My Personal Emmy-nity

Every year, regardless, the Emmys disappoint me. With the Oscars, there seems sometimes to be a chance that something a little more unusual will be slip in and be recognized before the staid voters notice -- a Silence of the Lambs, if you will. I mean, there was even something interesting, in its way, about Titanic winning -- as in, you mean, they're willing to recognize big-budget cheese?

But I never feel any suspense when it comes to the Emmys, and after weeks of reading how this was "a whole new Emmys," "not your parents' Emmys," I thought, Huh, maybe it'll be something this time.

And? No. The choices are pretty much as staid as usual -- they all have a feeling of after the fact.

Felicity Huffman for Desperate Housewives? Am I the only one who watched that woman wow every week on Sports Night? (Well, apparently, since it did get cancelled.) Where was her Emmy then?

And my admiration for Tony Shalhoub is large and fierce, but should we really be giving him awards now that his show has jumped the shark (Free Sharona, USA bitches!) and his character, once finely drawn and grounded in what seemed like real emotion, has sunk into a repetitive flourish of senseless quirkiness?

Doris Roberts and Brad Garrett, love and more love, really, but do we need to award Raymond in its senility a kind of memorial recognition? It's not like the cast and the producers didn't have a few statuettes to polish already. It's not like the show had never been recognized.

And I'm just not impressed by the award for Lost, though, in the Battle of the Shows With Enormous Buzz That I Do Not Watch, I'm glad it, rather than Desperate Housewives, took home a prize. But, nevertheless, it was almost a foregone conclusion, predicted by pretty much everyone professional and amateur. The award (unlike, I've heard, the show) just wasn't a surprise.

I'm a little happy about the Daily Show win, but at the same time, thinking about its competition makes me sad, because what else is out there with even comparable vim and vigor? Not much.

Maybe I'd feel more satisfaction with the whole thing if I watched less niche TV than I do. But I watch niche TV because most mainstream TV, not unlike the awards it garners, lacks, for the most part, the ability to take my breath away. Sigh.

All the results, for your opining pleasure:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/arts/television/19emmy.html??th&emc=th