You’d think that someone like me, who loves TV and writes about it for a living, would have stared at the TV, riveted by last night’s Emmycast. Well, you’d be wrong.
Since I wasn’t assigned to do anything Emmy-related last night, I watched the final regular-season game at Yankee Stadium instead (how optimistic that they still say it’s the “last regular-season game.” It’s the last game, folks, period).
I have a good reason for that, and it comes in the form of a quiz: Quick, who won the major lead acting Emmys last year? Can’t name more than one of them, can you (and, no Alec Baldwin didn’t win last year)? How ’bout from the year before? Didn’t think so. The Emmys have some the most quickly-forgotten awards results, right behind the Tonys and just ahead of the People’s Choice Awards. So it makes me wonder why all the tsuris that occurs leading up to the ceremony even happens.
Think about how much hype preceeds the Emmys… who got snubbed for a nomination, who will get snubbed for an award, who never gets Emmy love, who always (undeservedly) gets Emmy love. But by about a day and a half after the show is over, people move on to the new season or whatever else is bugging them that week.
The networks themselves don’t really seem to care much who wins, either. They don’t often use the “Emmy Award winner” honorific before show or actor names for more than two weeks after the ceremony, mainly because they know that that honorific doesn’t really indicate how good or bad that actor or show really is, given the Academy’s past sketchy track record. It doesn’t seem to matter to viewers, either; just ask all those shows that never win until they either leave the air or get cancelled.