It's How You Play the Game

I guess it takes the Emmy's/the promise of a new TV season/and a little time off to dust off the blog and say "what up" to you, my old Is-It-Just-Me?-TV-ers.

Did you watch the Emmy's last night? I did, and if I was grading it by my elementary school report card standards, I would give it somewhere between a "Satisfactory" and "Needs Improvement" (though even the "Talks too much in class" note that I often received seems fitting here).

But, I like to be Pollyanna Positive when I can, so we'll start out with the good...working our way down to the bad, lest you worry no snark will appear here.

The (Pretty) Good  I must confess, I have never seen Glee.  Well, I mean, I've SEEN it, like clips and such, but no, sorry, I have not jumped on the sing-a-long bandwagon.  However, I thought Jane Lynch kept it all moving along and she had the right amount of wink-wink sarcasm for me.

"I'll have what she's having" award goes to Sofia Vergara.  I could not feel more genetically inferior. And of course they paired her with Rob Lowe, just to remind us all that we are mere mortals. No amount of Spanx/push ups/botox/80 hours on the Stairmaster could ever make us worthy of their company.

The Bad I love a good water cooler moment, really, I do.  So, whatever my feelings for Charlie Sheen's Insanity tour, I was thinking something really fun was going to happen - maybe a dream sequence for 2 and 1/2 Men that revealed all this crazy was imagined? Ashton Kutcher doing a mock Punk'd segment?  Nope, Charlie just came on out and apologized, the audience's nervous light applause underscoring that we were all waiting for the punchline.

Still waiting.

The Ugly I am a huge Modern Family fan, but dear God Julie Bowen, what was with that Ally McBeal look?  Get that gal a sandwich, with a side of extra carbs, stat!

The Gold Standard

I mean, I knew it was going to be a good night when the opening Emmy number was set to Bruce Springsteen and included Jon Hamm. That and knowing George Clooney was going to be receiving the Humanitarian award? About as mysterious an outcome for me as when I order up some nachos at the local pub: pure joy!

Duh.

GOOD Everyone's been talking about how good the opening number was and I'm no exception. Besides what I've already mentioned, let's not leave out that Betty White never gets old (figuratively and literally). I even have to admit that I liked the Kate Gosselin moment where she disses herself, though it was slightly marred by the fact that girl looks a little plastic surgeried up to me. Had to rewind for a sec after a "Who is that?" moment. Seriously, Kate, it's time to go away and design baby strollers or something. Step. Away. From. The. Camera.


BETTER Ok, fine, it's no secret I'll pretty much like anything with George Clooney in it, but his inclusion in the "How can we make Modern Family better" bit was priceless.

BTW, when I tried to find a picture for this, I Googled "george clooney emmy modern family". Why is the picture that comes up first the girl who plays Kayla on Days of Our Lives? Someone should start a website of "Weird S&*T that turns up on Google searches".

Hmm, maybe I just did.

BEST And of course, speaking of Modern Family...Eric Stonestreet getting the Emmy was not just good because he is so freaking hilarious as Cameron on that show, but for me, way beyond all the quippy banter and skits, I am tuned in for the good acceptance speeches. Not the over-rehearsed-in-front-of-the-mirror ones (I'm talking to you Kyra Sedgwick) but the really awesome, heartfelt-make-you-cry ones, and Eric's speech fit the bill. Plus, bringing his mama as his date and giving his award to his parents as a show of his appreciation?

I'd like him to be a part of my modern family.

The Envelope Please

I was starting to panic. There are only 5 episodes of Mad Men left (yes, really) and there's only so much back-to-back-to-back Bachelor incarnations I can take before I need to regenerate my brain cells by reading a book or something.

So with a tv lull looming before the new fall shows begin, I am relieved that at least I have the Emmys coming up THIS Sunday!!

Things I'm Looking Forward to:
George Clooney is receiving the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award. I don't know what this entails, but it's a segment honoring George Clooney. Um, duh. I'll be there.

Modern Family has 14 nominations. Would love to see a sweep...though that kid and Ed O'Neill weren't part of those nominations? Muy mal.

Conan's now defunct Tonight Show is nominated. I'm with Coco!!! How bad do you want to see THAT speech? Suck it, Jay Leno.

I'll probably grab some Ben + Jerry's during...
I'm still bitter over wasting 6 years of my life on LOST. Not rooting for anyone from LOST and especially hoping there are no Dharma-themed skits. And enough dragging it out with that auction already! No, I don't want to buy the smoke monster, musical instruments from Driveshaft, and absolutely, positively I do not want any of their what I assume-to-be-smelly outfits!


BTW, how come no one's hair ever got longer on that show? Maybe if they didn't waste time fashioning a blade to cut it, they would've gotten off the island sooner.

Wait, did they get off the island or did the smoke monster get them? I'm still not sure...

Pu Pu Platter

I mean, I bitched all summer about having nothing to watch. It was seriously the dregs. A re-run of Oprah picked up by my DVR was actually described as follows: "Dr. Mehmet Oz answers viewers' questions about bike seats, hot tubs and tight pants.".

Obviously, times have been tough, so I was pretty psyched that all the new programming was finally hitting the airwaves.

But, being the über busy gal I am, I had to have kind of a quickie cram session to catch last week's new stuff. It went something like this:

As painful as it was, I forced myself to zip through the premiere of The View co-hosted by Kate Gosselin. That is, until Kate said to Victoria Beckham something like "Oh, your marriage made it to ten years, unlike mine.". Um, yeah, you guys are the same.

DVR - Delete.

Then, it was onto Oprah's interview with Whitney, who now inexplicably is starting to sound like Marge Simpson. Stuck with that until the "Bobby Brown spit in my face" portion.

Delete.

Not really a Jay Leno person (go Team Dave!) but I had to at least watch the premiere in the interest of journalistic integrity. Ok, fine, he lucked out with Kanye West and even got him to cry. And Jerry Seinfeld would be hilarious reading the phone book. But basically, this is just the same show, earlier time...no thanks.

Delete.

So when I realized Sunday night contained the Emmy's, Mad Men AND Curb Your Enthusiasm, well, it became another DVR feeding frenzy.

**Spoilers**

But then all of my Emmy faves kept losing. Bupkis for Tina Fey? Or Julia Louis Dreyfus? Or Tracey Morgan? Or Neil Patrick Harris? Or Jack McBrayer? Or Elisabeth Moss? Or Jon Hamm? Really?

Delete.

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?