Spoilers for a goddamned award show below.

Things that happened

This year’s Emmy awards were, in short, a ridiculous array of nothingness, as FOX finally gets the show and, realizing that ‘classy’ is completely out of their reach, opts instead for ‘efficient’ and ‘workman-like.’ The lone thematic element holding the show together was… a circle. In a move that baffled the audience, presenters and viewers alike, this year’s awards were presented on a big round stage in the middle of the auditorium.

Seriously, it was as if FOX got a bunch of executives in the room and asked for ideas on how they should format the Emmy’s, now that they finally have their shot. And no one in the room spoke up, save for one guy in the back who was all “Let’s get rid of the stage! Hear me out — instead of, like, a regular stage, what if we just had a circle, in the middle of the room. We’d totally fuck with the paradigm! People would get up there and be all ‘whoa, man, where’s the rest of the audience? Where is that applause coming from?’ and we’d be all ‘Behind you, man. They’re all around you.’ Because of the circle.”

And then everyone went home early.

The only other non-award bits were the opening Family Guy musical number, which had to be awkward for those actually in attendance (“Welcoming you to the show, an empty stage!”), Tony Bennett singing while simultaneously wondering who Christina Aguilera was, the usual death montage (Merv Griffith was the big dead winner, by applause), and a somewhat inspired game of “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” featuring Rainn Wilson versus Kanye West.

They also decided to give The Sopranos a musical tribute and then reward them with a big… something, before actually giving them them the award for Best Drama later. I didn’t quite get that. “Musical theatre” isn’t really how’d I play tribute to a cold-blooded gangster show.

Ceremony aside, the awards were just weird:

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy

Jeremy Piven for Entourage was fine, if mildly annoying because — honestly now — the show has been treading water for years now. Someone else on the internet — I don’t remember who — put it best when he said that every episode this season could have been summed up by “Something something blah blah Mediin EVERYTHING GOES WRONG oh wait it’s cool dudes — let’s party.”

Not a big mistake, though. Kevin Dillon would have been way worse. I like Piven well enough, save for his stupid fake hair.

Best Supporting Actor, Drama

Terry O’Quinn from Lost is a good choice. I was pulling for Imperioli, but I was pretty much pulling for The Sopranos in all the drama categories this year, as it is (was) awesome. I feel like O’Quinn was way better on Lost the first couple of seasons, as he sort of faded into the background this season, aside from his random appearances where he would act totally irrational and blow shit up for no reason. He seems like a really nice guy, however.

Best Supporting Actress, Comedy

I make no bones about it: I wanted Jenna Fischer from The Office to win. She deserved it. She’s funny. She’s cute. She’s not afraid to reference her breasts. She’s going through a divorce. But Jaime Pressly was a good back-up winner, to be sure. I like My Name is Earl a lot — it’s one of those unsung shows that’s generally pretty consistently good.

Best Supporting Actress, Drama

Again, I was pulling for The Sopranos girls. (Mostly Turturro, though Bracco was good, too.) For me, Katherine Heigl winning is really where the show went off the rails. I’m not sure what it is about her, but she strikes me as completely uninteresting, unfunny and really goddamn egotistical. Her whole “I’ve been working so hard my whole life!” thing was complete bullshit — you’d never be able to convince me that hanging out on the set of My Father The Hero wouldn’t be totally awesome and a bucketful of fun.

Best Actor, Comedy

Ricky Gervais is one of my favourite guys, and certainly an inspiration to millions of people who have just now started to realize that awkwardness is hilarious, but I was totally shocked to see him win here. Extras is a good show, but not a great show. It strikes me more as something Gervais and Stephen Merchant have made to have fun for a few years than actually serious, convention-defying, memorable work like The Office was for them. Honestly, this award should have gone to Alec Baldwin.

I will note though that Gervais winning (and not being there) made for one of the funniest moments of the show, where presenters Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart decided to just give the statue to their old Daily Show buddy Steve Carrell anyway. They all just looked so happy.

Best Actor, Drama

James Fucking Spader. Seriously. Here are the problems I have with this. One: It’s James Fucking Spader. Two: Boston Legal can hardly still qualify as a drama, can it? Three: Nobody — literally nobody watches Boston Legal, so how did Emmy voters know what his performance was like? Four: It’s James Fucking Spader! He beat James Gandolfini, who came off the final season of a show that will probably stand the test of time and define its generation, if only to a small HBOish degree. What the fuck, voters. James Spader?!

Best Actress, Comedy

America Ferrera was kind of a foregone conclusion. Emmy voters seem to love comedies that are, in fact, not really comedies but actually more dramedies. (Or, in Ugly Betty‘s case, primetime soap operas?) I guess it makes them feel all classy or whatever. I would have given it to Tina Fey, personally, as her acting was far more comedic without relying on fake eyebrows and braces and lots of layers, but, as said, this really wasn’t very surprising.

Best Actress, Drama

Sally Field wins and, seriously, will anyone try to argue it wasn’t at least a little bit because Emmy voters remember her ever-so-precious Oscar speech and decided to give her another award just to see what she’d say? And I guess she sort of delivered on that potential, dropping the so non-kosher g.d. word in prime-time and somehow relating her Emmy win to the tyranny of war. Pretty goddamned awesome, though, again, the sensible choice would have been The Sopranos‘s Edie Falco.

Best Comedy

30 Rock winning was fucking shocking, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s great for the show — because the show is great — and Tina Fey’s acceptance speech was the perfect mix of funny and sweet, with just a touch of sarcasm and self-deprecation to get it all down smooth. Objectively, it was probably a bit too early for the show to win — the first season was brilliant at times, but still uneven (Pound for pound, The Office was the better show) — but hopefully this win will give the show the extra exposure it needs to stay on the air for a good long run. Because that worked so well for Arrested Development.

Best Drama

Finally, some sense. The Sopranos wins and everyone even vaguely related to the show storms the big circular stage. Creator David Chase is kind of out of things to say, as he’s been up at least four times already (for directing and writing awards, plus that weird musical tribute) so instead he talks about how cool Stevie Van Zandt is (he is indeed very cool) and then takes a shot at George Bush. In retrospect, the better gag would probably have been to cut straight to a silent black screen. If only they hadn’t wasted that in the damn Family Guy singalong earlier in the show.

So, in sum, who the hell knows. It’s The Emmy’s. The best I can say is that I went through this whole recap and review without mentioning host Ryan Seacrest once. But that’s mostly because he limited his involvement to welcoming us back from commercial and, once, making fun of The Tudors. Which, really… take that Showtime Original Programming. Seacrest totally burned you.

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