8.30.2010

The 62nd Annual Emmy Awards

* We really hate the red carpet pre-award shows. For one, it is a too-long opportunity for all of those fake, sniveling "Access Hollywood"-style sound-bite interviews where everyone's a fan of everyone else and we're all just so happy to be here. The world would be a better place if Billy Bush had to be digging ditches somewhere. Of that we're sure. But more repellant are those "fashion police" elements of the red carpet shows were know-it-all nobodies show us which dress was a hit and which dress was a miss. We don't know much about fashion, but we're willing to give the benefit of the doubt to designers who make their living, you know, designing rather than some snarky talking head hired for the day by "The Insider." The whole thing feels like high school where the pretty, popular girls are called sluts out of jealousy.

* Jimmy Fallon is funny. Great "Glee" inspired open, but we hate that the Emmys use this bit to continue to breathe life into the celebrity of Kate Gosselin. She's another one who, like Billy Bush, has made our lives a little less pleasant by being on TV.

* We're sick of Betty White. Please go back to the pop culture punchline obscurity from which you came. It was fun, but it's over.

* Jon Hamm should be a bigger star than he is.

* A singing Hugo Hurley Reyes!

* John Hodgman, the guy who's doing the deadpan commentary of the winners as they walk to the stage (he was the PC in the "I'm a Mac" TV spots), isn't nearly as funny as he thinks he is.

* Why does everything have to involve Twitter nowadays? #Enoughtweeting

* We like Sofia Vergara, but we're getting tired of the dumb sexpot Latina routine.

* Love this bit where we get to see and hear the nominated directors and writers talking.

* Stephen Colbert is a genius without question. But the guy is always on, always in character, always doing his schtick. It can be exhausting to watch.

* We do feel kind of uncool for not watching "Glee." But we can't watch every show that gets good buzz.

* How very meta to allow the viewers a glimpse into the Emmy TV control room and hear the director counting us down after the commercial breaks.

* Does anyone really enjoy the painful award show banter between two actors who (in some cases) probably never met before? If it works (see: Arnett, Will and his sex poem), then use it. But if it's not working, why not cut it? Why force us to sit through it? The producers have to know when something is funny or not. Don't they?

* The taped bit about "Modern Family" meeting with a clueless TV executive is funny. And it's probably happens something like this more often than not when a show is struggling.

* George Clooney. Give the guy credit - he'll do anything for a laugh sometimes.

* Jim Parsons seems like a watered-down version of his weirdo "Big Bang Theory" character Sheldon. We can't see him doing anything after the show ends. He's just too Sheldon.

* We are fans of Neil Patrick Harris. He can do anything. But we've recently grown rather weary of his misogynist, promiscuous Barney character on "How I Met Your Mother." If anyone else had been playing him, we'd have started hating him long ago.

* Lea Michele. A future ex-Mrs. Cheese Fry.

* "Nurse Jackie" is not a comedy. We call foul.

* We can't decide who is less appropriate to be featured at the Emmys, which is ostensibly a forum in which we celebrate actual skill and talent: Kate Gosselin or Kim Kardashian. Kim needs to join Billy Bush in the ditch digging. She could use a honest day's work.

* We do like Will Arnett. But he's a little bit scary, too, isn't he?

* Bravo's "Top Chef" beats out CBS' "The Amazing Race" for best reality show. The Emmys more and more have become an advertisement for cable programming. At some point, the networks are going to stop paying millions for the rights to air the Emmy show.

* More Emmy love for AMC's "Mad Men." We tried to watch it when it first debuted a few years ago. We lasted maybe four episodes before giving up - it's well done, sure, but it's also very somber. Everyone on the show is so miserable. We don't know anyone who actually watches it on a regular basis.

* "Lost" isn't going to get any Emmy respect, is it?

* We do like "The Good Wife," but think Archie Panjabi's Kalinda is probably the show's least rounded character.

* And now please welcome to the stage... actors you've never heard of who are starring in a new show on NBC you won't see for another four weeks! Not cool to use an award show to sell your new shows, especially if doing so means you're forcing new faces on us. We want TV stars, not nobodies. We won't watch "Undercover" out of spite.

* Highlight of the show so far: Jimmy Fallon's goodbye songs to "24," "Law & Order," and "Lost." Genius.

* We may just about be over Tina Fey.

* It's not very engaging when the winners just read a list of names. Honestly, what would happen if you didn't thank your team of attorneys?

* Ricky Jervais is sublime in situations like this. There's a danger to him. You don't know what he's going to say. And the sharpest of knives come out while he keeps that beatific grin on his face.

* We used to watch "The Daily Show," which just won best variety show for the 8th year in a row. We loved it. But it became a chore. If you don't keep up in the TiVo, that stack of unwatched "Daily Show" episodes becomes just as bad as the term paper from 10 grade that's due next Monday.

* "What is The Event" on NBC? A show they hope desperately will become the next "Lost" but will likely end up being the next "Flashforward."

* Maybe we're cynical, but we don't think it's a coincidence that the Emmys decided to honor one of the world's biggest movie stars, George Clooney, a guy who hasn't been on TV in ten years. We call it a ratings ploy, pure and simple. As good a guy as he is, Emmy voters are notoriously enamored of movie stars.

* All of the movies and miniseries nominees are from HBO (with a few token PBS titles). Remember when the networks made movies-of-the-week? They were still doing a few as recently as the early 1990s.

* We do not get January Jones. Seriously.

* The "In Memoriam" segments, as on the Oscars, always devolves into some kind of weird applause referendum. Who'll get the biggest cheer? Clap for your favorites!

* We didn't know Caroline McWilliams, the sassy executive assistant on "Benson," died. Sad.

* Enough with the Emmys for HBO's "Temple Grandin."

* No shock here: "Mad Men" wins again for best drama. Yawn. One thing about Emmys - once they find a winner, they tend to go back to the same well many many times. "Frasier" won about 15 years in a row it seemed.

* "Modern Family" wins best comedy. It is a pretty funny show, so we can't complain.

8.27.2010

Times when we do not want to talk to strangers

* Entering or leaving the grocery store
* Sitting in coach on an airplane
* Pumping gas
* Waiting at a traffic light
* Using an ATM
* Crossing the street
* Riding in an elevator
* Waiting to see the doctor

"And the actual retail price is..."

The Cheese Fry remembers well as a boy watching one contestant rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from CBS' weekday game show "Press Your Luck." (We miss you, Peter Tomarken.) The guy's incredible, unending, no-Whammy spins chewed up so much time that CBS had to stop the show and pick it up again the next day. Our elementary-school mind was effectively blown. Only later, thanks to the hard-hitting journalism of 1980s TV Guide, did we learn that the contestant had found a mechanical glitch in the "Press Your Luck" big board that allowed him to avoid the Whammy.

Esquire last month exceeded TV Guide by exploring in detail how one contestant gamed the mother lode of game shows - "The Price is Right" - and became that very rare species: the Double-Showcase Winner. We'd heard something about this when it happened, but we didn't understand the drama involved behind the scenes. The producers were sure the contestant had somehow cheated when in fact he'd done something perhaps far more pathetic: he'd learned the prices of every prize put up for bid.