Unfortunately, I won’t be watching the Emmys this year. I teach a class in comedy at USC on Monday nights. I secretly think that’s why the Emmys moved from Sunday, to avoid my snarky recaps. Yes, I could DVR them, start watching when I got home at midnight then stay up all night writing but that’s the kind of stuff you do when people pay you. So what I shall do instead is write my review BEFORE the show. After all, you KNOW what you are going to see.
At least I have the
option of not watching the Emmys. If you’re attending them you don’t have that luxury. One year David Isaacs and I were nominated for a CHEERS we wrote. At the time blue ribbon committees were assembled for a long weekend. Each committee was assigned a category and sat together to watch all the nominees. They each then filled out their ballots, ranking the contenders.
A few days before the ceremony I got a call from a friend who happened to be on the blue ribbon committee judging our category. He wanted to give us the heads-up that we had won. Our episode clearly received the best reaction; big laughs all the way through.
So I was really looking forward to the ceremony. David and I prepared our speeches and were ready to go.
You can probably guess what happened next.
Not only did we lose, but it was the very first award of the night. Now we had to sit there for three excruciating hours and watch happy winners and clunky self-congratulatory TV salutes.
The next day at the office we got several calls from other blue ribbon committee members who we didn’t know. They all said there must’ve been some mistake. To everyone’s knowledge we had won. They suggested we investigate.
The trouble is there’s no graceful way of doing that. What, we were going to demand a recount? They’d discover that yes, indeed, a mistake had been made and send somebody to the winner’s house to take the Emmy away from him and drop it off at my door instead? Or they’d do the recount and discover the results were in fact, accurate. Then we’d REALLY look like assholes.
No, we just had to suck it up. But it was a lonnnnnnnng night.
Best of luck to everyone tonight, even if others who weren’t nominated are more deserving or you’re in categories you have no business being in.