Mothers, Gangsters and the Usual Boobs at the Emmys

If the Emmys go back to a round stage next year, it should at least revolve, maybe suddenly, jerkily, to give shocked — shocked! — awardees the true feeling that the earth has moved beneath them. And with a revolving platform, each acceptance speech could last the length of one complete revolution, so that the happy Hollywood-ites clutching that weird sci-fi claw of an Emmy statuette could thank their “team” in front of everybody in the audience, unlike Sunday’s show when the we’re over here! attendees were made to feel like ass-end concertgoers.

But, hey, at least they got to hear what viewers couldn’t: Ray Romano making a reference to “screwing” and Sally Field practically yelling “goddamn.” (While she wasn’t miked at her seat, Fox cut away from Katharine Heigl anyway because we could all lip-read “Shit!”) Fox knew its priorities, though, and decided the best way to get viewers to continue watching the sitcom ’Til Death was to have presenter Brad Garrett make “me-like-boobies” jokes to co-star Joely Fisher from the stage.

As for whether we’d all feel like we should have been spared Ryan Seacrest as host, I’m kind of ambivalent. He’s such a well-lubricated, unfazed MC presence that you never feared for a derailing, and yet you didn’t get that frisson of excitement from comedians awkwardly trying to determine how much of their sauciness they should tamp down for a live, classy prime-time gig.

As for who won and who lost, I was happy for Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera, Tina Fey (as creator/exec producer of comedy series champ 30 Rock), Lost supporting dude Terry O’Quinn and the trio of Steve Carell, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for making the absence of would’ve-been-funny-if-he’d-shown-up winner Ricky Gervais a hilarious moment anyway.

But really, am I supposed to be sorry for The Sopranos because it only got writing, directing and drama series kudos and got skipped in all acting categories? When Emmy voters refuse to recognize The Wire even for nominations in the major categories — and will probably ignore it again after its last season next year? Fuhgeddaboudit.