EMMY 2010 - RANDOM THOUGHTS

It was a pretty good show.

The opening was terrific.

George Clooney gave a brilliant and brilliantly short speech.

Jewel performed a beautiful accompaniment to a sensitive Memorial Tribute.

David Stathairn was good talking about the importance of teachers. And Temple Grandin, which was highly recommended by critics when it came out, was a big winner.

Dividing the show into segments by the type of TV (comedy, drama, reality, TV Movies...) sort of worked. The retrospectives of scenes from the year's shows were well done, except they always go by too quickly, and it's hard to identify the shows that the scenes came from when the type is hard to read or goes by very fast.

(For some reason, the "reality" segment on this show made me remember the reality shows, "Project Greenlight" and "On The Lot," two terrible shows about making movies. Bad as the actual shows were, they had tremendous promise, and I'd love to see a reality show about acting and directing -- Note to producers: Call Me! I've got ideas about how to do a reality acting/directing show. Let's do lunch!)

I'm glad The Daily Show won. They call it "fake news," but the way they pore through archival footage to find what people have said in the past is more significant commentary than the so-called news on many "real" news programs ever offer.

I liked the award to Archi Panjabi (Kalinda Sharma on "The Good Wife"). It was a very interesting character, very well played.

On the NBC Red Carpet show, the male hosts seemed like real idiots. Once again it reminds you just how good a live Red Carpet host Ryan Seacrest is. (Watch how he is informal, real, rarely trivial, and (mostly) interesting... next time you see him host.)

I think 24 deserved more attention this year than it got. It was a memorable year for 24. And a memorable run.

I think Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights (who was nominated, but did not win), as well as (not nominated) cast members like Taylor Kitsch and Zach Gilford deserved more recognition.

There were some excellent moments. But the Twitter thing was lame.

Suggestions for speeding up the show: My recommendation is that for all awards shows THANK YOUs be limited to one or two. Hearing someone shout out a list of ??? people I've never heard of is really boring.

It is also stupid when the same person comes up for more than one award. (Been there, done that... And they usually have nothing more to say.) In designating who is going to respond to any award, there should be a rule that (if at all possible) any one person can come up at most once -- co-writers, co-producers, co-whatevers who haven't spoken before, should come to the mike instead of someone who already has spoken, or is likely to get a later award.

I'm not sure whether or not the EMMY's claim that the winners are not known until they are announced, but I can't believe Al Pacino would have come if he didn't know he was going to win. And it's always suspicious when someone associated with a show gives out a prize to someone in the same show.

Jimmy Fallon was a good host. And, overall, it was a better than average awards show.

I won't repeat all the EMMY winners here. Here's the official site:

http://www.emmys.com/nominations