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Today‘s column concerns the Daytime Emmys. You must be nearly sick to death of hearing about the Emmys by now. Well, I’m here to push you over to the other side. Seriously, stick with me through the rest of the column. I’ll try to make it worth your while. But, first, here’s a word from my sponsor, Snarkie Express Credit Cards. Yes, my second column, and I already have a sponsor!
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Obviously, I’m thrilled that OLTL picked up none of the 5 major awards it was nominated for. Yet, at the same time, I was upset that I had to be thrilled. I watch the Emmys, and various other award shows, because they’re live, they’re fun, and you never know what will happen. I don’t watch them to feel validated or to root for any particular favorites, because I think the system is flawed. Here, we have awards given out by an academy of your peers. Nevermind that most of your peers are too busy working on their own shows to keep up with what the other 9 soaps are doing. We give you tapes of their best two performances of the year! Best show nominees? Best two individual episodes of the year!
Choosing your two best episodes is fine if you’re looking for a job and you’re trying to put together your resume. But, I thought the Daytime Emmys were about bestowing the honor of best of the year. Afterall, when they say GH is the Best Show of 1999, or Anthony Geary was the Outstanding Lead Actor of 1999, that means they were the best of 1999--the whole year. Therein lies the problem. You absolutely cannot judge a show’s quality for an entire year based on two episodes. Nor can you judge a year’s worth of performances based on two episodes. If you’re critiquing the whole year, then you need to weigh the whole year --good, bad and ugly. Anyone--anyone--can pull it together for two episodes.
Case in point. After decades of losses, Susan Lucci finally won the coveted Lead Actress Emmy last year, based on her performances in 1998. Lucci achieved this on the strength of two powerful episodes that dealt with Erica coping with her daughter’s anorexia. However, this was nowhere near representative of Lucci’s year in general. Shortly after the nominated episodes aired, the anorexia storyline was dropped. Erica was catapulted into a mind-numbingly stupid triangle caught between her on-again/off-again beau Jackson and her back-from- the- dead- after- 13 years- and being cremated-lover Mike Roy. After months of this saga, Erica finally decided that she honestly, truly loved Jackson--and then promptly slept with Mike as a way of saying goodbye. It was not Erica’s best year. In fact, it probably ranks just behind “Erica joins the circus to find her long-lost father” as the worst in Erica storylines. Furthermore, Lucci did nothing to make Erica rise above the level of the storyline or stand out anymore than normal. Yet, the academy bestowed Lucci the honor of being called Outstanding Lead Actress for the entire year of 1998, based on two episodes that would ultimately have little impact on the year.
That’s not fair.
Likewise, GH can have a few gut-wrenching episodes that dealt with Lucky’s death, but if the rest of them bored the pants off me, I don’t think it deserves best show. Personally, I think GH has a terrific cast, and great storyline ideas. But those storylines usually drag on far too long and ultimately fall apart. (Except for those storylines where the writers obviously have no clue what they’re doing. Faison, anyone?) GH’s idea of excitement is to throw in a random mob shootout every couple of months. But, because they can pull it together for two episodes...
And, let’s not talk about the idiocy of letting lead actors and actresses submit their names for Supporting actor/actress, because they can’t go toe-to-toe with the more established players. Or the Younger acting categories, where you can see a 9 year old go head to head with a 25 year old.
In short, we have an Emmy system which says “Hey, we don’t care if you’re putting out boring, mindless garbage all year. Just give us two great episodes, and you’ll be rewarded!” And that’s just what a lot of soap producers do. I’m tired of seeing certain episodes, and thinking, “Yep, this is going on the Emmy reel,” not because it was a truly great performance or episode, but because you can feel the Producer screaming, “Yes! Yes! Screw the other 258 episodes! These are the two that shall bring home the golden statuette!” If TPTB would put as much energy into doing consistently good work as they do into those obvious Emmy episodes, the audience would be much better off.
Which brings me to OLTL. While Jill Farren Phelps is by no means the only person in the industry that does “Screaming Emmy Episodes”, OLTL has become the epitome of this problem. OLTL is a series of silly, boring, barely cohesive episodes punctuated by those occasional mad Emmy grabs. A big part of JFP’s continued success in this biz is that she is known for bringing in Emmys for her shows, and the people that work on them. I think this is not because Phelps puts out truly Emmy-worthy work year round, but because she knows how to play the system. She knew that it didn’t matter if the average viewer gave a fig about Grace’s death or not. As long as the technical effects were dazzling, and the acting was sad and somber, OLTL had enough to get noticed by the committee. Who cares if day-to-day viewers are unconvinced of Kevin’s undying love for Grace, when he was professing the same thing 8 months ago for his wife, Cassie, currently locked away in a mental institution, after he cheated on her with Nurse Barbara? (!) All that mattered was Kevin had just enough excuse to get angry at the world, become a drunk, and do those fabulous “drunk angry at the world” scenes that look great on their own, but were hollow within the context of the daily world that is OLTL.
Yes, I’m happy that JFP picked up no major awards this year. But I’m sickened that we have a fatally flawed system that bestows the most prestigious award for daytime programming. I’m sickened that JFP’s OLTL, as well as other soaps, have figured out how to work the system and aim straight for the heart of Academy voters. And I’m sickened that this system allows clearly inferior soaps to be called or even considered best of anything when they clearly are not. There need to be changes. Some of them are easy, like creating two separate categories for younger actors/actresses. (And once you hit 21, you’re in the adult categories. Period.) There needs to be someone who says, “Sorry, Ms. Brown, but your character was clearly a lead player last year. You can’t nominate yourself in Supporting.” And there definitely needs to be a better way to judge than by two performances. But, with the academy made up of peers, who are too busy to watch their own work, let alone other soaps on a regular basis, what can we do?
Hmmm....Now who do I know that watches soaps on a regular, day-to-day basis? Dare we turn the Emmys over to the viewers themselves?