Emmy may get it right this time

Some perennial favorites will sit out the fun tonight, as the Emmy Awards show prepares to shine the spotlight on actors from Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Friends and Sex and the City.

By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 22, 2002

At the time, it felt like a bad B-movie: The Show That Wouldn't Go On.

Emmy academy chairman Bryce Zabel can laugh about it now, but last year he was living a nightmare: watching his signature TV awards show delayed not once, but twice by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (the show, rescheduled after the initial attacks, was rescheduled again when America's offensive against the Taliban began the day of the ceremony).

What a difference a year makes. Critics are already hailing the record amount of new talent among this year's nominees, and Zabel is almost giddily considering the prospect of an Emmy awards show with no postponements and a clear mandate to have fun.

"One of the things we want to do is return to normalcy for the Emmys, such as that is," said Zabel, whose official title is chairman and CEO for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the group that organizes and votes on the Emmy Awards. "There is a new wind blowing through the academy on a lot of fronts. Our membership has been getting younger. They voted all kinds of surprising things this year."

Indeed, Emmy this year seemed to shake off its musty habit of rewarding shows one or two years after their prime, handing the most nominations to HBO's white-hot family drama Six Feet Under -- 23 in all -- during its first year of eligibility.

Perennial Emmy names such as NYPD Blue's Dennis Franz, ER's Anthony Edwards and Will & Grace's Eric McCormack were left on the sidelines, as actors from Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Friends and Sex and the City took center stage just as their shows have taken hold with viewers.

And there was even room for wild cards, with The Shield's Michael Chiklis and Malcolm in the Middle's Bryan Cranston earning dark horse nominations.

"I feel great that finally all that payola money has finally gotten to the people who make the decisions," joked Cranston, routinely cited in years past as deserving-but-overlooked as Malcolm's ditsy dad Hal. "I have to continue to pinch myself. I've already overachieved so much. . . . You look at my gene pool, and I'm overextended as it is."

Overlooked as an actor while on NBC's cop drama Homicide and as a director on HBO's powerful civil rights movie Boycott, Clark Johnson saw his fortunes turn this year with a nomination for directing an episode of FX's buzzed-about police drama The Shield.

"You don't want to make it about the acclaim that you get, you want to make it about the work that you do," Johnson said. "Still, it's nice when people notice, especially in light of the fact that nothing happened for Homicide, and Boycott went way below the radar. Now's my time to say, 'Okay, I'm here.' "

Perhaps that's why the Emmy academy will welcome a new host who was also often overlooked by the industry and critics early on: late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien.

"I'd like people that have never seen my show before, if they're watching The Emmys, to think, 'Oh, what a nice, funny charming sexy, sexy man. . . . Maybe I'll check out your show someday,' " joked O'Brien, who -- like several NBC executives -- took great pains to note that Tonight Show host Jay Leno did not want the Emmy hosting job.

"If something makes sense from my show and it's funny, it would make sense (to bring it to the Emmys)," O'Brien added, on the question of whether popular Late Night character Triumph the Insult Comic Dog would make an appearance tonight (Triumph made a controversial appearance last month with Eminem at the MTV Video Music Awards). "Nobody wants the Masturbating Bear coming out during the Emmys."

Of course, old controversies remain: NBC is expected to turn tonight's ceremony -- which airs just before the start of the new TV season Monday -- into a showcase for its new and returning series, shoehorning actors such as The In-Laws' Dennis Farina and Crossing Jordan's Jill Hennessy among the awards presenters.

Critics also have groused that contest rules allow academy members to nominate shows without seeing them. Instead of attending group screenings, academy members now can screen nominated material at home, though some say they don't but vote anyway.

But Zabel maintained that the new rules helped make last year's winners -- including Sex and the City, The West Wing and The Sopranos' Edie Falco and James Gandolfini -- more relevant than in the past, with working academy members able to vote without spending hours at special group screenings.

Changed rules allowing members to screen nominated material at home also increases the risk some voters will cast ballots handing awards to shows they've only heard about.

"I think what that does is send the message to even the people who voted for the nominations this year that, 'Hey, my vote counts,' " he added. "I think people actually watched the TV shows this year, looked at their ballots and gave some thought to it."

Here are my picks:

BEST DRAMA: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); Law & Order (NBC); Six Feet Under (HBO); 24 (Fox); The West Wing (NBC).

Should and will win: 24. Besides reinvigorating the network TV drama form with its real-time storytelling style, this thriller had the good luck to debut at a time when heavyweights The West Wing and Six Feet Under notched sub-par seasons.

BEST COMEDY: Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO); Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS); Friends (NBC); Sex and the City (HBO); Will & Grace (NBC).

Should and will win: Friends. Think about it: a series in its eighth season not only finds new depths in old characters, but manages to stay funny besides. One look at ABC's limp The Drew Carey Show will show you how tough that achievement is.

BEST ACTOR, DRAMA: Michael Chiklis, The Shield (FX); Michael C. Hall, Six Feet Under; Peter Krause, Six Feet Under; Martin Sheen, The West Wing; Kiefer Sutherland, 24.

Should win: Michael C. Hall.

Will win: Kiefer Sutherland. Hall's portrayal of a morally conflicted gay director of his family's funeral home has been Six Feet Under's high point. But Sutherland's a bigger star and his showy turn as beleaguered government agent Jack Bauer has way more buzz.

BEST ACTRESS, DRAMA: Amy Brenneman, Judging Amy (CBS); Frances Conroy, Six Feet Under; Jennifer Garner, Alias (ABC); Rachel Griffiths, Six Feet Under; Allison Janney, The West Wing.

Should and will win: Rachel Griffiths. Conroy may have had the subtler acting tasks -- playing a widowed control freak flailing to find herself -- but Griffiths has the arty credibility and a past Golden Globe win in her favor. Janney is a dark horse, mostly for the episode where her Secret Service boyfriend Mark Harmon got killed, but I think Emmy likes her better as a supporting actress.

BEST ACTOR, COMEDY: Kelsey Grammer, Frasier (NBC); Matt LeBlanc, Friends; Bernie Mac, The Bernie Mac Show (Fox); Matthew Perry, Friends; Ray Romano, Everybody Loves Raymond.

Should and will win: Who else? In a single, brilliant season, LeBlanc made up for clunkers like Ed and Lost in Space by delivering a complex, hilarious take on dimwitted actor Joey Tribbiani that now has fans salivating for a spinoff. Of course, they could always hand another award to Kelsey Grammer, signaling the end of the world.

BEST ACTRESS, COMEDY: Jennifer Aniston, Friends; Patricia Heaton, Everybody Loves Raymond; Jane Kaczmarek, Malcolm in the Middle (Fox); Debra Messing, Will & Grace; Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City.

Should and will win: Aniston. Another no-brainer, though I'm picking Aniston mostly because Heaton has won twice already, Parker's Sex season lagged a bit and Kaczmarek really should have won the first year she was nominated, in 2000.

BEST MINISERIES: Band of Brothers (HBO); Dinotopia (ABC); The Mists of Avalon (TNT); Shackleton (A&E).

Should and will win: Band of Brothers. A sprawling Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks-produced World War II epic up against a nonsensical dinosaur movie, a rambling take on King Arthur's legend and yet another self-indulgent Kenneth Branagh TV movie? Even the Emmy voters who handed an inexplicable nomination to NBC's sitcom disaster Emeril (best art direction) won't fumble that choice. I hope.

TV preview

The 54th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards airs tonight at 8 on WFLA-Ch. 8, live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Today show hosts Matt Lauer and Katie Couric will greet celebrities on the red carpet in Countdown to the Emmys is at 7 p.m.; Access Hollywood hosts Nancy O'Dell and Pat O'Brien recap the evening on Backstage Access, airing at 11:30 p.m.

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