61st Emmys: Deja Vu All Over Again

Winner-watching with cynicism and subversion

Comments (0) By Nikki Finke Wednesday, Sep 23 2009

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Jon Cryer is a mediocre actor on a misogynist sitcom that America watches, and Nielsen meters in the Top 10, for reasons that completely escape me. (Sorry, Chuck Lorre, but you’re crying all the way to the bank.) That Neil Patrick Harris didn’t win for How I Met Your Mother when he carries that show on his Hugo Boss’ed back is beyond me.

If you’re a liberal, this is deserved. If you’re a conservative, it’s a plot by those goddamn Hollywood socialists who worship the Messiah and hate God-fearing, real Americans.

How could the ATAS voters not recognize true genius in the bizarre way that Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio holds his knife and fork and tastes the food in front of him? On the other hand, Jeff Probst has the good sense to stay upwind of all those dirty and stinky Survivor contestants but also the bad manners to tell them exactly why he’s doing it.

I can’t stomach my own arguments with airline personnel much less watch other people have them. How is this entertainment? And the cameras work hard to catch every last ounce of Ugly American behavior around the world. Yet no one to date has died doing a challenge or been thrown into a Midnight Express–like foreign jail to rot. There’s much more maiming and manacling worth watching on Top Chef.

Hollywood has a Jessica Lange law: Whenever she’s in something that’s not a dumb-ass movie she did just for the money, just give her an award. (Remember how she won the Academy Award for Blue Sky, a film no one saw?)