What The People Arguing For Jeopardy's New Host Keep Getting Wrong, Part 2: The wrong question is being asked

 

There has been so much discussion about who the ‘right’ person is to replace Alex Trebek. What never seems to quite enter the discussion is who the people who watch the show the most – the people like me – really think. I’m relatively certain that in the past year everybody except Jeopardy viewers have been asked that question. The outrage over Mike Richards being chosen was so palpable that I don’t think anyway even bothered to create a survey of Jeopardy fans to see what they thought.

I’ve already expressed my opinion multiple times, but I think I need to make it blunter. Had there been no real controversy surrounding Mike Richards, I honestly don’t think the fans would’ve cared as much. We watch the show for the contestants at least as much as we did Alex Trebek. We all know there is a cache to being a Jeopardy champion that doesn’t apply to basically any other game show. I was going to make this a hypothetical, but let’s be honest: Has anyone ever wanted to buy a book about the secrets of a Wheel of Fortune champion?

As I’ve said repeated, Trebek’s job was to put the focus on the contestants and the champions. What far too many members of the media and the social world seem to think is that it should be the other way around. This is so ridiculous you should think it goes without saying. Yet somehow when LeVar Burton ended up hosting Jeopardy, TV Guide actually jeered the contestants for having their performances detract from Burton’s. That’s not fair to either the contestants or Burton.

But that argument is at the key of the search for a new host. More people seem to care about who hosts it than what the contestants are doing. And what makes this horrendous especially now is what’s happening on the show.

Matt Amadio has gone beyond being a great Jeopardy champion to one of the greatest game show contestants in history. On Friday, he became only the third Jeopardy contestant – behind James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings – to win a million dollars in his original run. He has won thirty games by now, second only to Jennings and Holzhauer and in total winnings he is currently fourth on the all-time list.

I’m not speaking in hyperbole to say that this is one of the great achievements in game show history. Under normal circumstances, millions of people who care nothing about Jeopardy would be watching, the same way they did for Jennings and Holzhauer and the way they often did for so many other great players like Julia Collins and Austin Rogers. And yet I can’t help but think that there’s a decided lack of interest in this particular story by the media in comparison to all of the questions about the problems with the host. I imagine that Matt himself, every time he does interviews (and trust me, by now they are coming out of the woodwork) is tired of having to answer questions about he feels about the hosting situation that his performance. I imagine he’s been asked: “How has having so many people host during your appearance affected your performance?” “Do you have an opinion about who should host permanently?” “What do you think Alex Trebek would think of this situation?” (It’s probably less stressful than having to answer questions about why he begins every response with ‘What’, but no less annoying.)

Matt’s accomplishments matter far more than whoever ends up hosting Jeopardy. They should be the Jeopardy story at the center of late night comics by now, not all the commotion over who hosts the show. Indeed, there’s a question that I don’t think anybody in the media or on the net has asked: How are the ratings for Jeopardy now? The thing is I have a good idea as to why. If it turned out the ratings for the show were as high or at least the same as they were before, then there would be no story. It would mean that Jeopardy fans will watch the show no matter what. And that, like so many other tempests in a teapot, doesn’t fit the narrative the media has constructed. And they will never admit that they made a mistake.

Like I’ve said over and over – and will probably have to keep saying over and over – people like me watch the show for the contestants. If you’re watching the show because you care about seeing who recites trivial facts for contestants, then you’re really watching Jeopardy for the wrong reasons. And if that is the case I beg of you, go away. Find some other controversy to make a big deal out of. I realize seeing a decades-long show struggle to find a successor to a TV legend is a big story, but for quite a few of us – and I include myself among those numbers – we honestly wish you’d shut up and let us watch the game. Frankly, I’m insulted that you only seem to care about Jeopardy when we were having problems – and would rather focus on those problems then the people who have made Jeopardy what it is for thirty-seven years. To drive the point home, Alex was only one of those people – and I think even he would have said that most of the time, he wasn’t the most important one. People weren’t trying out for the show last year on the off chance they would get Aaron Rodgers’ autograph. And they were still trying out despite everything that happened involving Matt Richards. We’d much rather you focus on how long Matt Amadio stays on the show, rather than how long Mayim Bialik does. And if you still have to ask who he is, there’s the door.

What the People Arguing for Trebek's Replacement Keep Getting Wrong: Part 1, Trebek Was Not Perfect

 

As a Jeopardy fan, I know that I should just ignore the jokes that are coming from late night comic about the problems finding a host of the show. They come with the territory about everything that’s an icon. But the thing is there’s a darker truth to this that a part of me really doesn’t like and that goes in context with the fact that all of the sound and fury really does have nothing to do with who does host the show in the end.

So in this piece, I will concentrate on some things: why the deification of Alex Trebek is misguided and probably doesn’t help the search and why I think the people who are making the larger critiques don’t care about Jeopardy at all.

Let’s start with the obvious: Jeopardy completely botched the search for a replacement. It was badly handled with the concept that somehow one of these celebrities would be Trebek’s replacement (the fact that one was hasn’t stopped the furor, but never mind). Giving Mike Richards the job was ham-handled to the extreme and smacked of nepotism and given his history behind the scenes as producer (something that no less that James Holzhauer was willing to acknowledge) should not have happened. The series was absolutely right to get rid of him.

That said when Mayim Bialik was immediately named to replace him as an interim; the backlash against her was ridiculous. No one had a problem with her guest hosting the first time, but the moment she became seriously considered for the job, everybody started raising past comments that she has made against her.

That was when two related things became clear. First, whoever ends up hosting Jeopardy will never have a clean slate. In the world of social media and where a camera is everywhere, there is nobody who can survive this kind of scrutiny with a perfect record. If you can think of someone, I guarantee you they’re not famous enough to host the show.

Second, the reason so many people are supposedly raising an outcry is finding someone ‘good enough’ to replace Alex Trebek. This makes the critical assumption that Trebek was perfect. He wasn’t. What he did and was very good at doing was keep his entire life outside of Jeopardy private. As far as I know, he had no social media presence at all. He never was recording as saying anything controversial. And that had less to do with his opinions then what he represented – the white iconic game show host.

We now live in a world where there are so many game show hosts that its easy to forget that Trebek really was the last of his breed. Did anyone wonder what Bob Barker’s opinions were outside of pet population control? Did anyone care what Monty Hall did in his spare time? We heard rumors about Chuck Barris and every so often, Chuck Woolery or Pat Sajak will say something that we’re not comfortable with, but the fact is no one really cared what Trebek thought. And because he kept his private life private, we thought he was a saint. In fact, when he was hosting Jeopardy, there were at least two occasions where his reactions could very well have gotten him fired and ostracized. (The full details can be found in Claire McNeer’s brilliant history of the show Answers in the Form of Questions.)

In 1986 a female contestant had won four games. On her fifth game, Alex ruled incorrect when she mispronounced the word Loeb. This is not uncommon, and the practice is if there is a question about correctness to raise at the commercial. That’s not what she did. She left the podium, got in Alex’s face, and confronted him on it. Alex remained calm…at the time. Later on, it was decided by production and Alex that she would not compete in the next Tournament of Champions and her games would be removed from syndications.

I don’t have to tell you what would happen if that happened just in the last twenty years. Alex would’ve lost his job and the female contestant would be lionized in certain circles for speaking ‘truth to power’ , even though behavior was incorrect in every possible respect. Instead, this entire event – and it’s been in the public record since at least the early 1990s, so its not like they’ve been hiding it – was swept over.

The next event happened more recently and led to far more controversy at the time.  Starting in 1999, Jeopardy would hold an annual competition week for children. Initially having to do with Holidays or Back to School, after awhile it just became known as Kids’ Week. Then in 2013, this week became the subject of controversy.

In the third game, one of the contestants Final Jeopardy dealt with THE CIVIL WAR: “Abraham Lincoln called this document, which took effect in 1863, ‘a fit and necessary war measure.” The second place contestant wrote down:”What is the Emanciptation Proclamation?” The judges ruled against him. (The winner, who spelled the response correctly, ended up winning $66,600 one of the highest records ever but that got lost in the shuffle.)

Now to be clear, the second place contestant had barely a fourth of his opponent's total. There was no way he was going to win. And Jeopardy has been penalizing for misspelling words pretty much since the inception of the series. None of this would’ve changed the results or what the contestant won an iota. No one seemed to care about this. Everyone. from the media to the child’s parents, just said how unfair this was to the child. Context was irrelevant.

The judges and producers made suggestions to Alex that they might want to make modifications to how they handled Kids’ Week going forward because of this. Alex, normally stoic about these kinds of things, told the producers that if they changed things, they could start looking for a new host. Jeopardy decided to get rid of the Kids’ Week to avoid controversy and disturbing their star.

Now we all know if this had gotten out then, there would’ve been yet another firestorm – a white man flexing his will so that children couldn’t have a good environment! – and there’s a good chance the show might not have recovered from that. That the show was in the right, that nothing had changed because of the original incident – and the fact that the media turned it into a ‘controversy’ just how hysterical the world can be – wouldn’t have mattered.

Again, in neither of the scenarios I mentioned was Trebek in the wrong. And in the world we currently live in – where social media makes you guilty and doesn’t care about proving you innocent –  it would not have made a difference. Trebek wouldn’t have survived it, and neither would Jeopardy most likely. And it is in that context that we now realize trying to find someone with the ‘flawless’ reputation of Trebek is an impossibility. Because he was never flawless, he just played someone who was on TV.

All of this is a big deal – but I think it is a big deal to the wrong people. In the conclusion of this article, I’ll address why I think that the people who should care the most about this – the fans – are probably the ones who care the least.

A Brilliant Comedy, No Reservations: Reservation Dogs Reviewed

 

One of the greatest comic specials I’ve ever seen was Chris Rock’s 2000 HBO special Bigger and Blacker. Rock has been one of the most revolutionary performers and really does tell it like it is. In the middle of a hysterical rant on racism, he said: “And the Indians ain’t saying shit ‘cause they dead. You think I’m lying? When’s the last time you ever remember seeing two Indians?”

Aside from the exaggeration for comic effect, you could easily make this argument when it came to representation for indigenous people on screen. There have been a handful of good character actors in this field, but it is says a lot about Hollywood as a whole that the most famous portrayal of a Native American onscreen in the last twenty years was Johnny Depp in the hideous Lone Ranger movie. Even in the age of Peak TV, stories featuring even a single indigenous person are few and far between. Until now.

Reservation Dogs, the extraordinary new comedy series from FX and Hulu absolutely shatters any concept – assuming you had one to begin with – about what its like to be a Native American. From the minds of Sterling Harjo and the backing of Taiki Waititi comes the story of four Native American teenagers growing up on a reservation in Eastern Oklahoma. Bear, Willie Jack, Cheese and Elora hate where they live. They are currently the most notorious stick-up artists on their reservation (we see them steal a truck full of chips in the opening minutes) and are bent on trying to raise enough money to get to California. We already know how shitty the world is for them from minute one; it actually gets worse than that when we learn about an ‘Indian Mafia’ that has targeted them because they want to be the biggest gangsters. Big, the only reservation cop who is indigenous is hot on their trail…sort of. Considering how spacey and obsessed with conspiracy theories he is, its hard to imagine he’s a good cop and you get the feeling that a larger part of him really wants them to get away with it.

In the middle of all this Bear is ‘shot by the white man’ – actually he’s hit with a paintball gun – and is visited by a spirit guide. And it’s not even a really good one. ‘Danny’ makes it clear he was at Little Bighorn…but ended up getting killed when his horse stumbled before he could even get on the battlefield. The messages he sends would be inspirational, if he didn’t seem so confused about them, but Bear gets the idea that somehow his groups mission should to be stay and save his people. Naturally, his friends think he’s crazy.

Reservation Dogs is, of course, remarkable because it is written, directed and stars all indigenous people. And it makes it clear in just about every aspect of their lives how truly horrendous it is. These are the kind of people that Earn and Paper Boi from Atlanta would pity and yet feel superior to at the same time. In the episode NDN Clinic, Bear is beaten to a pulp by this same gang and has to go to the clinic because he thinks his nose is broken. He spends the entire episode saying: “I got a few good punches in’ and trying desperately to make sure his mother, who works at the clinic, doesn’t find out about him. The entire episode is wonderfully cruel comedy – the waiting room in the clinic, imagine the one in ER, multiply by twenty and you might have an idea how messed up it is.  The crew is selling meat pies they know are terrible. Cheese comes in for chocolate, and it becomes clear he has terrible vision. Willie comes in with a stomachache, which is symptom of the fact she is eating ten to twelve bags of nachos a day. When Bear finally gets seen by Dr. Kang – who basically does everything at the clinic and wants to leave as badly as Bear does – he does everything in his power to treat Bear and find out if his mother is single. Kang then does the most pathetic possible way of hitting on her, and of course, reveals Bear’s injuries. Another confrontation between the gangs ends when Bear’s mother pulls him away from the fight, which no child ever wants to have happen.

I realize that being a white male I may not be the most qualified person to discuss what makes Reservation Dogs remarkable, but I sure as hell know that I recognize what makes it hysterical. Every character has a level of pain with their humor that makes so much comedy work. Willie Jack takes a lot of abuse because her name is Willow and she was named for the notorious 1988 film. (One group of people thinks that movie was awesome; Dr. Kang thinks it’s a rip-off of Lord of the Rings.) There are many references to great filmmakers throughout – Tarentino being by far the most obvious – and part of me can’t help but think that the writers are having vengeance against John Ford and all the Indians he had killed off by John Wayne. It’s hardly surprising this series was renewed so quickly for a second season. It’s a little early to tell at this stage, but Reservation Dogs has all the indicators of being a masterpiece.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Why I'm Glad Bob Costas is Back On the Record

 

As a critic I have rarely looked very deeply at the world where TV and sports merge. This is mostly because the only sport I follow religiously is baseball and a lot of that is done more through the sports pages than ESPN. This isn’t quite fair, though, because if there is one profession that is basically immune to the changing times, it is the sportscaster.  This has been true locally ever since radio and TV entered the games; icons like Phil Rizzuto and Curt Gowdy lasted for decades and it is only recently than Vin Scully stopped being the voice of the Dodgers. This is just as true at the national level; Howard Cosell and Jim McKay represented ABC for much of the Golden Age of Sports, and say what you will about Tim McCarver, it seemed like he would be there forever.

Today, however, I want to discuss one of the longest lasting icons in the field, a true legend who has passed through the halls of journalism, sports and entertainment without missing a beat. I’m speaking of Bob Costas.

Costas has been an icon on NBC Sports nearly as long as I have been alive. One of the great joys of Ken Burns’s magnificent documentary on baseball was watching Costas relate not just the moments he celebrated, but those he witnessed. The highpoints include his being in the Red Sox locker room for Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, watching the preparations for the celebration going up, and then witnessing the horror of the bottom of the tenth inning. Also glorious was his first hand observation of one of the games great moments: Kirk Gibson’s miraculous home run in the 1988 World Series that from beginning to end seemed out of a B-Movie. But Costas has never been blind to the sports inequities. He was one of the earliest observers as to the rise of the steroids epidemic, and was for most of his career shouted down until it became too obvious to look away from. He also has never truly believed in the increased postseason play, which has not stopped him from talking about it.

For those of us with a long memory, one remembers that Costas was the first representative of NBC’s late night: Later With Bob Costas. Indeed, when David Letterman famously left NBC for CBS, the widespread assumption was that he would end up succeeding him in the 12:30 AM spot. Though it’s hard to imagine another white, straight male changing the face of late night, given Costas leaning towards journalism rather than entertainment, you could certainly how it might have been different. But in the end NBC went for the self-described ‘complete unknown’ Conan O’Brien. One can hardly argue that late night television as well as comedy is poorer for that selection.

Instead Costas would go in a different direction. In 2001, he started the late night show On the Record with Bob Costas, arguably one of the most brilliant journalism programs they ever did.

HBO has always been, even before it became the founder of Peak TV, a great place for sports documentaries and journalism. Admittedly quite a few had the sepia tones of nostalgia that so many fans look back on, but more often than not they would look in to the hard truths. ‘The Curse of the Bambino’ was just as focused on the racism within the Red Sox organization as the triumph of Bucky Dent and the error of  Bill Buckner. And they handled the risk takers just as much as the famous: they gave equal attention to icon Muhammad Ali as they would to Curt Flood, the Cardinal outfielder who challenged the system of baseball even though it cost him his career. And one of the best journalism shows on any TV is Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel where for more than twenty years he and his teams have looked unflinchingly at some of the biggest issues facing every aspects of sports, from whether Tokyo was in any position to host an Olympics a full year before the pandemic to how the desire for participation trophies may have damaged the American psyche.

So when Costas ended up HBO, it was a perfect match. Costas was basically given the freedom to interview anyone he wanted on any issue he wanted, only some of which had to do with athletics. And it suited Costas’ personality – he’s never been confrontational or particularly hostile; rather, he will gently poke at the flaws of the subject’s argument or try to give a group of easy question before gently poking his subjects with what he wants to know. I remember in 2003 when he was interviewing John Dean and Carl Bernstein about Watergate, and subtly asked Bernstein: “Who is Deep Throat?” (Bernstein deflected.) I also remember how while interviewing Kevin Kline while he was promoted his Cole Porter biopic, Costas gently told the viewers that Porter was married as a cover to have affairs with people of both sexes. (Even now, Kline’s true sexual orientation remains a mystery.) Nor was he afraid to go hard at people he thought were clearly in the wrong. One of his first interviews with Vince McMahon about the XFL turned into a shouting match that would’ve gone viral had the term had existed back then. (Given what we know about McMahon’s treatment of all his employees, I’d like to see a rematch.)

And though Costas almost never dealt with politics in any way, he didn’t shy away from it either. During the War in Iraq, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were supposed to go to the Hall of Fame to commemorate Bull Durham. Because of their very strong political leanings, Cooperstown revoked the invitation. On his next show Costas invited Sarandon, Robbins, Robert Wuhl and Tim Shelton to discuss Bull Durham and what they would’ve said had they been given an outlet as well as what they thought of MLB’s behavior.

But for whatever reason, it didn’t last particularly long. In 2004, the series was cancelled. Costas ran a panel show called Costas Now for awhile – it ran monthly and was less concentrated – but by 2006 Costas was gone from HBO.

That doesn’t mean he was gone, of course. Even while Costas was On the Record he was still broadcasting for NBC. He was always their go-to guy for the Olympics as well as almost every other sporting event they had. And I was glad to see that every so often, the MLB network will have return to his first love and broadcast a ball game.

But as sports have become more and more part of the culture war, as athletes are becoming more political and as more and more scandals about so many of the institutional sports we held dear have become public, it has become more and more obvious we need a man like Costas and his type of journalism more than ever. Which is why I was elated when in July HBO announced that Back on the Record with Bob Costas would begin airing monthly.

There are few signs that Costas has changed in the interim. He’s still willing to take on the hard issues – he talked to Billie Jean King and John McEnroe about mental health and being an icon in tennis; he talked to David Cone about the pressure of being an athlete in the age of social media, he talked to Peyton Manning about being a comedian. And he will challenge certain people – when Cleveland announced it was no longer going to call its baseball team  the Indians, he pointed out to a hostile panel that sixty percent of Cleveland fans don’t care one way or the other.

And Costas remains unafraid to speak truth to power. In his closing monologue for his first show back, he challenged the IOC for not only decided to have its games during a pandemic, but far too often being willing to have dictatorships so often be the host country. As he eloquently put it: “If you test positive for marijuana, you can’t compete at the games. If you violate human right abuses for decades, your country can host the games.”

All of this, of course, could come across as yet another one of those diatribes that so often passes as  cable news. The thing is, Costas never comes across as angry and he has a sense of self-effacing humor that so many ‘angry white men’ don’t have. In this same monologue, he addressed the fact that during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Putin took the opportunity to annex the Crimea. He referred to that the as the second greatest act of terror during those games, ‘the first being, of course, infecting me with pink-eye.’ (Costas red-rimmed eyes during the broadcast of the Olympics were more talked about then the actual games; it’s good to know he has a sense of humor about it)

It is rather shocking that the still youthful looking Costas is fast approaching 70. He shows no signs of slowing down, as the fact that he’s back doing a show that, frankly, athletics and journalism desperately need right now. Like Bryant Gumbel on HBO Sports, he is one of the last of his breed and we need journalists like him more than ever.  I hope this isn’t a sign of him deciding to slow down.

The Emmys Need To Be Reformed, Part 2: What the Emmys Are and Why It Needs to Happen

I’ve commented on more than one occasion that the Emmys almost never lead the way when it comes to recognizing great television. After The Crown and Ted Lasso dominated on Sunday, there was a huge outcry saying that the Emmys are just followers. To this I say, if only that were true.

If the Emmys were willing to follow other awards shows like the Golden Globes or SAG awards, it would make jobs for people like me a lot easier. But in my experience – which goes back nearly a quarter of a century – the Emmys don’t do that. If they had then just at the start of the century, they would’ve recognized for Best Drama Six Feet Under (they never did) The Shield (never even nominated it for Best Drama or 24 (yes, but only two years after the fact) These were ambitious series; they also ignored the more conventional Grey’s Anatomy and Boardwalk Empire (twice).

That’s in drama. Their record in comedy is actually worse. In the last twenty years they ignored Sex in the City (three times) Curb your Enthusiasm, Glee (twice) Brooklyn Nine-Nine (never nominated) Transparent and Orange is the New Black.

And don’t get me started on their track records with actors in any category. Do you know how many Golden Globes Julia-Louis Dreyfus won the six straight years she was winning Emmys? Zero. In order, they were won by Laura Dern, Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler, Gina Rodriguez, Rachel Bloom and Tracee Ellis Ross. Rodriguez and Bloom didn’t even get nominated the years they won.

The Emmys have only occasionally corresponded with so many of these awards show by nominated some – and usually it’s only one or two – of the groups that follow them. Say what you will about the controversies with the Golden Globes; the one thing you couldn’t accuse them was lack of variety. They pay little attention to award groups like the SAGs or the Television Critics Association or The Broadcast Critics. If some series or actor does manage the rare achievement of sweeping them, then yes they might that show or actor an award. But their record is woefully thin. Everyone may crowd on the idea they got behind Schitt’s Creek very quickly, but they’d spent the last five seasons more or less ignoring it. By the time they usually do decide to honor a great series – Breaking Bad is by far the most obvious example – they’ve almost run out of time.

So the Emmys don’t lead, and they don’t follow. What do they do, you might ask? Well, as someone who has been studying them for a very long time, here is how I see them.

The Emmys, at their core, are one of those ‘legacy’ clubs. No one really knows what the rules are to join, certainly not the founders. Once you’ve been recognized, and the rules are arbitrary, there’s nothing to stop you from being acknowledged over and over again, even if your quality continues to diminish over time. This club does not like having the natural order restored and goes out of its way to ignore the real revolutionaries over the ones it just can’t ignore. (Think of The Sopranos only getting recognized for Best Drama after five seasons, and The Wire basically never even being acknowledged.)

Over the course of time, much as they’d like to ignore, the world around this club has changed. So, kicking and screaming all the while, they make changes to their rules that its hard to argue with, more people are allowing in the door, most of whom don’t act or look like the ones who came before. (If you want to see institutional racism and sexism in this process that’s a different article, but considering the people who run most of these networks, I can’t say you’re necessarily wrong.) And so there is the appearance of change. What no one seems to notice (or if they do, they’re shouted down) is that it’s only the appearance. The names have changed, but the fundamental rules – once you’re in, you’re in – have not. And if some of the older members complain about this, they are basically in no position to do anything about it now, and many of the people who are still excluded, well, they point to the members and say: ‘Keep trying!’ All the while continuing to move the goalpost.

This would be bad enough on its own. What makes it worse is that many of the participants are getting the message. Broadcast television is a quality and popularity spiral that becomes increasingly harder to get out of year after year.  Just as dangerous is the fact that many of the possible participants are also getting out of the business.

A few years ago, A&E announced it was getting out of the original series business. There was some hew and cry from those who loved Bates Motel, but little else. Then Lifetime more or less did the same. USA and TNT are slowly but surely cutting back on the original series they produce. By far the most troubling bellwether is Comedy Central. Think back over the past year on the last time you saw anything on them other than The Office reruns or The Daily Show. The Other Two, one of the most promising new series they’d done in years, is now being run by HBO Max. This is not a good sign from the network that gave us Inside Amy Schumer, Key & Peele and Corporate.

Now I imagine that the reaction of many will be to shrug and say: “There’s already too much TV on right now.” And I get that. But the fewer networks that decide to compete in the original series market means by necessity that more and more entertainment – Peak and otherwise – will be controlled by fewer and fewer sources. It’s bad enough that corporate monopolies are basically taking over every other aspect of how we get entertainment; to have to do so for the channels we get it from is truly frightening.

Now does the solution that I suggested in the previous article – separating all the awards into Broadcast, Cable and Streaming – solve all of these problems? No, of course not. But what it will do is something the Emmys (and frankly, most other awards shows) don’t do – expand the playing field and allow room for more networks. Some might argue that this is sort of more modern day thinking; a way to let everybody to have a trophy. It really isn’t, of course, but it is allowing for people to have a realistic chance at a trophy.

This is just a suggestion, of course. It may not be as good as the system that’s allowed Modern Family to win five years in a row and Game of thrones to win four years out of five (including you know, the last season) and has decided that Hulu and Apple are far more worthy of producing entertainment than the CW and Starz, but I humbly submit it just the same.

 

 

Why America Should Be Watching Impeachment: American Crime Story...And Why They Don't Want to

Ever since the latest installment of Ryan Murphy’s extraordinary anthology series American Crime Story was announced to deal with Bill Clinton’s impeachment, there’s been a lot of backlash. Not just the predictable one from the political media, but from just about everyone in media and supposedly in the world. They say we’ve just lived through two impeachments in the course of a year and even aside from that, most of them had so many painful memories from Saturday Night Live’s reenactment of everything that happened, why should we go through a fictionalized version? But the thing is that says a lot how the country thinks about politics, sex and our view of not just the Clinton scandals, but of sex and power in general.

This is a complicated issue so it deserves a more detailed introduction. First of all, Ryan Murphy was always planning to do an installment on Clinton’s impeachment. He made that clear as far back as 2016. The difference is it was supposed to be the fourth installment, not the third. (There was going to be a story about the aftermath of Katrina first; it’s unclear if that’s still going to happen.) So this was in the works before the idea of a Trump Presidency was in anyone’s thoughts. Next, because of the pandemic, this installment has been delayed for a long time. It was supposed to air in the spring of 2020, and everything that has happened since then delayed its release for over a year.

But it’s not entirely because of the Trump Presidency and all its scandal that’s causing all this advance uproar.  And I think most of it has to do with how the world viewed the Clinton scandals at the time and how Murphy and his group of creative forces clearly view it now. In a sense, all of this is part of larger stories that the writers are trying to tell. The People V. O.J. Simpson wasn’t just about the media circus around the Trial of the Century; it was about how the world views race and celebrity. The Assassination of Gianni Versace showed how the world viewed homosexuality in such in a way in the nineties that Andrew Cunanan could kill multiple gay people before he killed Versace – and local law enforcements reaction was basically to shrug. This message was clear in both series, but I think a lot of the viewers could overlook it not just because of the quality of the performances and the writing, but because in the first installment, the victims of the crimes quickly were viewed as irrelevant to the circus, and in the second, the format was different from the first that we may not have fully registered that everybody – including Cunanan – was a victim.

What Impeachment makes clear right from the get-go is that everybody in the media completely approached the Clinton scandals wrong. Let us leave aside the conservative world, which the show reemphasizes, never trusted Clinton and really was willing to do anything to bring him down. (The series makes this very clear by showing that George Conway, famous for being an anti-Trumper was very viable in wanting Clinton impeached – something the liberal media was really comfortable in overlooking the past few years.) What is clear in retrospect is that the liberal media was just as compliant in declaring the narrative. The victim of all of these accusations of assault and using his power to have affairs with women was – the accused.

That was the prevalent attitude, by the way, of not just the media, but every single late night comic that made a joke about everything that was going on at that time. The narrative that everybody seemed to agree on was that adultery might be sin, but it wasn’t serious enough to bring down the Presidency. (The fact that a decade earlier Gary Hart, a man far more qualified for the White House than Clinton ever was, was brought down by an adultery scandal, was something the media never brought up.) And if we’re being honest, even that wasn’t the real thing we found disturbing. No, the overwhelming implication was that none of the women who were involved with Clinton were…f-able enough to be worth all this fuss.

Because that was the overarching narrative. The line that I heard from so many late night comics was that if you were going to lose the Presidency over a woman, it had better be Marilyn Monroe. (And again, the fact that the historical narrative was that JFK, a man whose adulteries were even worse than Clinton was then – and still is – regarded as a liberal icon, says something very upsetting about our history.) I actually remember an SNL sketch which had a group of female anchors on MSNBC debating whether Monica was pretty enough, and how handsome all the people in the scandal were. It devolved into what was basically a sleepover.

And the world decided that was the scandal. None of these women were the victims, and as a result they deserved to be scorched earth, not the man who clearly was guilty of, if not high crimes and misdemeanors, then clearly being an adulterous lech. Remember how everybody seemed overjoyed when John Goodman took on the role of Linda Tripp on SNL? In retrospect, this wasn’t an act of genius like have Tina Fey play Sarah Palin a decade later or Maya Rudolph take on Kamala Harris now. The writers of SNL must have made the clear decision: why should we bother to have one of our own actresses dress up in padding and wear makeup? She’s causing all these headaches; let’s have her played by an overweight actor who doesn’t really look like her. And their treatment of Monica Lewinsky was little better; she was just a teenage bimbo who somehow should’ve known better than to seduce – that was the narrative – the most powerful man in the world and be friends with an overweight woman who was clearly using her.

And that’s the narrative that we created. Not just the media, not just the late night comics, everybody. Bill Clinton became a liberal icon, despite everything he did. No one ever apologized to Monica Lewinsky (indeed Bill Maher continued to make horrible jokes about her well in W.s first administration) It is only now, nearly four years into the #MeToo movement, far too late to do anything constructive that we are starting to look again at how we idolized Clinton. So maybe its right that Monica Lewinsky decided the only way to change the narrative was to help tell her own story.

The clearest thing about Impeachment is that it is all about the women. At the center of it, of course, is Monica Lewinsky. Played by the brilliant multi-talent Beanie Feldstein, Monica comes across as a woman who is so smitten by a combination of Clinton’s looks and power that she can’t see how badly she is being used. It’s not clear even in the series whether the seduction is mutual or whether there is some degree of grooming involved, but either way Monica spends months yearning after the most powerful man in the world, believing every story he tells her. You can’t help but sympathize her as we see how easily she is led, first by Clinton, then by Linda Tripp a woman who seems to befriend but has an agenda not even she may suspect at first.

The series makes it clear from the beginning that Clinton is a predator. We see how he treats Kathleen Willey before the first episode is even over. And then of course, there is Paula Jones, the woman who in effect started the whole mess. Some have complained that Jones comes across as a simpleton. This didn’t stop me from feeling immense sympathy from her for the get go. Annaleigh Ashford is one of the great actresses of the new Golden Age, and it says a lot about her talents that I didn’t recognize her, not just by appearance but by her attitude. Usually she plays characters so filled with confidence that it’s startling to see her play someone so naïve, who’s being assaulted by the most powerful man in the world is only the start of a years’ long struggle of abuse as powerful figures in the media make it their life’s mission just to use her so they can get at a President they dislike. I’m honestly not sure whose behavior towards her I find more gutwrenching: Ann Coulter (an utterly unrecognizable Cobie Smulders) who doesn’t care a thing about her or the suit as long as they can get Clinton on the record or Sarah McMillan (Judith Light) who does everything in her power to make herself seem like she’s on Paula’s side and then when a settlement is on the table, throws her under the bus to her husband so that they continue their pursuit of Clinton.

And I know this isn’t the intention of the writers at all, but at least in the early episodes I could feel sympathy for Linda Tripp. I’m well aware she’s the monster who (at least in the eyes of the world) started this whole me. And it’s clear that Tripp’s entire attitude is one who wants to be at the center of this but doesn’t want her hands dirty. That said, and maybe part of this really is just Sarah Paulson’s incredible gifts as an actress, it’s hard not to feel something for her. Sure she’s an egomaniac who thinks she’s more important than she is. Tell me you don’t know someone like that who didn’t work at the White House. And there’s something terribly sad about watching her in last night episode as she is assigned a publicity tour for Gerald McRaney to see the Pentagon. She throws herself into this with all the energy she can, and then when the tour gets bumped at the last minute, the hurt on her face is indescribable. And for all the horrible things she does, there’s something childlike about the way she looks at Newsweek after confirming the story for her own name. Throw in the fact that she and Monica actually bonded over weight issues (you can see it in the way they pick at their food and discuss Weight Watchers that they’ve probably spent a lot of their lives being body shamed) and you feel there was a heart there. Maybe as black as coal, but still a heart.

I know that some people have complained about Clive Owen’s portrayal of Clinton as not being accurate. But in an odd way, it’s appropriate for this story. There’s little of the good ol’ boy that Darrell Hammond and Phil Hartman made famous; instead it sounds just a bit more sinister, a little more manipulative. And the famous Clinton temper that was talked about in private – oh, it’s in abundance here. They should probably reconsider this as a new way to look at him going forward.

You feel for the women in a way you never did. Monica deserved better than to be a punch line for two years. Paula Jones deserved better than to end up Celebrity Boxing. Even Linda Tripp deserved better to be played by a man in drag. Ashford, Feldstein and of course Paulson, automatically go on the forefront of this year’s Emmy nods.

What about Hilary, some of you may ask? Well, we’ve barely seen her, which has no doubt disappointed all the Edie Falco fans out there. But I don’t see her coming out of this series with her reputation any better. During the whole saga, Hilary came across at best as someone who was willfully blind to what her husband was doing. What Impeachment makes very clear is that’s still the best case scenario and it’s more likely that it’s much worse – she knew her husband was a predator and she stuck with him through the whole process, not out of love but because she wanted power and she thought his name was the only way to get it. Right now, she doesn’t look much better than all the other women trying to destroy him for the same reason.

This actually brings to me my final point – the most obvious connection between Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Remember how furious that at the second Presidential Debate in 2016 – just a few days after the Access Hollywood tape had supposedly put the nail in his coffin – the media was that he brought three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment as his guests?

The thing is, Trump and by extension the GOP had gotten the message from their failed impeachment loud and clear. Trump just did what he always did; he said the quiet part out loud. Isn’t that what the last five years have proven? When you are famous, you can just grab them by the p----. What this show makes very clear is that the only real difference between then and now is that Bill Clinton wasn’t stupid enough to admit it on tape.

Like I said, the reception and ratings have not been as enthusiastic or large as the previous two. But I really hope that Impeachment brings more discussion then among critics and awards. The old trope is: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The last quarter century has proved both sides did learn – the wrong lesson. Democrats learned that as long as you bring the budget to a surplus, it’s perfect okay to lionize a sexual deviant. Republicans basically learned if you can’t beat them, get one of your own. Listen to Ann Coulter’s speech as to why they couldn’t let Clinton get away with what they think he did, and its perfectly easy to understand why the GOP was so willing to throw away ‘the moral high ground’

My score: 5 stars.

 

The Emmys Need To Be Reformed, Part 1: A Possible Way to Do It

 

No sooner had the Emmys ended their broadcast then Twitter started the hashtag: #EmmysSoWhite to protest that for all the record number of nominees of color, not one actor of color had won. (They all seemed to have ignored the fact that Michaela Coel became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for writing in a Limited Series and they clearly hadn’t noticed that three of the winners for Guest Actor and Actress the night before had been actors of color, but I’m going to let that pass for now.) Now I’ll admit I was fiercely disappointed that Michael K. Williams didn’t win Best Supporting Actor and I would have liked to see MJ Rodriguez win too. That being said, there is a larger issue with the Emmys that, despite my general happiness with the results, I think both the Academy and television would do well to ignore.

First, there is the problem of sweeps in major awards. For the second straight year, all seven major Emmys in a genre went to the same series. This is actually indicative of a bigger problem, the tendency of a major series to win the lion’s share of the awards at the expense of often better shows. This has been more obvious in the Limited Series category over the past six years, but it is happened more often then not throughout the last twenty years of my watching the Emmys. The same series would win in the major categories year after year: Mad Men from 2007-2010, Modern Family 2010-2014, Veep 2015-2017 and the last four seasons of Game of Thrones. There has been some room for variety; ten different actors have won Best Actor in a Drama over the past decade and Best Comedy has been won by a different series for four successive years. But when the lion’s shares of the same series dominate the nominations year after year, you can understand why there is frustration. No one really knows why three years after it peaked, The Handmaid’s Tale got eight acting nominations.

More to the point is a larger problem. Streaming and cable have so dominated the awards shows for the last decade that network television is practically non-existent. In the past decade, only three actors from a broadcast drama have won an Acting Emmy – and Juliana Margulies counts twice. It’s actually worse when it comes to comedies: the only winners that haven’t been from cable the past six years all starred on Saturday Night Live.  The decline in Emmy viewership and broadcast television recognition from the Emmys is not, in my opinion, a coincidence. You can’t exactly draw eyeballs to a broadcast for series that only an increasingly fragmented group of viewers will watch. And the fact there are too many advantages streaming and cable have that networks can’t compete with.

And of course, there is also the simple fact there’s just too much TV to watch. No matter how many series or actors the Emmys add to every category, there are always going to be too many left out. And when so many of the same series dominate multiple categories, there’s even less room for them.

Can this problem be solved? It would take a lot of work. And fortunately, there me a group that can provide us with guidance.

(Note: For those of you who read my blog and think it hypocritical for me to praise the Emmys on a Monday and criticize how they do business on a Tuesday, I have two reasons: First, I have been advocating for Emmy nomination reform for at least twenty years and second, just because I think they got the results right this year doesn’t mean it’ll happen again for a very long time. I’d rather not wait another decade for this to happen.)

 

For those of you who follow my blog regularly, you might recall that this past July and August I wrote a series of basically ecstatic columns about the achievement of the Hollywood Critics Association first ever awards for Television. I’ll do my best to avoid repeating myself, but here is the fundamental thing that they did perfectly: In addition to giving awards in Drama, Comedy and Limited Series, they broke down almost every major award group into broadcast, cable and streaming.

Now for the past decade, I’ve been trying to get the Emmys to acknowledge the fact that they’ve been letting so much great broadcast television slip under the radar. Not once did it ever occur to me that the simplest way to solve this Gordian knot was to slash it apart. Of course we should acknowledge that the broadcast networks have to play by different rules than cable and streaming. It may not seem fair to many people in television, but neither is the way the Emmys (and honestly, almost every other awards group) have basically decided that a series as pedestrian as Emily in Paris was somehow superior to Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Network Television, by design, can’t compete in the same universe as cable or streaming. I think it’s about time we admitted it.

And I have to say, given how well, the HCA ended up working in its inaugural awards that the system basically worked.  All of the Comedy Awards (Broadcast and Cable did compete in acting awards) went to network series. Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist recognized Jane Levy for Best Actress and Mary Steenburgen for Best Supporting Actress. Best Actor went to Ted Danson for Mr. Mayor, a nomination that everybody had been expecting and were astonished didn’t happen. Best Supporting Actor went to Nico Santos for Superstore, an actor and a series that Emmys spent its entire six year run ignoring. And while could question why Young Rock ended up taking Best Network Comedy, one would be hard pressed to argue that it wasn’t a different choice.

And for those of you who are trending EmmysSoWhite, you couldn’t make that argument about the HCA. I’d have to double check all the nominations to be certain of this, but I honestly believe there were even more nominees of color than there were at this year’s Emmys. There sure as hell were more winners of color. Not just Michael K. Williams for Lovecraft Country, but MJ Rodriguez and Billy Porter were more than free to take Best Actress and Actor in a Drama, Broadcast or Cable, while Josh O’Connor and Emma Corrin won for The Crown in the Streaming Drama category. I didn’t agree with Colman Domingo winning for the Euphoria two-part special, but I’d be hard pressed to say it wasn’t a better choice than Ewan McGregor. Throw in Santos’ win and Dwayne Johnson’s accepting for Young Rock, that’s six wins for minority actors. I’m damn sure that’s better than the Emmys have ever done in their history.

And if I’m being honest this approach is good not just for Broadcast Television but also for cable and streaming. The winner for Best Cable Drama went not to Pose or Lovecraft Country, but rather to Freeform’s incredible series Cruel Summer, a series that was completely ignored by the Emmys and is on my shortlist for the Best Show of the year period. The Best Comedy on cable went to Resident Alien, a bizarre outlandish series on the SyFy channel. These networks have been producing increasingly brilliant dramas and comedies for years, but don’t even get recognized by the Emmys. This would solve a lot of problems.

It’s hard to make a similar argument when it comes to streaming television – they did, after all, pretty much dominate the Emmy nominations and awards this year – but this process did allow for a certain amount of recognition to a lot of shows that basically have been ignored. There’s AppleTV’s Dickinson, Mythic Quest and Servant (Rupert Grint actually managed an upset win for Supporting Actor in that category) and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and The Boys got more recognition than they did from the Emmys. So did Girls5Eva and Made for Love.  Better still, in my opinion, The Handmaid’s Tale and Hamilton got less.

I’m not saying that there would be kinks in the process or that it would work perfectly. But given everything we have seen from the Emmys over the past decades, and all the complaints that everybody has now, it is really hard to imagine that the process we currently have is working. You can make as many changes to the voting process as you want, you can enlarge the number of nominations per category, you can change the qualifications of who gets to vote in the first place but as I have argued for years, the Emmys is stubbornly and utterly resistant to change.

The thing is, they might be willing to accept this group with far less pushing. In the past few years, they have major adjustments in their makeup and costume awards after period pieces and fantasy pieces kept winning all the time. So now there’ are contenders for period and fantasy and contemporary costumes. Visual and sound effects awards kept going to fantasy and sci-fi shows, so now they’re divided them among non-fantasy. The Academy’s also been making similar division in these categories when it comes to one hour or half-hour programming.

By comparison the rules the HCA are following and that I’m suggested would involved a lot less heavy lifting and probably satisfy everybody: the networks would be happy because they’d be getting recognized, cable would be happy because more networks could compete more prominent, and oh yeah, viewers would be happier because more series they actually saw would be competing as well.

And yeah, I get it, the show would be longer. Might I suggest putting the Late Night awards and reality awards all in the creative arts Emmys? They’re halfway their already by now. You’ve already moved TV Movie there, and honestly, when you can only come up with two nominees for Sketch Comedy series, you don’t need to give that award in the big ceremony either. There are probably other ways to cut fat, but I’ll worry about that later.

Now the thing is, the Emmys need to take some drastic steps. And it’s not just about broadcast networks or the lack of diversity. In a way, it bears probably on how long Peak TV ends up lasting. In my next article, I’ll deal with what the Emmys is doing now, what they’ve always done, and why that desperately needs to change.

The Emmys Were Last Night, And They Actually Got It (Mostly) Right

 

After nearly fifteen years of trying to predict the winners for the Emmys – ten of them professionally, five of them at this site – I had actually forgotten something. How genuinely good you feel when a series you really like – really enjoy – wins. Not only wins, but does well.

Maybe it’s part of the detachment that comes from being a critic all this time, but after all these years I had forgotten the last time I really had fun watching the Emmys. Thought they’d made the right choices and was genuinely happy for the winners. I’ve spent over four years advocating for the brilliance of The Crown and I’ve spent much of that time wanting them to win. But I didn’t think I’d actually feel so good when they ended up doing what no drama series in my lifetime – perhaps in Emmy history – has ever done: run all seven categories they were competing in last night. Even in my heart of hearts, I really didn’t think the series could do it. (Whether or not it deserved to is another matter, which I’ll get to below.) But I was so happy when Josh O’Connor and Gillian Anderson prevailed last night, and overjoyed when Olivia Colman ended up winning. (Part of it, I will admit, is because over the years I’ve looked forward to Colman giving speeches: she was so self-effacing she really admitting that she wanted MJ Rodriguez to win.) And when Peter Morgan finally took the prizes he deserved for years, I was happier than I’ve been for an Emmy winning Best Drama – well, probably since Breaking Bad way back in 2014.

I had a similar reaction to all of the Best Comedy winners. I’d expected Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham to win last night, and I was grateful to see it happen. I was also overjoyed that Brett Goldstein did win Best Supporting Actor, and his speech was almost entertaining as it was at the HCA last month. (Seriously, go to youtube and look it up. Goldstein is wonderful.) I don’t think it would’ve been as possible for me to be as happy that Jean Smart won for Best Actress as everybody else in the room was, but seriously, she really deserved it and I loved her speech. And I was actually glad that Hacks ended up taking the Best Writing and Directing awards. Would I have liked to see Zach Braff or Bill Lawrence get a trophy for themselves? Obviously. (Would I have been thrilled in Maya Erskine had won for Pen15? Sure, but there’s time.)  But after much thought, Hacks was one of the best series of 2021 and it more than deserved for the creative staff to get recognized. And honestly, the speeches they gave were so wonderful.

I will admit a certain mixed feeling to the awards for Best Limited Series. I really wanted Anya Taylor-Joy to end up winning for The Queen’s Gambit, but I understood the momentum that Kate Winslet had gotten, and in all candor her speech was just wonderful. I was fine with Evan Peters winning, and I jumped for joy when Julianne Nicholson won. Sure I wanted Kathryn Hahn to win, but if I’m being honest, I’ve worshipped Nicholson’s talent as an actress far longer than I have Hahn’s. I’m certain Hahn will get another chance. And I was thrilled to see Michaela Coel get the Emmy she’s had in her back pocket since I May Destroy You premiered last June. Judging that the audience was even louder in their approval than they were for Smart’s win, I’m not alone.  This is the start of a great career for Coel. We all know it.

Indeed, the only wins last night that I was upset about were Tobias Menzies triumph for The Crown and Ewan McGregor’s win for Halston. I’ve explained my problems with Menzies’ performance so I won’t go into it, but I really wanted Williams to win even before his untimely passing. Kerry Washington gave a noble tribute to him, as did Courtney B. Vance when he won Best Guest Actor for Lovecraft Country, but it would’ve been better for the world for him to get it, even posthumously.  There’s no real logic behind McGregor’s win at all. I grant you it was a mediocre category, but Paul Bettany and Hugh Grant were light years beyond his work. Was this some kind of restitution for his being robbed for Fargo four years ago? Who can say? But honestly, the Emmys rarely gets so many awards right that at this point, I’m willing to let this be the exception rather than the rule.

If this year’s Emmy had only given the awards they did, then it would’ve been enough. But the awards show itself was surprisingly entertaining – arguably the most fun its been since Seth Meyers last hosted in 2014. Cedric the Entertainer was onpoint without being too blue. His sketches were a mixed bag, though. I didn’t really like the ‘historic moments of 2021’ he inserted himself. But the sketch he did with performers who hadn’t won an Emmy? One of the greatest pieces of work I’ve seen since The Office parody. I’m still debating which I found funnier: Fred Savage inserted himself into the sketch before going back to direct, or Dr. Phil’s showing up, and all of these actors scoffing at the fact he won two ‘Daytime Emmys’.

And the presenters were all exceptionally good this year. Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler were hysterical as always. (Particularly liked Kaling’s remark to Rege-Jean Page that his ‘abs were CGI’)  Glad to see last year’s winners from Schitt’s Creek get to basically perform a sketch where the premise was that Eugene Levy had insulted the writers. And was delighted when Anthony Anderson and Tracie Ellis Ross presented an award and Ross took the occasion to serve Anderson with divorce papers. (Anderson: “We’re not really married.” Ross: “Eight years, five children. That’s a Hollywood marriage. Please next year let them win.)

Now to all you naysayers who will no doubt say the show was too long. Well, you’re right: just as many of the winners ignored the music that should’ve played them off that stuck to it. (And full credit to the band for basic letting many of them finish). To those of you, I say: ‘who cares?” First of all, I think we’ve reached the point in our award shows where I think everybody should thank whoever they want, at least here. And second of all, after everything the world has gone through the last year, television more than anything got the world through it. Shouldn’t the people who brought us those moments be entitled to be celebrate and thank whoever they want?

This is the first true post-pandemic awards show we have gotten. I hope that next year manages to live up to it. I hope that the series they nominate live up to it as well. Starting today, the work begins again.

My Final thoughts on This Year's Emmys: Writing and Directing

 

As I promised, just before Emmy night I’m going to evaluate Best Directing and Writing for all three major categories. Unlike everything else, though, I’m going to lean more on my personal feelings rather than any professional beliefs. So I’ll put forth what I think should win and what I think will win. I will start with comedy.

 

BEST DIRECTING, COMEDY

B Positive and Mom have no real chance. I think it is likely to go to one of the Ted Lasso stories. My personal preference would be ‘The Hope That Kills You’ which brought so many great stories to a climax. But the odds are it will go to the more then hysterical ‘Biscuits’. I actually don’t care that much – any Ted Lasso win is a good one.

‘

BEST WRITING, COMEDY

While I’ll admit a certain fondness for Pen15’s ‘Play’ episode which was a small masterpiece, this is Ted Lasso’s to lose. And it will probably go to the Pilot. No real problem there

 

BEST DIRECTING, DRAMA

In my heart of hearts I’d like this to go to the Series Finale of Pose which was heart-breaking and life-affirming in all the right ways. But like everything else, this is The Crown’s to lose. And ‘Fairytale’ had some pretty remarkable sequences – who will forget seeing Diana skating through Buckingham Palace.

 

BEST WRITING, DRAMA

A personal preference for the series finale for Pose and I wouldn’t mind seeing Lovecraft Country win either. But again, this is an easy one: the season finale for The Crown had so many brilliant moments its hard to imagine it not winning.  The confrontations between Charles and his mother, and the climax of the struggles between the Queen and Margaret Thatcher are among the greatest moments in the series.

 

BEST DIRECTING, LIMITED SERIES

Very close one. Wandavision had a lot of brilliant directing moments, and I think it very likely Michaela Coel could triumph here. But I do think, given all of the camera work, this is going to The Queen’s Gambit.

 

BEST WRITING, LIMITED SERIES

Explain to me why Wandavision is nominated three times and I May Destroy You is only nominated once. (Better yet, explain to me why the ‘East/West’ episode of Fargo, one of the most astonishing episodes last year isn’t nominated at all.)  I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference though: Michaela Coel seems a shoo in here.

 

See you Monday.

Twenty Years Later, How 9-11 Changed TV, Part 1: David E. Kelley

For those who have watched TV in the past few years, it is easy to equate David E. Kelley as enjoying a major creative renewal with a group of exceptional well-done shows with Nicole Kidman at the center. Big Little Lies was one of the biggest critical and ratings successes for HBO (are we going to get a third season, David?) The Undoing was a major audience and critical success last fall with nominations for Hugh Grant and awards for Donald Sutherland, and Nine Perfect Strangers has already achieved great buzz for Hulu this past month. Throw in the critically acclaimed Goliath for Amazon (now in its fourth and final season) and the high praise for Big Sky (coming back for its second year this week) and its easy to understand why Kelley has been considered hot.

What few people remember these days is that the major reason for Kelley’s fall from grace during much of the Golden Age was due to his own brand, and that brand took a major hit immediately following 9-11. Like Dick Wolf, this hit was almost entirely self-inflicted.

In order to explain this, one must take a broader view as Kelley’s work as a whole. Kelley’s first major success was as one of the head writers for L.A. Law one of the most famous and greatest series of the 1980s and early 1990s. Few shows had ever done the legal drama the way that Kelley and showrunner extraordinaire Steven Bochco did. It is one of the only dramas in television history to win four Emmys for Best Drama Series and launched the careers of (among others) Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Corbin Bernsen, Blair Underwood and Larry Drake. The series was known for its multi-week storylines, almost unheard of in that era and quirky sense of humor.

Kelley left L.A. Law in 1992 to form his own production company. The first series he created was Picket Fences, a bizarre, often brilliant drama series centered on the Brock family, living in Rome, Wisconsin. I have a great fondness for this series because along with The X-Files, Picket Fences was the gateway drama that led me to realize just how brilliant network television could truly be. Was it believable? Not really. But when you saw Fyvush Finkel stride into court, saying: ‘Douglas Wambaugh for the defendant, your honor!” or heard Ray Walston chew out the defense and the jury as Judge Bone, you didn’t really care. (Both Finkel and Walston would deservedly earn Emmys for their work here.) The series lasted four seasons and won fifteen Emmys, including two for Best Drama and Emmys for both Tom Skerritt and Kathy Baker as Jimmy and Jill Brock, the heart of the series. Despite the series tendency to lean on elder statesman, Picket Fences also launched the careers of such formidable talents as Lauren Holly, Holly Marie Combs and Don Cheadle.

Halfway through Picket Fences run, Kelley launched a hospital based drama Chicago Hope. Basically known as a trivia question (the Chicago-based medical drama to air premiere against ER) it was nevertheless an extremely well acted and written series featuring a searing performance by Mandy Patinkin as Jeffrey Geiger and great supporting work by Adam Arkin and Hector Elizondo. It could be best described as Grey’s Anatomy if the doctors were only concerned with running a hospital.

Because of Kelley’s excessive work load (he has a tendency to write most of the episodes of every series he runs) he basically resigned from both series in the fall of 1995. Chicago Hope would undergo a series of major transitions, but continue to run for six seasons. Picket Fences would suffer much more and end up being cancelled by the end of the 1995-1996 seasons.

Kelley’s exhaustion didn’t last long, and by the fall of 1997 he was running two completely different Boston-set legal dramas. (Kelley is a native Bostonian.) That spring, The Practice premiered on ABC. Featuring the barely surviving firm run by Bobby Donnell (in my opinion Dylan McDermott’s greatest role) the series dealt with a firm to survive usually defended the guiltiest and scummiest of clients. It dealt very clearly with the ethical and emotional strain it took to this kind of work. Barely surviving its first season, word of mouth and a move to Monday nights would make it a critical darling and a smash hit. It would often have storylines that lasted for weeks, sometimes two at a time. The series would launch the careers of such talents as Steve Harris, Camryn Manheim and Kelli Williams. It would win Best Drama twice and dominate the Guest Actor and Actress awards at the Emmys for its eight year run.

Of course, everybody remembers the other Boston set legal series that debuted in 1997 – Ally McBeal. There’s very little left to be said about it now, so I’ll just say as a personal criticism that even at the time, I thought it was too bizarre to work. It was far too quirky for its own good and that was before the dancing baby showed up. But you can’t exactly deny this series proved once and for all, Kelley’s gift for writing for actresses. Calista Flockhart, Jane Krakowski, Portia Del Rossi and Lucy Liu would not be who they are today had they not crossed paths with Kelley.

Kelley was perhaps at his peak in 1999. He may be the only showrunner in history to win an Emmy for Best Drama and Best Comedy in the same year for these series. At that point, his reach starting to exceed his grasp – he returned to Chicago Hope for a final season, attempted to do a half-hour version of Ally McBeal and tried a detective based series called Snoops all while still working in on his two Emmy winning series. All three of these series were gone by the fall of 2000, but Kelley didn’t slow down – that fall, he premiered his high school drama Boston Public on Fox which became another hit. Kelley was on cruise control.

Then before the 2001-2002 season began, the attacks of September 11^th happened. And none of Kelley’s series were ever as good again.

It’s important to understand that Kelley’s series, more than any other show runner’s at the time, were always filled with topical references. Usually they were subtle – he made more than his share of O.J. Simpson references in The Practice and sometimes they just referred to victories by the Patriots or the Red Sox. After the attacks on September 11^th, they become more frequent and far too obvious.

He rarely referred to the attacks themselves – though he did a couple of times on Ally McBeal in a very heavy handed way in January of 2002.  But the more politicized the world became, the more intense and frankly ludicrous they became. Never was this clearer than on Boston Public when a class did a Model UN – and all of the students began shouting at ‘America’ over the Iraq War.

Within two years, Ally McBeal was cancelled and Boston Legal was in a graveyard site. The Practice seemed just as doomed, when it saved by the arrival of James Spader as Alan Shore, an attorney so corrupt he actually bragged about. Alan Shore was one of Kelley’s most brilliant creations, and when The Practice ended up being cancelled, Kelley essentially started a new series focused on him: Boston Legal. And this is where he truly went off the rails.

In all of Kelley’s previous dramas, there would only occasionally be a storyline devoted to current events – every few weeks or so. On Boston Legal, the firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt was dealing with more ripped from the headlines stories than Law and Order was and a faster clip. It is a tribute to the cast that the series managed to work as well as did – in addition to James Spader, the series featured William Shatner in what I would argue was his greatest role as ultra-conservative Denny Crane. (Shatner had appeared in a storyline in the final season of The Practice and was so brilliant that Kelley formed Boston Legal with him at the center. Shatner deservedly won two Emmys for his work.) Candice Bergen appeared in the middle of Season 1 as Shirley Schmidt, and managed to bring a voice of relative calm. Similarly great acting came from John Laroquette and Christian Clemson (who also won an Emmy) But the show would often work despite Kelley’s writing than because of it. It wasn’t long before Spader’s closing arguments became more along the lines of diatribes against the Bush Administration, Conservatism and everything that was a hot button issue in America than actual law. (The series actually ended with Alan lecturing the Supreme Court on its legal and moral failures. You don’t want to know.) It didn’t help matters that in the second season, Kelley would regularly have Spader and Shatner first subtly and then without any pretense acknowledging that they were in a TV series as well as some of their past roles. I could never understand why this happened.

Now Boston Legal was a very popular and critical hit, winning several Emmys along its five year run. (I should, however, say that I consider many of them among the most questionable in the awards history. Spader himself seemed to think as much; when he was third beating, among others, James Gandolfini, he seemed truly bothered by it.) But unlike so many of the great dramas of the era, you were never transported like you were with 24 or Lost. You always knew you were watching a television series, as opposed to a work of art. And more often then not, you were getting a series of Kelley’s political lectures disguised (barely) as entertainment.

I’m also certain there must have been a lot of behind the scenes strife. All of Kelley’s dramas had a certain degree of flux with the cast throughout the series. But on Boston Legal, you often couldn’t go more than a few episodes without a group of departures, often with no explanation. Lake Bell left before the first season was over; Monica Potter and Rhona Mitra were gone by the end of Season 1. Replacements would fluctuate as well; among the many superb actors who didn’t last long were Julie Bowen, Constance Zimmer, Saffron Burrows and Taraj P. Henson. Lest you think he was having problems keeping actresses, he had the same trouble with actors; Craig Bierko didn’t even last half of Season 3. (Bierko and Zimmer would end up finding their greatest moments a decade later on Lifetime’s UnReal.)

When the series ended in the winter of 2008, it took a long time for Kelley to come up with another series. It came as small surprise that it was yet another legal drama, this one set in Chicago. Harry’s Law, with Kathy Bates in the title role, seemed to be a little closer to The Practice in spirit than anything else. Bates’ character and her firm operated out of a shoe store and spent most of their time, working with lower class clients, as well as with an egomaniacal lawyer named…Tommy Jefferson. (Like I said, not subtle.)

This series was a relatively big success for NBC at a time when the network desperately needed one. Bates earned a deserved Best Actress nomination. Then in Season 2, they ended up nearly rewriting everything that happened in Season 1, half the cast departed and the shoe store was gone. Despite that, it was one of the network few real successes, which I never understood why they cancelled in the spring of 2012. (Then again, not long after that, the network managed to slowly begin its climb out of the cellar, so what do I know?)

Kelley slowly managed to climb out of the niche he found himself in. He developed a fairly well done hospital drama for TNT Monday Mornings, which was purely about medicine and I’m actually still bitter was cancelled. Then came one of his few attempts at a pure comedy: The Crazy Ones, sadly now known as the last major project Robin Williams was associated with.  He’s now back to being as productive as he was at his peak and I have to say, its help immensely that the lion’s share of his project are adaptations of popular novels. (In addition to the works listed, he also adapted a series of Stephen King novels for DIRECTV, Mr. Mercedes. It took him time but he finally realized that the best way to create anything is to make it entertaining first, and then, maybe topical.