Gold Body Paint: Guilty Pleasure
The 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards will be held Sunday night to honor the greatest achievements in yet another year of quality performances that air after Grandma has gone to bed. This year’s show will be hosted by Jane Lynch and is being produced by reality TV kingpin Mark Burnett so it should pack at least a few entertaining surprises.
Every year, the breaths of individuals involved in the television industry catch in their throat as yet another Emmy envelope is slowly opened. This year, there are a few especially close races such as Best Actor in a Drama Series with Steve Buscemi, Michael C. Hall, Jon Hamm, and Hugh Laurie who have all been snubbed in the past.
Your guess is as good as mine as to who wins awards this Sunday, but there are a few nominees who I think it’s safe to say (though great examples of the pinnacle of the television art form) are also secretly a little messy. (Ed O’Neill, those sweatpants you wear in Modern Family are messy) So let’s review the great television from the year that was, that also has a hint of guilty pleasure.
Best Drama Series This Schlemmy Award would have to go to Game of Thrones. While this captivating show that transported audiences to the foreign world of Westeros was entertaining, fascinating, and motivated a bunch of people to carry freakishly heavy books on the subway, it was also fully of naked people rolling around animal skins. That’s messy. Winter is coming! You guys are just gonna get cold.
Best Comedy Series Glee goes for it in a big way in the best way possible, and this season was full of emotional ups and downs. Remember when Gwyneth Paltrow was a singing substitute before she caught that bird flu and died? That was fun. The episode that earned Glee its Schlemmy Awards, however, was its amazing song, dance, and music montage episode of a group of teenagers getting wasted. That was messy.
Best Actress in a Drama Series Kathy Bates is in a legal procedural where she plays a character named Harry who you can tell always secretly wants to be wearing dark-colored muumuus? That’s messy, Kathy. You can obviously do no wrong.
Best Actor in a Drama Series Steve Buscemi running around beating people in clothes from one of those amusement park old-timey photo booths? Ok Boardwalk Empire, why not! Pour me some bootleg gin and hand me the remote, American television viewing audience.
Best Actress in a Comedy Series Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation has cranked the dial all the way up and the result is often over the top hilariousness. Any character who loves working a nice, casual pantsuit this much definitely deserves to be on this list.
Best Actor in a Comedy Series The performance in this category that’s the biggest guilty pleasure would have to be Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock. With Jack, Baldwin takes everything you feared to be true about corporate Republicans and confirms them with a little wiggle room. Also, some of his subplots this season involved coming to terms with his ethnic nanny spending so much time with his kid and his wife being held indefinitely in North Korea. Schlemmy!
Best Movie/Miniseries Where to begin? The frantic driving through the rain? The constant emotional camera shots through panes of glass? Evan Rachel Wood’s merkin? The amazing Mildred Pierce obviously wins this category this year, hands down, and maybe in future years as well. Sad Waitress Kate Winslet. Never forget.
The actual 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards air Sunday night at 8PM on Fox.
