By Thomas Willett
For the first time in my life, I find myself interested in actually watching the telecast for this year’s Emmys. I want to see Breaking Bad, Girls, and Louie sweep the categories and watch as Bryan Cranston gives another brilliant speech. My hopes are high and while I cannot be accused of seeing every nominated product, I have seen significantly more. In fact, I think that the reason that I am curious to watch the Emmys has nothing to do with the host Jimmy Kimmel, but the awards themselves, which is largely thanks to my decision to try and critique TV.
For the better portion of my life, I have been writing about movies. I watch the Oscars not only as an awards show, but a year-long investment in which I hope the right movie wins. While awards in general seem a little blasé, the Oscars have long been associated with something deeper for me. It was the movie equivalence of New Year’s Eve look backs. What were the best moments that we had? This is essentially what I look for in an awards show.
I am sure that I have watched the Emmys. Or at very least, mistaken them for the Golden Globes, which is a show I watch in spite of my dissatisfaction with them. The reason that I pay little attention to the Emmys in the past is largely because of the TV shows I watched. In reality, Freaks and Geeks won awards years after their cancellation, so there isn’t any bias. I just never understood the functions of TV awards as much as I did movies.
The shows that they nominated often felt like lowbrow choices. I didn’t care to see Modern Family sweep every category year after year. I really try to like that show, but at some point it feels forced. However, as this blog has shown, I have become a fan of TV criticism. I remember starting in my comfortable familiar shows in which I would read Community recaps, but soon I just began reading any recap if I was interested in checking out a show. I even checked them out to see if my opinions were in some way similar. In a sense, AV Club’s TV Club is highly responsible for my transition, as well as the Firewall and Iceberg podcast.
It also feels significant to watch this year’s Emmys because the first show that I ever began recapping, Girls, is a frontrunner. On top of just watching each episode multiple times trying to learn how to properly recap a show, there is that sense of first love that goes along with it. I can pull up old entries and reveal the rocky path that I took to finally finding my formula (which is still evolving). It is kind of embarrassing and while I feel that there are nuggets in the Girls recaps, it is very wordy and unfocused in comparison to what I write now.
In fact, I don’t think that I understand TV just yet. It almost feels that by choosing to write about it weekly, I am creating a deeper revelation. My predictions and thoughts are not the most precise. I read bits on HitFix to compare my writing and suddenly I discover something to improve upon. I am able to write comprehensive analysis, but making them engaging is another story.
I won’t go into my Emmy predictions, as I have already done it on the podcast back when the nominees were announced. However, I am kind of excited to watch and have a familiarity of who is competing. It won’t be as personal an investment as the Oscars, but I will have that feeling like I invested time and blog space into many of the nominees, and I feel that this will be crucial to me rooting for my shows to win. It is also pretty prominent because this will be the first year that I have seen and became a raving lunatic of a fan of Breaking Bad, so every time Matt’s Downton Abby wins, it will only cause more conflict with the staff.
While I don’t see myself getting any emotionally deeper to the realm of television to make the 2013 nominations more significant, I am hoping that I have a better understanding of TV criticism when that time arrives. I want to be able to recite moments that have sparked in the TV community and be like “Revolution doesn’t deserve to win because…” It is pretty much what I hope to be the sibling edition to my Oscar fever.
So what do you think? Have you ever been invested in TV well enough to get something out of the Emmys besides big names doing big things and then giving awards to shows you don’t know about? Is Breaking Bad capable of taking down Downton Abby and Game of Thrones? Is there any politics that I am missing? Why not drop me a line and let’s get a dialogue going. I may tune in and out of the ceremony, but I will be damned if I cannot hear Giancarlo Esposito give an acceptance speech. He really was the best element of Breaking Bad.
You can read Thom’s blog every Wednesday and hear him on Nerd’s Eye View every Tuesday and Thursday at nevpodcast.com. Send your thoughts to nevpodcast@gmail.com. You can also read Thom’s movie reviews for Cinema Beach at cinemabeach.com.
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