You Say Tomato

Law & Order’s Outsourcing

Actresses of Indian descent get a lot of work from the Law & Order folks. Interestingly, though, they rarely seem to play Indians. A few weeks ago I saw an episode in which Sakina Jaffrey played an Iranian; just last week Sarita Choudhury played an Iraqi.

Coe and Kepa

We had to rush back from Oregon (no stopping at Powell’s on the way back) because we had tickets to see Kepa Junkera at the Century Ballroom on Sunday night. I was a terrible passenger, with my head stuck in a book—Jonathan Coe’s fabulous House of Sleep, which I’d bought on the way down and was completely captivated by. I’d enjoyed his book What a Carve Up! (known as The Winshaw Legacy in the United States, for some reason), and while The House of Sleep lacks WACU!’s political context, it’s none the worse for that. Coe reminds me of writers like Patrick Gale, David Lodge, and even Robertson Davies, who conjure up complex situations and casts of characters and manipulate them really well. His new book, The Closed Circle, was due to be published in England just a couple of days after I left last month. Given the woeful exchange rate, I probably wouldn’t have bought it if it had been in stores while I was still there, but now I’m kinda sorta tempted to splash out on it from Amazon.co.uk. I also eschewed a piece of nonfiction penned by Coe: a biography of B.S. Johnson. I walked on by because I’d never heard of the subject, but now I’m thinking that was a mistake.

Kepa Junkera was awesome. It was a pretty concise show—90 solid minutes, no opening act and no messing around—because the Century Ballroom was hosting its usual Sunday night dance afterward. As fabulous as the show was, I was relieved to get out of there by 9:10. It was Sunday night, we’d had a long drive, and I wanted to finish my book.

The show was wonderful, though. Kepa on trikitixa, a drummer, a bassist (who looked like a cross between Ian Curtis and the guy who plays Mr. Vicary on Red Cap), an acoustic guitarist, and a txalaparta duo who also played alboka (the instrument I’d most like to learn to play) and tambourine. When I was a hip young thing back in the '70s, I’d never have thought that I would get all excited about a concert by a dude playing an accordion accompanied by a couple of guys banging sticks on some planks of wood, but there you go.

KJ won a 2004 Latin Grammy for the live album [backward K] (though Fnac lists it as K). They didn’t have that album on sale at the concert, but even the 2001 release Maren was a treat to find in the US.

Shock and Awe

I’m still reeling from a computer disaster on my home laptop (the keyboard has gone kapow—only seven letters still work, and the R key now functions as the space bar). God knows what happened, it was fine last time I used it. Could Sooky have sat on the keys or something? I can’t for the life of me remember if I closed the lid. Either way, a major pain in the ass.

Until I discovered that little nightmare, the weekend was swell. We went down to the wilds of Oregon for R’s family reunion—she’s the oldest of 11 children and most of them have kids (and some grandchildren). It was held at the house where they grew up, and it’s in serious off-the-map territory, the like of which doesn’t really exist in Western Europe (that I’m aware of, anyway). It’s only a 30-minute drive from town, though you certainly need a vehicle to get anywhere, and they have electricity (it makes you realize what an achievement rural electrification really was), but that’s about it for modern conveniences; everything else is pretty much do-it-yourself. They have running water, you understand, it’s just that it’s not laid on by the county. The kids go to school, but they have to get there under the own steam—there’s no school bus, much less a “regular” bus service.

Even though I grew up in what felt like the country, it was only a 20-minute bus ride from Manchester, and every few minutes buses stopped just a few paces from our house going all over the show—Bolton, Wigan, Leigh, Manchester. If I wanted something to read or eat or drink, I could just walk down to the village shops. There’s nothing like that out there—if you want a latte, a book, or a chocolate bar, you’re SOL. Of course, the trees are bursting with fruit, so you can go grab an apple, or take a bucketful and make yourself a gallon of apple juice. They are so self-sufficient it’s scary—they hunt, fish, grow, and can most of what they eat.

When I first met R, I asked over and over if she could remember the names of all her siblings. (Gimme a break, I’m an only.) Of course, I now realize how silly this was, and I take particular delight in referring to them by number. As we were leaving, I rounded up the sibs that were standing around and ordered them to pose for a photo by yelling, “No 1, No. 3, No. 5, No. 8, No. 9, get over there.” Patrick McGoohan would be appalled.

Still More Fall TV Madness

Monday night I eschewed LAX, which I’d enjoyed last week, because CSI: Miami (CBS, Monday at 10) had the ultimate season-opener ingredient: the death of a regular character. Usually that kind of thrill is reserved for cliffhanger finales, but I guess the contractual difficulties didn’t arise until the summer break in this case. I’d seen a spoiler about who was going to buy the gator farm, but even if I hadn’t, I’m pretty sure I could’ve guessed; there wasn’t a lot of subtlety about the way they played it. “I could kill X,” said one agent early in the show about the victim-to-be. “Hey there’s lots of time for that, right?” the dead-character-walking blithely announced to a colleague as they walked into what would be the crime scene. Other than the divine doctor treating the body with even more reverence than usual (she’s by far the best CSI doctor so far—I was really scared she’d be the casualty) and Horatio biting his lip in an even more determined manner than usual (c’mon, you knew it wasn’t going to be him), the loss was rather underplayed until the tacked-on lights-blazing police funeral at the end. I’m kind of curious about CSI: New York (only kind of—Gary Sinise is not my kind of actor; he blew in The Human Stain, though his casting was pretty moronic to begin with), but not terribly excited. Miami is too much about keeping Horatio’s promises that wrongs will be righted and disturbed people will be relieved of their grief and fear. The original is still the best, even if they have been suffering from character memory loss of late.

I also watched Listen Up (NBC, Monday at 8:30), the new Jason Alexander vehicle that is based on the Tony Kornheiser’s columns. (That’s right, his columns are based on his life, but the show isn’t. Whatev.) Dreadful! There’s something tragic about TV shows (and movies for that matter) that purport to show creative people writing something funny, moving, or sad when the product they’re laughing, sighing, or crying over is third-rate at best. All I could think when we heard “Tony’s” columns was, “Dude, never mind this crisis, you’d better worry about what you’re going to do for a living when the newspaper comes to its senses and realizes you can’t write!” And it just wasn’t funny. I’ve never liked laugh tracks (when we watched a show—inevitably American—that used one, my granddad would always say, “Yanks’ll laugh at owt, eh?”), but I felt like a creature from another planet when the soundtrack was signaling major merriment and all I could manage was utter puzzlement. It’s so terrible, it’ll probably be the next Everybody Loves Raymond.

The show I was most looking forward to was Second Time Around (UPN, Monday at 9:30), a sitcom in which real-life couple Nicole Parker (I guess she lost her Ari this summer—is it suddenly passé for actors to have three names?) and Boris Kodjoe play a formerly married couple who have come back together and re-married after years apart. I’ve been a fan of Parker’s since The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (and I'm really disappointed that she or the production company neglected to mention that movie in her Second Time Around bio—she was the lead in a pretty successful movie, I can't think of a good reason to overlook it, just lots of bad ones), and she and Kodjoe had great chemistry in Showtime’s Soul Food, but that connection seems to have lost its sizzle on the UPN set. Perhaps it’s something about the cheap-ass ticky-tacky sets that seem like something out of those late-night Christian youth shows (you know, when the pastor is all decked out in sports-logo gear, as though he were a football coach rather than a God-botherer). Parker’s character, Ryan (no Shenaynays here—it’s Jackson and Ryan and their buddies Nigel and Paula—as the bougie gold-digging Paula tells her man, “More suburban, less urban”), is an artist, so we’re subjected to those tired hippy-chick costumes that bohemian types so often get saddled with (in life as well as in art, unfortunately). She looked a lot better in the business suits and sexy lingerie of Soul Food. The sad fact is, Showtime’s willingness (boy, were they willing) to show off the gorgeous bodies of the Soul Food cast did a lot to establish the couple’s spark—here we have to imagine it, and unfortunately, neither the script or the actors do much to help that happen.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 3

It’s way past my bedtime already, so just a few thoughts on Hour 3.

Thought 1: I said it yesterday, but now I really have to say it again: There are way too many awards for miniseries. If people watched them, they’d be on network TV. Was there a network miniseries nominated (not counting The Reagans, which started life as a network miniseries and ended up on cable—and doesn’t it say it all that that POS got two noms?).

Thought 2: Meryl Streep is a goddess. She is funny and smart and lovely. The little tribute to Tony Kushner and writers in general at the end of her speech was beautiful and moving.

Thought 3: James Spader is the spit and image of Arthur from Six Feet Under.

Thought 4: Why didn’t Al Pacino hear music? I’m thinking the orchestra are all fans.

Thought 5: The big winner wasn’t Angels in America—it didn’t really have any competition—it was Arrested Development. Huge wins for them.

Thought 6: Everybody Loves Raymond went home empty-handed. Yes!

Thought 7: Allison Janney is going to have to give that Emmy to Mariska Hargitay after embarrassing her like that.

Thought 8: Unintentionally funniest line of the evening came from Sarah Jessica Parker referring to the finale as “the end of a long sentence.”

Thought 9: James Gandolfini was definitely channeling Tony Soprano at the end when he cursed the mike being cut.

Thought 10: Thank God for Chris Rock. “Who’s Elaine Stitch?” saved the worst skit of the night, even if it was filmed in an appropriate spot—the urinal.

Thought 11: I went 8 for 13 in my predictions. I was going gangbusters until the end, but, hey, I feel better than Garry Shandling’s agent.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 2

Well, I was right, I guess, Hour 2 was a bit of a snoozer. Jon Stewart opened up the hour and handled the MC duties way better than GS—but I guess it isn’t kosher to have stars who are likely to be nominated for and to win awards presenting the show for real.

Elaine Stritch was Elaine Stritch—I guess anyone who was surprised by her shtick doesn’t know much about her. And it sounded to me like she was bleeped for a “shit” and got away with an “effing,” mild stuff for ES! (It’s funny to see her on a Sunday night—when I was growing up, Two’s Company, her show with Donald Sinden, which came on before (or was it right after?) The South Bank Show, was my regular Sunday night entertainment.)

Not much else to write home about—the methods of presenting the names of the nominees for Best Writer in a Music, Comedy, or Variety Show award were pretty amusing. (I especially liked Howard Dean reading the Daily Show names, followed by a slightly muted “Yeow!”)

The farewell to TV shows clip segment was way too long. Is that going to be the Emmys equivalent of the “In Memoriam” section of the Oscar telecast? I hope not.

Speaking of going on too long, America needs to find another token Latino award-presenter, because George Lopez is tiresome (and I loved that The Donald couldn’t be bothered to disguise his disgust for the little pisher).

I’m no big fan of Tony Kushner’s, but it was cool to see a boy-on-boy kiss when his name was read and to hear his banter about hoping that he’ll be able to marry his “husband” for real some time so he can “make an honest homosexual of me.”

The business with the “real people” being flown in to present the Emmy for best Reality-Competition Show was way overblown. (If they’re “real people,” what are all the other presenters? Aliens?) The gimmick got more attention than the shows they were supposed to be honoring—and the guy’s description of The Apprentice as “my favorite show,” though kind of refreshing, must’ve felt like a slight to the other nominees.

The acceptance speech for Something the Lord Made (I hope HBO will play it—and Elaine Stritch Live at Liberty—again soon) was the most polished of the night. A little somber perhaps, but very professional and, well, grown-up.

Live-Blogging the Emmys, Hour 1

An hour into the three-hour Emmys telecast, I’m giving TiVo a chance to get ahead of me while I type up some quick reactions.

My God, has there ever been a worse-scripted and presented awards show? I’m a longtime fan of Garry Shandling from It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (I can still hum the theme tune though I haven’t seen it in years) and The Larry Sanders Show, but he is stinking up the joint big-time. Everything about the presentation, from the very wooden and extremely unfunny taped setups to the truly awful and awkward monologue has just sucked ass. Around the one-hour mark, in yet another lame bit of business, Billy Crystal tells Shandling to get back on stage, because “the show is slipping away from you …” Dude, that happened about 60 minutes ago.

The exchanges between presenters were painful too—how did Chris Noth expect Sarah Jessica Parker to respond to his marriage proposal? “Erm, no, but thanks” was about as good as could be expected, and that’s pretty terrible. Still, Zach Braff’s aside to his co-presenter, Joan of Arcadia’s Amber Tamblyn—“Don’t you know God? Can’t we get a better line than that?”—was perfect.

And the premature music-players! This is an old bugaboo of mine—we want to hear the speeches—and it really doesn’t feel like they’re giving the winners enough time to even get through the basic acknowledgments. Jeffrey Wright, a wonderful actor who won an award for his portrayal of a beautiful character (Belize is Tony Kushner’s greatest artistic achievement in my view) is up there talking about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and the band is playing the exit music, acting like he’s already walked off stage. It’s especially galling when the pitiful inter-award “comedy” material is so desperately in need of editing. (For the director of the Oscar telecast, who’s also directing the Emmy telecast, to be the next recipient was just shameful.) When the band started to swell about 20 seconds into Mitchell Hurwitz’s acceptance speech for Best Comedy Writing (for Arrested Development), his beautifully delivered line, “I’d like to sing this now if I may” provided the first genuine laugh of the night.

It sure feels like a lot of important awards have already been given out—I’m wondering if we’re going to be in a miniseries dead zone for the next hour—but I’m doing well on my predictions: Cynthia Nixon’s win for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy was the first I’ve missed. It was kind of sad to see both Nixon and David Hyde-Pierce (who didn’t look terribly healthy) appear to genuinely miss their shows. Another actress who might miss her old show next year is Drea de Matteo, who didn’t thank anyone by name because “I might puke, choke, cry, or die—and you’ve already seen me do that.” A great line—apparently unscripted, but who knows, she is an actress after all.

Emmy Predictions

Even though my favorite TV show, The Wire, returns for a new series tomorrow night, I won’t be watching. (Of course, that might not be so if HBO didn’t have such a generous rerun policy.) Instead, I’ll be watching the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards. The Oscars they aren’t, but since I’ve watched more network television since getting TiVo last summer, I’m more interested than usual. My feelings about some shows are stronger than my desire to make accurate predictions (I don’t care if Everybody Loves Raymond is likely to win awards, it’s junk, and I can’t bring myself to suggest it’s going to come out on top), but here are my guesses for the big awards.

Drama Series
Nominees: CSI, Joan of Arcadia, The Sopranos, 24, The West Wing

I haven’t seen Joan of Arcadia, but I think I saw all the episodes in the last series of the other shows. The West Wing was pretty blah last season—a viewer who’d never seen it in the Aaron Sorkin years must’ve wondered what all the fuss was about. The West Wing did more to establish the writer as the most important ingredient in a great show by having the same outstanding cast but leaving them with nothing to say and very little to do. Whereas before they’d soared with great speeches and slightly crazy but brilliant plot twists, this time around it was just a bunch of great actors saying and doing uninteresting things. Even when they ratcheted up the drama and killed off beloved characters, it felt like empty manipulation rather than inspired and inspiring puppetry. This year’s 24 was OK, but it’s a case of diminishing returns—it’s like an NBA game: You know the only reason to watch the first 95 percent is to see if anyone gets injured and who fouls out. There’s no reason to get invested in the characters, because you know most of them will be out of the picture before we reach the end. I like CSI, and the show has done a great job of maintaining its standards. We had a little bit of wobbling this season—it’s hard to figure out what’s going on with Greg; Catherine’s character got a little lost with all the business with her father (and it’s time to stop messing with that woman’s family—she’s now lost her ex-husband, had her daughter almost drown, and found out who her real father is); and the business of Grissom’s hearing loss was wrapped up very unsatisfactorily. Overall it was as if the show’s writers just couldn’t be bothered to deal with the traits and flaws the characters had been given over the years (as well as Grissom’s hearing, we also lost the thread of Warwick’s gambling and the odd attraction between Grissom and Sara). Still, I wouldn’t be disappointed if it won. I’d be a little surprised, though. This definitely wasn’t the best Sopranos series—an awful lot of the episodes felt like slow build-up to a climax that never came (and I hated that nonsensical dream sequence—if you’re going to do one, at least allow it to stand up to interpretation), but there were still moments that are more exquisite than just about any other show on television (The Wire is the only show I can think of that’s consistently better-written). So, my prediction: The Sopranos.

Comedy Series
Nominees: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Everybody Loves Raymond, Sex and the City, Will & Grace

Comedy is more polarizing than any other TV genre. A couple of the shows on this list are undoubtedly high-quality, they’re just not my cup of tea. I’ve tried to watch Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but they’re not for me—I find AD frustrating and CYE too annoying to permit the possibility of pleasure. Everybody Loves Raymond I cannot stand, nor can I understand why anyone would think it has any merit whatsoever. I find it both resolutely unfunny and shockingly mean-spirited. Will & Grace isn’t part of my TV diet, but when I do see it, it strikes me as smart and funny. But Sex and the City was smart, funny, and convincing—although the characters and the situations were nothing like people and places that I know or particularly want to know, I believe they exist. Sure, there were some missteps last season—starting with Samantha’s cancer and moving through Charlotte’s infertility, Miranda’s exile to Brooklyn, and Carrie’s treatment by the Russian (Matt Haber wrote a great piece about the producers’ sadism for Slate)—but it still made me laugh a lot (and, I’m pretty sure, cry a little bit), so Sex and the City gets my nod for the Emmy.

Miniseries
Nominees: American Family—Journey of Dreams, Angels in America, Horatio Hornblower, Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness, Traffic: The Miniseries

I didn’t see American Family or Horatio Hornblower, so I’ll have to exclude them from consideration. I didn’t like Angels in America—I didn’t like it when I saw it on stage years ago, either, so that’s no hard knock on HBO. Jeffrey Wright was awesome; Meryl Streep was fabulous as Ethel Rosenberg, not so good as the rabbi; Justin Kirk was great as Prior Walter (he’d better be by now); Emma Thompson was great as the angel, not so good as the nurse; but I can’t stand any of the Pitts, so the actors who played them left me cold. The whole play (I guess technically plays) strikes me as an overlong statement of the obvious, with a lot of business thrown in to distract the audience. I’m not a fan of Mike Nichols, either, so HBO had a hell of a task on their hands to win me over, so it’s no surprise that they failed. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Traffic (though it wasn’t as good as the original or the Canadian miniseries Human Cargo that explored very similar material). Prime Suspect 6 certainly wasn’t the best Prime Suspect—I’d’ve liked a lot more of Tennyson’s private life; that strand has often been the juiciest material—but it was so much better than most shows on television that it deserves the Emmy. I don’t think it’ll win, though. Miniseries are over-rewarded at Emmy time (look how many statues the OK but nothing spectacular Door to Door won last year), and this year that’ll be even more true. My prediction: Angels in America.

Variety, Music, or Comedy Series
Nominees: Chapelle’s Show, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, Late Show With David Letterman, Saturday Night Live

I should sit this one out since I’ve never been a late-night viewer. My guess, though, is that although The Daily Show’s political tendency could affect the voting (possibly positively if it’s really true what they say about Hollywood being liberal—though I never quite believe that since so many of them are rich) and the topical nature of the show limits the shelf life of the humor, Chapelle’s Show is too contentious/edgy to win an award. Prediction: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Reality-Competition Program
Nominees: The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Apprentice, Last Comic Standing, Survivor

Here’s another one I should abstain from. I’m not a regular viewer of any of the reality shows (one series of Big Brother was enough for me), but it’s a genre that permeates the Zeitgeist more than most. Amazing Race may well be the best, but it’s between American Idol and The Apprentice for which has had most effect on people who didn’t watch a minute of the thing. I’m going to guess: American Idol.

Actor, Drama Series
Nominees: James Spader, The Practice; James Gandolfini, The Sopranos; Kiefer Sutherland, 24; Martin Sheen, The West Wing; Anthony LaPaglia, Without a Trace

I don’t watch The Practice, but I did read and hear from several people that James Spader single-handedly saved the show. Despite all that screen time and all those heroics, Kiefer Sutherland doesn’t really get to display a lot of range in 24—he’s always under pressure, always running, always aggressive. The whole business with his heroin addiction proved to be a silly Maguffin this season. Martin Sheen is just as good an actor as he always was, but his material was about half as good as it used to be—and besides, he’s playing a lame duck president now. Anthony LaPaglia is a good actor, but the Without a Trace role is one where he’s constantly having to swallow his personality or his desires, so it often feels like his performance is being muted. Tony Soprano certainly wasn’t muted this season—he gave free rein to his inner asshole—but he was always convincing. So, my prediction is: another Emmy for James Gandolfini.

Actress, Drama Series
Nominees: Jennifer Garner, Alias; Amber Tamblyn, Joan of Arcadia; Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; Edie Falco, The Sopranos; Allison Janney, The West Wing

I can’t speak to Garner and Tamblyn’s performances, since I don’t watch their shows. I’m not a regular viewer of L&O: SVU, but I’ve seen it enough to know that although Hargitay does the role very well, it’s another of those muted performances that doesn’t spotlight the kind of acting that wins awards. Allison Janney is a great actress, but she had nothing to do this season. The relationship with Ranger Rick was a nonevent, and although I don’t think she wanted to, Janney got to mail in her performance. Carmela is my favorite Soprano, but she was absent a lot this year, so she’s certainly not the lock she might’ve been in seasons past. Still, for the dinner party racism, the post-coital attempt to get help for college-placement help for AJ, and her not-so-subtle blackmailing of Tony, Edie Falco gets my bet.

Supporting Actor, Drama Series
Nominees: Victor Garber, Alias; Brad Dourif, Deadwood; Michael Imperioli, The Sopranos; Steve Buscemi, The Sopranos; John Spencer, The West Wing

Sorry Victor and Brad, I don’t watch Alias or Deadwood. John Spencer had some decent scenes this season, but like all the other West Wing actors, he just didn’t get a chance to strut his stuff. Steve Buscemi was the key character in the Sopranos series that ended in June, but he was too much of a cipher—his sudden snap that took him from the one righteous member of the family to a guy who cold-cocks the guy putting up the money for his massage therapy office wasn’t altogether convincing. Michael Imperioli has the advantage of a character who goes to extremes—from a sober 12-step evangelist to a guy who downs a bottle of vodka and injects himself with smack, from a loving fiancé to the guy who sends his intended to the Pine Barrens. My prediction: Even though we’ll never again hear Adriana yell, “Kristopha!” Michael Imperioli will go home with an Emmy.

Supporting Actress, Drama Series
Nominees: Robin Weigert, Deadwood; Tyne Daly, Judging Amy; Drea de Matteo, The Sopranos; Janel Moloney, The West Wing; Stockard Channing, The West Wing

I’m only familiar with the work of the last three nominees, and although Donna and Abigail were probably the only West Wing characters to have good years, this was an awesome season for Adriana, so I reckon Drea de Matteo will get the nod, despite the embarrassment of Joey.

Actor, Comedy Series
Nominees: Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm; John Ritter, 8 Simple Rules; Kelsey Grammer, Frasier; Matt LeBlanc, Friends; Tony Shalhoub, Monk

It’s always hard to beat a dead man, especially a popular one who died young and unexpectedly. I know he’s hugely popular, but I don’t like Larry David’s schtick, so I can’t tip him. Matt LeBlanc was the worst actor in Friends (and God knows, he had some competition from the other guys in the cast—by the end of the final series, David Schwimmer had turned into one long series of facial and vocal tics). I’ve always had a soft spot for Tony Shalhoub—I was shocked when, after years of watching Wings, I discovered he wasn’t really Italian—but Monk’s just not a very good show (though it’s good at being what it is—the 21st century version of Matlock). I wasn’t always a Frasier viewer, but the episodes of the last season that I saw were very good and very funny (the episode with Patrick Stewart as the opera director who fell for Frasier made me laugh even the second time around), and it seems likely that the voters will want to give a final statue to the longest-running character in TV comedy. My prediction: Kelsey Grammer.

Actress, Comedy Series
Nominees: Patricia Heaton, Everybody Loves Raymond; Jennifer Aniston, Friends; Bonnie Hunt, Life With Bonnie; Jane Kaczmarek, Malcolm in the Middle; Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City

I can’t stand Everybody Loves Raymond, so I can’t even consider Patricia Heaton, and although I like Bonnie Hunt and Jane Kaczmarek, I don’t watch their shows. I don’t know when the Emmy votes were cast (the nominees were announced way back in July, so it’s hard to guess), so I don’t know if the long Friends farewell fest would’ve helped Jennifer Aniston’s vote total. Sarah Jessica Parker would’ve been subject to the same emotional assistance, though, and her work in her show’s final series was way more impressive than Aniston’s. So, I’ll go for Sarah Jessica Parker.

Supporting Actor, Comedy Series
Nominees: Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development; Brad Garrett, Everybody Loves Raymond; Peter Boyle, Everybody Loves Raymond; David Hyde Pierce, Frasier; Sean Hayes, Will & Grace

Brad Garrett and Peter Boyle, don’t think I’m even contemplating picking you out of the lineup. I liked Jeffrey Tambor much better in The Larry Sanders Show. Sean Hayes’ character goes through too many switcheroos to get a sense of what he’s capable of, and although Niles underwent his share of incredible plot twists in the final season of Frasier, my money’s on David Hyde Pierce to take home the Emmy.

Supporting Actress, Comedy Series
Nominees: Doris Roberts, Everybody Loves Raymond; Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City; Kristin Davis, Sex and the City; Cynthia Nixon, Sex and the City; Megan Mullally, Will & Grace

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the three Sex and the City nominees will split the HBO vote, leaving the door open for Doris Roberts. My hatred of Everybody Loves Raymond is stronger than my desire to predict accurately, so I’m giving it to Megan Mullally. It’s not just a process of elimination, however. With Debra Messing’s pregnancy limiting her involvement in the last series of Will & Grace, Karen’s character became even more central, so she deserves it. (She’s always been the element that makes the show special, but it was especially obvious last season.)

More Fall TV

LAX (NBC, Monday at 10): After all that un-love for NBC, last night I saw a new fall show that I actually kind of liked, and of all things, it was the new Heather Locklear/Blair Underwood vehicle, LAX. I mean, it’s not exactly David Hare (which may not be a bad thing), but it was clever and entertaining and not too silly to be annoying.

The basic plot line was established in the opening moments when the airport manager (played by Tanner 88 himself, Michael Murphy) walks out onto the tarmac and kills himself with a landing 747). Then it’s the next morning and a Tannoy announcement spreads the word and acts like a combination of the precinct briefing in Hill Street Blues and the morning announcements on Degrassi: The Next Generation. Two hip-looking young dudes get the job of catching viewers up on what a thriving place LAX is and what a killer (geddit) job the dead man had: “The guy had over 16 million passengers a year, 700,000 takeoffs and landings, 60,000 employees. He had two police forces, CIA, Customs, the FBI, TSA, immigration, over 100 different airlines.”

From there, we move into some nice camerawork introducing the two main candidates to take the dead man’s job. Harley, played by Heather Locklear, came to the office still in her evening gear, but the intro was a nice piece of subtlety—we saw her feet, eventually her body (but her head was out of the frame), then her back, then she was in soft focus (but not too soft; it was cool, trust me), then half-reflected in a bathroom mirror, then in a car mirror … and then … by this time, even I, not part of the Heather Locklear demographic, was panting to finally see her.

After a little bit of funny business with the hip dude (he’s LAX’s version of CSI’s Greg, in other words), we move on to Roger, played by Blair Underwood, her dashing, handsome, African-American rival. He’s also fetishized—first we see just his hand, then his feet, then his back, his profile, then we see him fancying himself in some reflective glass at the foot of an elevator. They’re both cute but flawed (that whole driving to work straight from a night on the town thing for her; gambling for him).

There are some other by-the-numbers characters—the dude in the Hawaiian shirt (the chief air-traffic controller); the uptight, too-sure-of-herself woman (a dog-handling Customs agent); the gullible newbie (the most unconvincing immigration official evah); the flawed but dedicated peace officer (a boozer demoted from the bomb squad), the good-looking airline supervisor (my bet for the character who’ll turn out to be gay), etc.—but the show had a nice, kinetic energy, and some great music (including “Rose Rouge,” by St. Germain, one of my very favorite songs). Best of all, even with the personal distractions (Harley and Roger have history, which does allow for some good exchanges, like, “Kiss my ass.” “Been there.”), the show’s about work and trying to get along with your colleagues while you try to get ahead—and though you’d never know it since so many shows shy away from the topic, work makes a great subject for TV drama. (After all, isn’t that one of the reasons why The Wire is so brilliant?)

Of course, there were some frankly ridiculous moments—the naïve new immigration officer seemed to be learning for the first time that there are visitors to the United States that might indulge in a little deception to get into the country (what else do you suppose there is to learn at INS school?). The biggest “as if” moment came at the end, when a huge crowd of airport employees—naturally including the cast of characters we’d come to know during the pilot episode—ended their frantically busy day by going to meet Flight 174 from Shanghai, “the orphan plane.” Then, of course, their tired frowns turned to huge smiles as the new parents brought their new babies home for the first time—the Love, Actually moment when they introduced them to friends and family. (Apparently, they didn’t have to go through immigration—just walked right into the lounge, which, as any fule no, isn’t how it works after an international flight.) Still, I have to admit that even though I knew it was dumb, I got a little moist-eyed, especially when they showed the gay and lesbian couples with their new children. I’ll definitely watch LAX again.

Yeah, I Like Television; You Got a Problem With That?

For years I fought my addiction to television—I intentionally chose not to watch the hyped-up new shows for fear of adding another hour to my weekly viewing schedule. Now I've just decided to let go, let TiVo, and this being the start of the new fall season, I'm falling for it hook, line, and season pass.

With the weird prolonged rollout, I've only seen three of the new shows, and none of them are threatening my career yet.

Joey (NBC, Thursday at 8): Talk about a nothing-burger. Since the big structural differences between Friends and Joey are that he’s now alone and in Los Angeles, I guess it’s an In & Out Nothing-Burger. Matt LeBlanc’s a one-note actor (and, memo to the writing room: He’s dumb, we get it; it’s not that funny), and although I yield to no one in my love for Adriana La Cerva, I concluded from the pilot that Drea de Matteo can’t really act either. (I had to rewind on several occasions just to figure out what she said—a problem I never had on The Sopranos.) I don’t get what role the cute, married attorney neighbor is supposed to perform. Perhaps she’s the Monica character—someone who’ll indulge his cute stupidity and explain stuff to him; and I guess the bright nephew is Chandler, a smart guy (let’s hope he’s not quite that smart-mouthed) who’ll sort out the big fat mess he makes of his love life.

Medical Investigation (NBC, Friday at 10): OK, we’ve finally found a forensics investigation-type show that I won’t watch. As I wrote elsewhere about another canceled “all the members of my supersmart team are frowning really hard and talking into high-tech walky-talkies until we solve this problem that’ll kill us all if we don’t figure out the solution in the next three minutes” show, the problem with programs like this is that none of the characters can crack a smile for the entire hour because it’s all so damned serious and deadly. This one is also deadly dull. The lead actor, Neal McDonough, has a face that can only play cops, and the short-handing on the inevitable “I sacrificed my family so I could protect my country” motif was just plain lazy. Television is supposed to be fun. The new season isn’t looking good for NBC thus far.

Jack & Bobby (WB, Sunday at 9): I agree with the Surfergirl—once you know which one of the McCallister brothers is the president of the future, what’s to watch for? The pilot was interesting enough—Jack is appealing and good-looking, and I got a sense of what it must be like to be the big brother reluctantly accepting the burden of making sure his weird little brother adjusts to high-school life; Bobby was quirky and “different” without seeming self-conscious—finally an eccentric and lonely teen who is also quite charming with a personality that’s heart-wrenching without resorting to pity. Christine Lahti is a good actress, but her part’s a bit one-dimensional; she’s a pot-smoking professor mom who wants the best for her boys, but it seems that in every exchange she ends up cajoling and shouting at whoever she’s talking to. (And, professor, don’t get involved with guy from K Street—he’s a pornography addict.) The West Wing-influenced elements (one of the J&B producers served time on TWW) were fun, but that whole flashback from the future thing was done so well in the Spanish movie Noviembre/November that I couldn’t help thinking of the awesome film rather than the so-so TV show. I’d probably watch it again, but without much enthusiasm.

(Weirdly, the theme of a mother treating two brothers differently because one boy had been sick came up in the great Israeli movie about selfishness and selflessness, Bonjour, Monsieur Schlomi, which I saw on Sunday. It was spooky to see the whole mother-brothers theme played out again so soon afterward.)

La Zarzuela en Zaragoza Es Gozosa

I saw La Mala Educación/Bad Education in England, and I must confess I don’t know quite what to think. I need to see it at least one more time before I make the genius/junk call, I think.

Still, in the long and somewhat unsatisfactory profile of Almodóvar by Lynne Hirschberg in this week’s New York Times Magazine, Gael García Bernal complained about being forced to disguise his Mexican accent for his role in the movie: "He wanted a Spanish accent and that is a colonialist thing. The Spanish accent sounds like … Flemish to me. But Pedro is a very specific person with a very personal point of view."

Where to begin? Peninsular Spanish as Flemish? Total crap—unless, perhaps, García Bernal is channeling his inner Dutchman. And it hardly seems like cutting-edge verisimilitude to insist that a character who’s supposed to have grown up in rural Spain wouldn’t talk like someone from 6,000 miles away! That character already has problems establishing his identity—a foreign accent would sure help a lot.

Reliving the Olympics

Although it was wonderful to be in Britain during the Olympics—whatever I may have said about CBC, the BBC was much, much better; sure, they spent a lot of time focusing on the sports that Britain is good at (otherwise, how would I have seen so much sailing—yawn—rowing, and cycling), but also providing great coverage of the rest of the events—I did miss out on the North American coverage (and also on blogs like this one, which I would’ve been checking out constantly if I’d been living my “normal” life).

Before I left, I bought a new TiVo with a 140-hour hard drive so that I could tape a whole bunch of Olympics coverage and enjoy it upon my return. I’ve started at the beginning, with the Canadian and U.S. coverage of Day 1, which we missed altogether because we were in airplanes. After only one day’s worth, I know for sure that I’m going to hate the NBC version. Bob Costas is so full of himself, it’s almost impossible to watch—at the start of every show, and often at the start of a new segment, he has to play the sports poet, treating the sporting events as if they were a matter of life or death (especially hard to take when we are, like it or not, at war). I wouldn’t mind if the writing was any good, but it’s not—it’s just ponderous and portentous instead of inspiring and/or illuminating. And Jimmy Roberts? I can’t talk about him—there are still 15 days to go, and if I think about his schlock too much, I’ll go off the Games.

What I never understand is why NBC allow some comments to go by unchallenged. For example, after U.S. gymnast Blaine Wilson’s first-day fall from the high bar, when he was whining (reasonably enough if NBC’s presentation of the last-minute judging-standards change can be trusted) about having had to incorporate new elements into his long-established routine, he said, referring to the Japanese judge whose decision had necessitated his disastrous routine-change, “If you can’t beat us fairly …”—an outrageous, open accusation of cheating on the part of a judge on behalf of his own nation. Did NBC offer any reaction or follow-up? Hell, no.

It really was unfortunate for the fragile, at times, U.S. psyche that Michael Phelps came across as a vapid car-loving blandoid, while Ian Thorpe is a smart, articulate superstar. Phelps is still young, but Thorpe is only 21, just two years older. Thorpedo's the kind of guy who would've been a star no matter what field he'd gone into; Phelps is now famous because he has the perfect body for swimming and has worked his ass off to become one of the best in the world, but he has nothing to say for himself and seems to have about two brain cells in that permanently conjested head of his.

Back to the Brits: The BBC TV presenters were almost too informal—dressed in super-casual clothes and just leaning on the set most of the time. (I’m a life-long slumper/sloucher, even I was upset by their terrible posture.) No suits or poetry for them.

And who could have guessed that Sue Barker would’ve turned out so well? Back when I was a mad, crazy women's tennis fan, Sue was a rather dull girl who didn’t do much to stand out among the players. I thought she sublimated her own fame and success amazingly well—for example, in her interview with the mega-gold-winners Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Steven Redgrave, she didn’t stop to correct them when Spitz and, to a lesser extent, Lewis treated her like a dumb blonde who didn’t know anything about being an athlete or winning a major world title. (She was always surprisingly good with her obviously gay fans. I remember a Barker-freak who was as butch as they come, with major visible tattoos—and this is back in the late-'70s/early '80s when tattoos were fewer and farther between—who would get a kind word and an occasional ticket from la Sue. I suspect my own internalized homophobia would’ve driven me to give said fan a wide berth.)

Bye Bye, Booknotes

This week’s Booknotes was a classic example of why I’ll be gutted when the show goes off the air in December. Few weeks have passed in the last decade or so that I haven’t watched Booknotes—I often watch with one eye on a newspaper or magazine, but when it engages, it’s one of the most compelling shows on television.

I have often found it most interesting when the book is one I’d never consider reading—perhaps because I know less about those subjects and so have most to learn. (For instance, from this year: Martin Marty on Martin Luther and David Cay Johnston on the U.S. tax code.) This week’s writer was Richard Viguerie, author of America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power. As Viguerie himself admitted, he got no interest in the book from established publishers, even on the right, so he went with a small house, Bonus Books, based in the publishing powerhouse of Santa Monica. Brian Lamb didn’t spend a ton of time on the book itself; this can sometimes be a bad sign, there have been cases recently where the author just couldn’t handle the kind of close questioning that Lamb dishes out—I’m thinking of Alyn Brodsky, who was just too forgetful, and Nikki Giovanni, who was just too quirky (besides which, it’s kind of hard to treat poetry like other nonfiction)—but in this case, it was that Lamb recognized that the interest was in Viguerie’s life and career, not whatever truisms he’d dug up (with a co-author) for this book.

Viguerie is a conservative who pretty much established direct mail marketing as a fund-raising (and consciousness-raising) tool. He didn’t talk about the computer programs he used (thank God), but there was some fascinating detail about the way he went about gathering the first lists of conservative names and addresses. I was surprised to hear the vehemence with which he distinguished between conservatives (he’s definitely one) and Republicans (they’re the people conservatives have to go through to enact their agenda). He talked about how he would definitely not work for a client he disagreed with, but he gave a very revealing example about a client who he had been sure he’d never work with, but then circumstances changed: For years, he’d disliked Rudy Giuliani, but as soon as he ran against Hillary Clinton … It was one of the highest fund-raising returns he’s ever generated.

Brian Lamb has cut down on his most famous habit of asking super-basic questions—“Who was George Washington?”—perhaps because it’s just too awkward when guests don’t know about the tactic and think he really doesn’t know who Karl Marx is. He is a bit of a prude, though. I notice that when he reads excerpts from books, he’ll often make little tweaks like “BS” for “bullshit, though this week he did say “bastards.”

Building a Bridge to the 21st Century

R and I had talked about going down to Tacoma today to see the Andy Goldsworthy show, but in the end we couldn’t face the drive (we’re both still coping with the last—I hope—of our jetlag), so we decided instead to see the Santiago Calatrava exhibition at the Henry. The University District was packed with people in purple and gold off to support the Dawgs in the first football game of the season, but the Henry’s galleries were depressingly quiet.

We’ve had a bit of a Calatrava thing going on the last two years—last year we went to Bilbao to write a travel series about that city and got to marvel at his fabulous Zubizuri bridge as well as the wonderful airport; then this year we went to Manchester for the same reason and stayed at a hotel that is connected to the rest of the city by Trinity Bridge, designed by the great man (it’s the hotel’s logo as well), so we walked over it at least a couple of times every single day we were there.

The show mostly consisted of architectural models (fascinating things but a little cold) and his incredible sketchbooks. I adore seeing writers’ and artists’ sketchbooks/journals—some of the things I remember most clearly in decades of museum-going are pages from Anne Frank’s journals in Amsterdam, Vincent van Gogh’s letters and sketchbooks in the same city (though there were even more fascinating examples of van Gogh’s “rough” work in the Kroller-Muller exhibition currently at SAM). Calatrava’s sketches, drawings, and watercolors were almost too perfect—if those really were his initial sketches, the man’s an automaton.

There’s a 52-minute movie that features him speaking to camera and shows him sketching out and explaining his work. The video is too long (30 minutes is as long as it’s comfortable to sit still in a cold gallery with other visitors coming and going all around), but it was fascinating and revealing. As well as being a brilliant engineer, the guy’s a very gifted artist, which I guess is the definition of a great architect.

At $8, it’s feels a little pricey for folks without a ton of disposable income, but I’d definitely recommend it, not so much for people interested in architecture, but definitely for anyone interested in witnessing an artist’s creative process.

And the Award for Worst TV Awards Show Goes To ...

Best-value television in a long time Tuesday night: The Fifth Annual Latin Grammy Awards on CBS. It started on a high note in the opening number, with David Bisbal grabbing onto the giant belt buckle of his white jumpsuit in his solo and then, just a few minutes later, dry-humping Jessica Simpson with this shit-eating grin on his face, like they were having real rather than fake sex. Jessica Simpson looked like she was on the verge of laughing right in his face, so immense was the provocation of his ridiculous hair, clothes, and facial expression.

George Lopez was dreadful. The constant wardrobe changes I could take—not understand, but take; I know short guys can be insecure—but the patter? Unforgivable. CBS bleeped several of his “jokes.” If only they’d bleeped the rest of them. (Actually they just silenced the sound, which is a much more effective way of leaving listeners with no idea what was said than bleeping; when you get an aural cue, you can look up quickly and try to read lips—you don’t have to have worked in a mill to understand the most frequently used expletives deleted.) I couldn't figure out how CBS decided what to bleep. According to MSNBC, “Lopez said he understood that President George W. Bush speaks some Spanish. He then uttered some of the language [which CBS bleeped] in a phrase that, politely translated, means: ‘Don’t lie to me.’ In English, he joked that it meant: ‘Good luck in your future endeavors. ’ ” So, a lame political swipe they censor, but referring to William Hung as “the little chinito” they kept? (Lopez must’ve known that he’d gone too far on that one—he repeated the phrase “little chinito” referring to Ozomatli’s percussionist, who’s of, erm, Japanese descent, but pretty unconvincingly.)

I felt worst for the non-musicians who were called upon to present the awards (for one thing, they would have at least three people for each one—but they usually didn’t even have any lines of humorous dialogue, and it doesn’t take that many people to say, “And the nominations for Best Album are …” and then after the tape had run, “And the winner of the Latin Grammy is …” I felt particularly bad for Wilmer Valderrama, who I was shocked to hear really does speak like Fes in That ‘70s Show. He was stuck with some egomaniacal rapper with a political agenda—his parting shot was that he hoped a Latino rapper could be president one day. Let’s hope so, but please Allah, not that one. Wilmer’s girlfriend, Lindsay Lohan, also had a cringe-inducing exchange with her co-presenter, Carlos Santana. She thanked him for his music, and he wished her the best of luck in her future endeavors. Carlos took away the “Worst Reading From Cue-Cards” award, and believe me, he had competition (including from craptacular G-Lo, who at one point started to read his own introduction and had to step away superquick).

I also couldn’t figure out how they chose which awards to put in the telecast—a lot of the ones they elected to televise were won by artists who weren’t present (including two Spaniards—Alejandro Sanz, the night’s big winner, and Rosario—the matadora from Talk to Her, for anyone who doesn’t know her shockingly catchy music). The other big winner was Maria Rita, who I’d heard for the first time that morning on NPR's Morning Edition and who, for reasons I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I’d immediately taken against. Let’s see: very unimpressive audio samples and what felt like excessive self-reverence. I guess I don’t care for contemporary MPB—I’ve now given Bebel Gilberto two chances, having bought both her albums, but I can’t bring myself to like them.

There were some good bits—the number with Bebo Valdes and Diego el Cigala, with Paquito D’Rivera guesting; having people speak Spanish on prime-time network television; seeing Spanish-language ads on prime-time network television—in fact, the whole campy train wreck was irresistible, but it was one of the most amateur awards shows I’ve ever seen, up to and including several late Saturday night “image” award shows (always MC’d by Jimmy Smits for some reason) on the UHF channels.

PS: I was SHOCKED to see an ad for the next Adam Sandler movie, Spanglish, because the lead actress appears to be Paz Vega. Judging from the trailer, I thought Vega’s character was married to Sandler’s, but the IMDB summary suggests otherwise. Phew!