To Stone", typing this as fast as my sausage-like fingers can manage, because in a very few minutes, I have to try to turn two ridiculously bad shooters into officers who are expected to be proficient at the agency standard.  If anyone can do it, it's me.  I'm that good... but at least one of them may be beyond my powers.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about them today (I'll tell you how they turned out after I finish their training on Friday), what I want to talk about is last night's Emmy Award show.  I was more keen to watch this year's Emmy show than I have been in a long time, because this year, I actually have a friend in the business who is up for an award!  That's right, a fellow blogger, one who reads my blog regularly (see? I'm waving in the direction of California as I type this), is in the business, and is up for an Emmy!  I'm so proud.  For real.  This person is a very nice lady, and I hope she wins.

Let's talk for just a minute about my relationship with television.  I love television.  I am not one of those people that believes that television is the bane of intellectual existence.  TV provides entertainment, and in some cases education.  It is up to the individual what s/he wants to watch.  Television doesn't rot the brain.  The brain-dead dopes who spend ALL of their time watching television would be brain-dead dopes even without them.  The thing about my particular television viewing is that I watch very few network television shows, and hence my small problem with the Emmy awards.

I will cheer for some shows and some performers for varying reasons, but it is almost never because I watch the shows.  I've never seen Grey's Anatomy, CSI, Mad Men (even with that smokin' hot Christina Whatshername), Two and A Half Men, or even Lost, so I have very little emotional investment... but what I do have is a track record of being personally responsible for the destruction of great shows.  For some reason, if I enjoy a TV show, it is the kiss of death.  I don't get it... but my favorite shows almost always get canceled.

OK, so the Emmy's... I missed all of the Red Carpet stuff, because I was busy feeding my family, and trying to get the weekend's soccer laundry done.  So I sat down on the stroke of eight with a pint of "Dead Guy" Ale at my side.   Neil Patrick Harris (NPH for the rest of this post) opens the show... clearly, this show is going to be "funny", with an emphasis on the quotation marks.  So let's get on with it.

Kristin Chenoweth wins best supporting actress in a comedy for her role in Pushing Daisies... another show I have never seen.  The very petite Ms. Chenoweth weeps and squeaks through her acceptance speech, while I sat seething about her beating out Amy Poelher and Kristin Wiig.  Having said all of that, I have to ask what the hell the nominees trying to do with that stupid sight gag with the weird glasses?

Wednesday, Sept. 23

OK, I started this on Monday, and I have been too busy to finish it, having taken up residence in Firearms Instructor Hell...so I am going to abandon my detailed format and say simply, that this year's Emmy show was putrid.  The writing was awful, the gags were awful, it was just awful all around.  The only bright spot was Neil Patrick Harris' efforts as host.  I think that NPH is a great actor, even though I will always look at him and see Doogie Howser, M.D., in my mind's eye.

The people who produced this show will have one advantage for next year... they can use THIS year's show as an example of how to crash and burn in a spectacular manner.

Oh, and my friend won her Emmy!  I am so proud.