I See Dead People

I have always been obsessed with the dead people montage at awards shows for several reasons, and Sunday night's Emmy telecast was no exception. The first reason for my obsession is, there's always that "Oh my God, he died?!" factor, as in...that kid from the Jefferson's died? Larry Bud Melman just died this year? Tom Poston died? Lily Munster died????

The other oddity of the dead people montage is that it's this bizarro posthumous popularity contest, so it's always morbidly interesting to see who the producers decide is the corpse with the most cache. This year, Merv Griffin was deemed dearest departed...no big surprise he was saved for last. But, isn't it weeeeeeeeeeird the way some of the dead people get more applause than others, or that many don't get applause at all? And why is the audience clapping?! These people are dead! Sit there and feel BAD like you are supposed to!

This year, there was some added weirdness. First, the fact that the dead people montage came right out of Sally Field's censored [over-rehearsed] speech left us still grappling with a "What's going on?" feeling, as in, why are they cutting to that non-descript dark wide shot of nothing to cover up whatever they are censoring? Is "Don't Stop Believin'" gonna come on now? Is David Chase involved?

So I was a little discombobulated that there was no classy "Here's the people that died" intro and had to readjust my concentration when the "In Memoriam" hit the screen next. Luckily, the super duper smart producers put up a nice sky with clouds graphic behind all of the dead people so you'd know they were dead people and that they were, I assume, in heaven.

The other oddity of the night was that early on, there was a montage of late night talk show one-liners, and then all of a sudden it morphed from funny to all of the late nighters talking about how sad they were Tom Snyder died. But, Tom Snyder ALSO got billing in the Dead People Montage.

Does that mean that Tom Snyder aced out Merv Griffin for Best Dead Person Emmy after all?