Hair & Make-Up: The Audience, Peripheral

There's something in the Emmy Awards for everyone even remotely connected to the television Industry it seems. The quantity of nominees is so huge that happily, everyone wins. Without wishing to sound churlish, they might be renamed 'you're doing a great job brownie' awards. This year, for the 58th Annual Emmys, the nomination process was apparently re-rigged in an attempt to help garner additional nominees from and for shows that absolutely no one watches, as opposed to the great and the good at the top of the pile. The Emmy  Boost = Hope, to get hitherto unknown shows a little more mass media.

Well that didn't work.

Casting a glance over the telephone book size list of nominees released this morning is a dire thankless task, as joyless as assembling the bodies of victims of an airline distater or a roll-call at a retirement home. It's stultifyingly gloomy reading. Truly, is this the very best the box can do to edify and entertain us?

The perenial exception is HBO. In each and every category the gulf between the quality of the entertainment presented by HBO and the others is simply implausible.

I have pretty much given all of the non HBO shows nominated the lack of attention they merit. Most are not just tired, they're exhausted, by the weight of themselves and their lineage. The sitcoms are nothing to smile about. The dramas, ho-hum, and reality is never ever very real at all. The audience, peripheral. What is the definition of a dead horse at a TV network?

If you're not that into sports then HBO and Showtime are perhaps among the few reasons to own a TV.  No wonder then, TV manufacturers peddle their wares as home theaters these days. I just don't see how 'Two and a half men' is going to help to get me to commit to 5k of debt at Circuit City. The best free television programming isn't on even TV anymore, its found in places like YouTube - (see jack black/ben stillers 'heat vision and jack')

And because HBO and Showtime are pay services, and American's in particular have been raised to understand TV for what it is not worth, not worth paying for. If there is a league table for the most swiftly bit torrented shows, then HBO series' are sure to be far ahead of the rest.

Meanwhile elsewhere, utterly bland and uninspiring programming, reality without a strand of reality and watered down surrogates will prevail.  No more and no less than you have come to expect. It leaves me wondering anyhow, what happened to David Caruso's nomination? Cheated.