I watched the 2004 TVLand Awards.
Perhaps it’s cynicism… perhaps it’s he abject reality of the show… But I honestly felt like I just sat thru a 3 hour commercial. Now, to be honest, I was watching an award show sponsored by a company, for a company, on a company’s channel.
It’s like watching the Microsoft Software Awards on MSNBC. And the winner for best Word Processing program is…. Oh my! Microsoft Word.
The things that caught my eye and made me want to write about this were things like:
Superest Superhero: The nominees were: The Incredible Hulk (circa Bixby), Wonder Woman, and Elecrawoman and DynaGirl
Call me crazy. But does anyone notice anything wrong with this list of candidates?
I admit being a fan of classic T. But I count myself among a very small number of people who at one time liked EW&DG let alone admit to even having heard of it. If I were to list the top ‘super hero’ shows from classic TV. I can come up with a whole lot that don’t ever look at EW&DG and probably might not even consider the Hulk.
I mean let’s face it… How would people vote given the choice between The Hulk (that’s so last year), Wonder Woman (Boy we hope you go for this movie in pre production) and ElectraWoman and DynaGirl (Yeah, how many of my readers have heard of them, without my introduction for them 😉
Please note: the original voting was two topics:
Superest Super Heroine: Wonder Woman, Bionic Woman, EW&DG, Isis, Batgirl
Superest Super Hero: Superman, Hulk, Greatest American Hero, Green Hornet, Shazam
Again, this sounds like abject silliness to talk about this. But the problem I had was that I knew who the winners would be from the nominees alone.
Yes, seeing Lee Meriwether, Julie Newmar, and Eartha Kitt all on stage together seeing who could make the best meow was cool. (Julie Newmar for looks, Eartha for purrs and meows any day) There was a nice tribute to Freddie Prinze (the first Latino on TV…. er.. if you don’t count Dezi Arnez) and a touching tribute to John Ritter.
The award for Future Classic however really rubbed me raw. The Future Classic was an award for a new show that is “innovative and ” blah blah. This show was Fox’s new, “Arrested Development.” The show looked good… but really felt like someone in one office bargained, wheeled, and dealed(sic) to get their show a little air time.
The awards were a mixed bag of some award recipients feigning surprise (oddly only the winners were present) and some other good tributes (Andy Griffith cast (no really, all of them that were alive save Ron Howard)
I guess, I’ve just gotten disenchanted with award shows and top 100 lists, and all this other stuff that eventually comes down to either a popularity contest based on no standard of evaluation or worse, something commercial to manipulate the fans to a chosen result.
But then again… we have Marriage Crises, Oil Crises, Corporate Fraud, Election Politicking… and every other thing to worry about. Is any of this really any more important ;?)
Short form: Shrug