Familiar faces

For all the attention awarded to new and cutting-edge TV shows, it was a conventional year for the Emmys. The big winners were The West Wing, Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends.

By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 23, 2002

It was very nearly business as usual at the 54th Annual Emmy Awards on Sunday night.

Quality-yet-conventional shows The West Wing, Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends swept all the major categories. Friends, for the first time in eight seasons on the air, was honored as best comedy, and The West Wing won its third consecutive Emmy as best drama.

But the award for best actor in a drama passed by favorites such as West Wing's Martin Sheen and 24's Kiefer Sutherland to land with The Shield's Michael Chiklis, who plays a murderous cop on a still-emerging cable channel (FX). Chiklis' last big network TV role was as one of the Three Stooges.

For at least a moment, it wasn't a typical Emmy show anymore.

"I'm a dreamer, like everyone in this room," said Chiklis, visibly choked up. "We all have a little place where we secretly allow ourselves to dream of a moment (like this)."

Chiklis' win hinted at the dream many critics had for this year's Emmys, which had handed the most nominations to HBO's edgy family drama Six Feet Under and reached out to new faces such as Chiklis and comic Bernie Mac.

The reality proved different, with wins for riskier fare handed out in less visible categories, such as best writing in a drama to Fox's 24 and best directing for a drama and a comedy to HBO's Six Feet Under and Sex and the City, respectively.

"We're as surprised as you are," cracked West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin while accepting the show's honor as best drama, given for a season of episodes Sorkin had called substandard. Star Allison Janney also won as best actress in a drama, after winning two consecutive supporting actress honors.

Friends executive producer David Crane simply noted, "This is so worth the wait."

Rather than honoring new faces, Emmy handed new honors to longtime stars, giving Friends' Jennifer Aniston her first award as best comedy actress. She nodded to husband Brad Pitt while gushing, "I just have to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. This has been the greatest nine years of my life."

Talk about waiting: Raymond star Ray Romano, who had been nominated seven times before with no wins, finally walked home with an honor as best comedy actor, beating longtime Emmy favorite Kelsey Grammer (Frasier) and Friends stars Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry.

"Mom, Dad, we're going right to the airport," cracked Romano, who had previously said his parents would visit him until he wins an Emmy.

Early on, the night belonged to Raymond, which saw two cast members snap up the support acting awards in comedy: Brad Garrett, who plays brother Robert to lead character Ray Barone, and Doris Roberts, who plays Ray's mother, Marie.

Garrett, the only cast member not nominated last year, looked genuinely shocked, wisecracking, "I hope this award breaks down the door for Jewish people trying to get into show business." Roberts, who turned 71 last year on the day she won her first Emmy, noted "This is what happens when you're young and sexy."

Support acting awards in drama followed the same trend, with thespians from NBC's The West Wing triumphing in male and female categories: John Spencer, for his work as chief of staff Leo McGarry, and Stockard Channing as first lady Abigail Bartlet.

Channing managed a rare honor, winning a second Emmy on Sunday as best supporting actress in a miniseries for playing Judy Shepard, the mother of murdered gay student Matthew Shepard, in NBC's The Matthew Shepard Story.

"Really, when all is said and done, this award belongs to Dennis and Judy Shepard and to Matthew," she said. "And to all those people that we know who are no longer with us, who have suffered from the inhumanity of their fellow man. May we never forget them."

Despite seeing Six Feet Under shut out in major categories (creator Alan Ball did win a directing award), HBO dominated the miniseries and movie arena. Its epic World War II miniseries, Band of Brothers, was honored as best miniseries and for best direction in a miniseries.

"We didn't just win this; the men of Easy Company won this in 1944," said Band of Brothers executive producer Steven Spielberg as cameras cut to a room filled with men from the military outfit profiled in the miniseries.

Emmy did find time for some newcomers, handing Bernie Mac Show creator/executive producer Larry Wilmore his first statue for best writing in a comedy, also marking the first win of the night for an African-American.

"Wow, I feel like Halle Berry up here, actually," cracked Wilmore, referring to Berry's emotional Oscar win this year.

Host Conan O'Brien had a tough act to follow: Last year, comic Ellen DeGeneres guided a group of uncertain participants, off-balance after two Sept. 11-related postponements, with a note-perfect mix of irreverence and propriety. Her joke about the show angering the Taliban by showing "a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews" resonates even today.

Too bad O'Brien couldn't manage similar deftness, offering a uneven monologue that veered from jokes about midseason replacements (ugh) to a sidesplitting list of new Emmy acceptance rules. (My fave: "If you get up here and say your Emmy belongs to someone else, it will be taken from you and given to that person")

His taped pieces worked much better, including an opening bit showing him waking up minutes before the show in the Osbournes' home. (Having seen Kelly Osbourne with a hairstyle like a dead skunk during the preshow, her later scene slathering makeup on O'Brien had added, um, punch.)

NBC turned its 7 p.m. preshow into an orgy of synergy, sticking the Today show's Matt Lauer and Katie Couric on Emmy's red carpet. Surprise! Their first two guests came from NBC shows: Grammer and Will & Grace's Debra Messing.

I used to blame Joan Rivers' increasingly addled public persona for her numerous gaffes during E! Entertainment Television's red carpet Emmy coverage. On Sunday, looking around for male West Wing actor Dule Hill, she kept shouting, "Where is she?"

But Couric and Lauer proved that even the team that ably covered the Sept. 11 attacks could find trouble quizzing actors on fashion and the fun of life as a TV star. Lauer to Messing: "Can I flatter you right off the bat? People call you this generation's Lucille Ball."

Riiight. Maybe if those people work in NBC's PR department.

Still, Sunday's extravaganza seemed a welcome exaltation for Hollywood; a final post-Sept. 11 sign that Tinseltown was back to its old ways after its most uncertain year in a very long time.

-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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