Television

When the first season of Survivor (the very first reality show) started, my friends here in Hollywood who write shows for a living loudly proclaimed that reality shows were taking dollars out of the writers’ pockets, and therefore, they (insert footstomp here) were not watching them! Surprisingly, many of them still have this attitude (in Survivor’s 20th season).

This week, I read an article which stated that MILLIONS of people who lost their jobs in this economic crisis were just simply never getting them back. These two items are related.

Simply put, the world is changing. You have two choices: Change with it, or die. Seriously.

You can say all day long that scripted television is better than reality television (and I would agree with that), but that won’t make the networks stop putting cheaper programming in place of it. All writers everywhere can stop watching it, but does that make American Idol less successful? No, it just makes those writers out of touch.

People can argue about how pervasive the Internet is, and how really, they still love to curl up with their favorite newspaper on Sundays, but is that going to stop the iPad from becoming a dominant way to read books or what used to be printed content? No.

So you can stomp your feet and cling to your mainstream media and outdated jobs, or you can evolve and evolve now. The Internet is where it’s at, folks, like it or not. People want media that’s better, faster and on their phone. Whatever that is, and whoever provides it.

As much as big media hates this reality, people can find just as much enjoyment (you heard me, I said JUST as much) from a YouTube video of a cat playing with yarn, or a podcast created in someone’s garage, as with whatever the Big Media is pumping at us currently.

Face it, principled writers: Dancing with the Stars is glitzy and glamourous and fun to watch. Survivor has some of the best location shooting and underwater photography on television. The Amazing Race travels all over the world, so you see cultures you’d never otherwise see. Every hugely popular reality show has good points.

This is our world now. Computerized, mechanized, at your fingertips 24/7. That is our entertainment. Those are our jobs. Come and get ‘em. Or at least, quit your bitching about it. It’s not going away.

Emmy show recap

With the debacle of the pointless multi-host banter and declining ratings staring them in the face, CBS and producer Don Mischner decided to try something different with this year’s Emmys. To my eyes, it was a breath of fresh air.

New host Neil Patrick Harris kicked the show off with a sprightly song, “Put Down that Remote.” He sang, he danced, it was funny. He was dapper, he was amusing. Throughout the show, various winners stopped mid-acceptance speech to comment publicly on what a great job Harris was doing hosting. And he was.

The set was a marvel of modern technology, from the multi-screen panels, used to various effect throughout, to bringing the band up from their nether regions to visibility onstage.

The biggest change, a quite welcome one, was giving a shape and a form to the proceedings at hand. Usually the awards are grouped by perceived importance, with the heavy-hitters last. But you end up with a mish-mash of comedy, drama and mini-series that really pleases no one.

This year, they had five distinct groupings: Comedy, Reality, Miniseries/Movie, Variety/Music/Comedy and Drama. Made so much more sense. Gave the whole thing a shape and format, which seemed to make it flow better.

The first winner of the night actually followed on the heels of what seemed like hundreds of awards that were given out already at the Creative Arts Emmys the weekend previous. At those, the now-cancelled comedy, Pushing Daisies won a bulk of the tech awards, more than any other show. Best Supporting Actress, Comedy was Kristen Chenowith from that show. A bittersweet moment.

(There were reports of her fainting backstage afterwards as well.)

30 Rock favorites: Alec Baldwin and writing favorite “Reunion” made predictable dents on the comedy palette. The expected winner Tina Fey (for Best Actress) was instead replaced by Toni Collette in her first season on the Showtime show, The United States of Tara. (Multiple personalities always wins awards.)

Even the Comedy Directing award for The Office’s Stress Relief was somewhat predictable.

The only true Comedy shocker was Best Supporting Actor. It was expected that once the 900-lb. gorilla Jeremy Piven got out of the way, that long-overdue nominees Neil Patrick Harris and/or Rainn Wilson would duke it out for that Emmy. Gasps could be hear all over Hollywood when Jon Cryer’s name was called out.

We slid back into more predictable and comfortable territory when previous winners Jeff Probst (Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program) and Amazing Race (Reality-Competition Program) took another statue. Probst gave the most inspirational speech of the night, quoting Joseph Campbell: “The adventure you get is the one you’re ready for. Go for it.”

The Amazing Race has won every year it’s been nominated. So has Probst.

Once we got into the Miniseries/Movie section, the awards were pretty split between Grey Gardens and Little Dorrit. Generation Kill had won some tech awards, but took home nothing at the big show.

One notable win was Shohreh Aghdashloo, Best Supporting Actress, Miniseries/Movie for House of Saddam. In addition to her Oscar nomination, she had turned heads with her memorable turn on 24 on a previous season. She was a gracious winner.

In the Variety Series section, previous winner Daily Show with Jon Stewart again took the major awards. American Idol had won several during the tech ceremony, and won the directing award tonight.

Justin Timberlake’s “Mother Lover” song was expected to follow in the footsteps of his previous win for “Cock in a Box.” It was not to be, with the 81st Annual Academy Awards opening song taking the Music & Lyrics honors.

The highlight of the Creative Arts Emmys (to these eyes at least, and ok, I admit I’m a total Buffy the Vampire Slayer fangirl, and think that Joss Whedon should have many Emmys on his mantlepiece by now) was when the web series Dr. Horrible (starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day) won an Emmy FINALLY for Joss Whedon. So it was hilarious when NPH introduced the accounting guys to discuss the vote tabulation, and instead had the screen “highjacked” by Dr. Horrible. Very funny stuff.

Very sad stuff came in the In Memorium segment, where Sarah McLaughlin sang. Too many wonderful and memorable TV folks passed on this year. The montage ended, fittingly, with Walter Cronkheit, a paragon of CBS News.

This was a good example of CBS patting itself on the back. One of the most annoying things about the show, however, was how gratuitously CBS pimped its own shows in the montage sequences. Most glaringly when they showed a Drama montage which didn’t even mention Mad Men or Breaking Bad, the perceived favorites. It did, however, include long segments of CSI and NCIS, neither of which would be on anyone’s short list for best dramas of the past year.

On the upside, they did also include the wondrous 24, which got slighted in too many categories. But the CBS glad-handing got to the point of nausea.

The Oscars, at least, know how to do this right. For heaven’s sake, if you have SEVEN Best Drama nominees, you should at least START with some footage of each one.

One thing that was good as far as the video clips shown is that at least with the acting nominees (in most cases, not all; CBS’ Jim Parsons’ tape was an exception) they used clips from the tapes the actors submitted for judging. This was a step up from previous years, when tape editors didn’t even seem to be conscious of the process of tape submission.

Now to the Drama segment, arguably the most anticipated.

First with the expected wins. Mad Men won again. Mad Men’s Meditations in an Emergency (the season finale) won for Best Dramatic Writing. Glenn Close again won Best Actress. Bryan Cranston again won Best Actor.

30 Rock, also at the end, was an expected repeat win for Best Comedy Series.

The somewhat surprising other awards included Michael Emerson finally winning for his evil Benjamin Linus on Lost. Sadly, the bravura finale of Battlestar Galactica (which also got roundly dissed at the tech awards, losing VFX to Heroes) lost out to the series finale (after a gazillion years) of ER, “And In the End” in Best Directing.

When filling out my predictions, this one had given me pause because it was quite stunning how after so many years and so many episodes, the last episode of ER had so many echoes of the first one.

But the one win that had the pundits stunned (in fact, on Gold Derby, I was one of only two people who predicted it) was Cherry Jones winning for her role as the president on 24.

So, all in all, it was a good Emmys. Some will never understand why Jon Cryer and Cherry Jones won. But I think that the people who deserved to win, did.

And here’s hoping that they already have Neil Patrick Harris pencilled in for future hosting duties. And that someone talks to the editors and gets them to put in far less CBS crap next year.

Let’s look at the facts for a minute here.

Kanye West gets up on stage and interrupts an acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards by Taylor Swift.

The audience boos, the country is in an uproar (it’s all Twitter can talk about for awhile). There are rumors of him “being drunk” (as if that makes it ok or understandable).

The next day, everyone apologizes to everyone, and we go on.

Except this. It was fake. And here’s why.

Jay Leno, whom NBC is banking a heck of a lot on with his new 10 pm gig, just happens to have his first show right after the VMAs. Funny. His guest is Kanye West. Huge ratings.

Two days later, Taylor Swift is on The View, also talking about the VMA debacle. Also huge ratings.

Except this. BOTH guests were booked prior to the VMAs.

And, further, both guests are clients of agency William Morris Endeavor (WME) Entertainment. Coincidence? I think not.

Remember that Bruno/Eminem debacle, which later turned out to be staged? Both of them, also clients of WME.

Now here’s the thing.

Do these people actually think this kind of media manipulation works? Obviously they do. They did it with Bruno/Eminem and came back for more for the VMAs.

They don’t, apparently, realize that we are in a different age now. The age of transparency. Where a person is accountable for their actions. Further, where things can be checked with a few keystrokes.

The end result of all of this, to my eyes, is that everyone looks bad.

Eminem. Bruno. Kanye. Taylor Swift.

But most especially the charlatans at William Morris Endeavor, who use these old school tricks when we are in new times. Shame on you!