- I may or may not have watched the opening number ten times since Sunday.
There are many things I love about this, including but not limited to: the "prize" for the competition being $1205, Joel McHale's huge, super-fake smile in the segue into the dressing room sequence, and Jon Hamm's unflagging commitment to the whole thing. I don't think it's possible for him to be overhyped - just when you think the awesomeness has hit the roof, there he is, shimmying with Betty White.
- Other highlights: that shot of Jesse Tyler Ferguson weeping in the audience as Eric Stonestreet gave his acceptance speech; Temple Grandin enthusiastically embracing the producer of the biopic based on her life (it's kind of the perfect epilogue to the movie; they should make it a DVD extra or something); Matt Weiner pointedly taking exception to his being cut off earlier in the show when he accepted the Best Drama Emmy - I know some people find him annoying, but I love what a control freak he is.
- Jimmy Fallon did a respectable hosting job, and the show moved at a fairly quick pace. The structure was a little shaky - the show felt like it ground to a halt once they moved into Variety, even though they were still efficiently moving through awards. This is TV, and it's 2010; there's no need to give Al Pacino free range to ramble at will near the end of the show. I'd go Comedy, Miniseries/Movie, Variety, Drama, Reality, but that's just me.
- New winners! Just when you think the television academy is the stodgiest of all the awards-giving bodies, they pull out a slate of first-time winners across the board. This doesn't fully negate the argument that they are stodgy - their blind spots around shows like Sons of Anarchy, Treme and Friday Night Lights (sure, Chandler and Britton got nominated this year, but Zach Gilford not getting nominated - which, don't get me wrong, he still would've lost to John Lithgow, I'm not crazy - shows that there are still apexes of talent and quality left unrecognized) show that there's still room for marked improvement.
- Some interesting food for thought from Regina King - I really shouldn't be surprised by misidentified black actors anymore, but seriously? Identifying Rutina Wesley as Regina King? Seriously? I wish she wasn't so reluctant to engage the central conceit of her argument - for all its relative improvements in diversity in recent years, there is still a lot to challenge and question in television. Not asking the questions doesn't make the problems go away.
True Blood
- It's interesting watching this now after watching the final season of Deadwood and learning about their cancellation woes. (HBO didn't let them know until right before the season started airing that they wouldn't be renewed, so the season was left with plotlines that didn't quite neatly wrap up.) It remains to be seen with the season finale how things are left, but a lot of this show is feeling very disjointed, and several of the stories are feeling very "theater troupe"-esque. That is to say, would seem pointless if there was no season four.
- If there's anything we've learned from this season, it's that Bill and Sookie are much more interesting apart than they are together. Their drippy discussion about what they would do if their lives were "normal"? I can't be alone in thinking that Bill would be the worst third-grade teacher ever.
Mad Men
- I've always wanted to see a flashback to Don's storied fur-selling days, and this episode didn't disappoint. Jon Hamm seems to have such a clear sense of the differences in personality and physicality that distinguish Dick Whitman from Don Draper, and it was nice to see comparably nuanced work from Christina Hendricks and John Slattery.
- The drunken interludes leading up to this episode's blackout have cast alcohol consumption in a decidedly different light than previous seasons, but I think it's also interesting to see the way that they've put vocal criticism of that lifestyle in the mouths of the younger characters. SCDP is starting to build up a stable of new talent, but one comprised of people who see Don not as a suave role model, but as a shambling drunk.
Rubicon
Just when I'm ready to table this for the remainder of the season, they pull out an episode that grants depth to some of the supporting characters and subtly advances the conspiracy narrative. Though the conspiracy-deconstructing advancement wasn't big, I think it was important for Rubicon to show Will and Katherine getting the same information (Atlas MacDowell? That's a conspiracy-mongering corporation name if I ever heard one) at roughly the same time. It made it feel for the first time like their storylines could organically converge, where before Katherine's tie to the other plots felt very shaky.
Huge
A wonderful finale to a wonderful show. I hope ABC Family renews it, but it could easily remain as a time capsule of ten quality episodes (much like co-creator Winnie Holzman's lauded My So-Called Life). The finale was filled with finely-executed, low-key scenes - the conversation between Becca and Chloe in particular was painfully true to life. And I think it says a lot about the quality of the show that I actually felt surprised when Will, Ian and Trent's band came together - they managed to make me forget, temporarily at least, Nikki Blonsky's previous musical work. If Huge is through, I hope that the actors find good work in other projects; their work here should stand as a strike against flat characterization and typecasting.
Top Chef
Is it wrong if Tiffany being dismissed this week makes me not want to watch the remaining episodes in the season?
Ongoing:
Sons of Anarchy, Season Two
- Retroactive entry for the Dream Emmy Ballot! Katey Sagal was robbed, y'all. The narrative balance that the show maintained between its normal testosterone-heavy plots and the subtle handling of Gemma's feelings post-rape is a mark of how good this show truly is. "Balm" and "Service" are just a great, great duo of episodes. Entertainment-world nepotism would never have gotten such a bad rap if it was all as good as the material Kurt Sutter's written for his wife over the past two years.
- Beyond the fine dramatic beats Sagal got to play, the best part of the post-rape storyline was Gemma taking Tara under her wing and schooling her in the fine art of being a totally fierce shitkicker. Tara should've gotten her own Prospect vest, for all the Head Bitch in Charge training she got this season. Speaking of Prospects...
- Half-Sack! Noooo! I knew it was coming, but I still cried. Something always feels so incomplete about character exits dictated by actor dissatisfaction, but I guess those are the most like real-life deaths in that way. It's not difficult to see where Johnny Lewis might have felt unfulfilled by his second-season storyline. The testicular implant subplot never quite seemed to gel, though it did give us that excellent scene where he shows it to Tara, and she starts to address him but can't quite get the second syllable out, like she's physically incapable of saying the word "sack" in the presence of his grotesquely infected scrotum, plus Kim Coates' amazing spewing double-take. Broad comedy, but hilarious broad comedy nonetheless. (Can you tell that I'm in love with this show now? I'm so excited for Tuesday, you guys.) I still wish we could've seen Sack get patched in, though.
- I'm totally fascinated by Sutter's decision to put himself in the role of Otto. The writer-actor is something you see more frequently in comedy, but I'm hard-pressed to think of a drama that's featured one of its own writers, much less the showrunner, in a role that prominent. It seems to speak to a sense of camaraderie that Sutter feels with his cast, the kind of "us against the world" relationship that you see in some shows that have a strong ensemble, take place in a very unique universe and/or have a cult following (Joss Whedon and Firefly, Dan Harmon and Community).
- In the commentary for "Balm," Sutter jokes in discussing the introduction of Titus Welliver's character that he'd like to get all the actors from Deadwood on the show eventually, then says something slightly unintelligible about Ian McShane. Can I just say that McShane on SoA would probably be more awesomeness than the world could handle? I'd flip my shit if that happened.
So...
The Emmys technically mark the delineation between the television seasons past and present, though the increasing cable presence in the summer means that there's no hard-and-fast line between the two. There's sort of a breather here, but the new season of SoA starts on Tuesday, and the next three weeks have season and series premieres coming down like falling dominoes. Every year I think about trying to watch all the new pilots - we'll see how that all shakes out. I've got actual academic shit to do, so technically I shouldn't have time to tackle it all, and I already know that making myself watch some of them will be like pulling teeth. Like I said, we'll see.
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