9 Days 'til Emmy Awards: Spin Offs & Ideal Hosts

As we approach the Emmy Awards, a little questionnaire silliness. I polled Friends of TFE and the staff, too. 

1. Which character on which show would you kill to see get their own spinoff series?

Joe Reid: That American Horror Story's Myrtyle Snow never got to be a Project Runway judge is the real shame. But if we're talking whole-cloth spinoff, I really honestly think that Mad Men has stopped being able to give to Joan what Joan gives to the show. Watching her navigate the '70s would be amazing.

 Mark Blankenship: Can we please, PLEASE follow the further adventures of Lincoln (Hannibal Buress) from Broad City? Maybe he can open a free dental dental clinic, and every week, we can see his zany adventures with his patients and their jacked up teeth.

Nathaniel R: I'd follow anyone from Mad Men through the 1970s... and I do mean anyone but I want to focus on shows that are so rich that even the outer periphery characters are awesome so can I pitch shows for?: Nurse Jackie's slutty new drug dealer (Michael Esper); Dawn & Shirley (Teyonnah Paris & Sola Bamis), the new secretaries of Mad Men; that gay hooker from Masters of Sex (Finn Wittrock); Archer's cyborg lovers Katya & Barry

Anne Marie: Freddy from House of Cards gets his own show where he turns his hole-in-the-wall restaurant into a food empire by taking advantage of the shady political maneuvering he's overheard for the last decade.

Jose: Anyone from The Big Bang Theory...oh sorry, I stopped reading after you said "kill". 

Dancin' Dan: All I want for Christmas is "The Taystee and Poussey Make Fun Of White People Show".

How many binge-watching hours would you give that one?

2. Which reality host would you choose to host your real life?

Mark Blankenship: Tim Gunn. Obviously. Because he'd be proud of me if I put together a good look for brunch.

Anne Marie: Betty. Freaking. White.

Nathaniel R: Heidi Klum... but only if she invites me to her annual Halloween bash.

Joe Reid:  This is not a question. This does not need more than a half-second's worth of thought. Cat Deeley now. Cat Deeley tomorrow. Cat Deeley forever.

YOUR TURN... who would host your life and which minor or central characters would you gladly follow up into their own spinoff series?

16 Days Til Emmy: What We're Rooting For

Over the next two weeks we'll periodically be experiencing a little Emmy countdown silliness. But first a matter of who we're rooting for in just 16 days. I polled a few members of TFE's team and my podcast co-host Joe Reid from whom I've learned much about TV (he's an expert) and who still thinks I look down on TV through pinched cinematic nose. Okay, maybe a little... but it is not from lack of quality! It's from other reasons but it mostly boils down to these four: I prefer a two hour commitment as opposed to a one-to-ten year commitment to stories and characters; I like the scope of history of the arts and the cinema has a much richer, longer and more well preserved history (people didn't really think of TV as an art until our lifetimes); I'm more naturally drawn to and more often wowed by movie stars; I despise the false equivalencies people who should know better (critics and journalists) are always spouting about TV vs Film so I am routinely pressed and therefore must take up arms for the cinema!

But otherwise I love TV... or at least "my shows". So let's get to it. Who is Team TFE rooting for in the big categories?

Why I'm Rooting for _______ in Drama Series? (answers after the jump)

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Linkhood

Luise Rainer is now on Spotify with numbers from The Great Ziegfeld. And she's still alive to see it!
Vox this is why (well, one of the reasons) Emmy nominations are always so disappointing/strange: behold the labyrinthine nomination process
Overland Glenn looks back at Twin Peaks' influence on television's corpse littered playground 

Mash-Ups To Go
Have you binge-watched "Frozen is the New Black" yet? By which I mean watched it three times in a row like I just did. 

Oh i know you're not reading one of my books, bitch.

I love Belle's cameo so much.

APEHOOD trailer (Boyhood & Dawn of the Planet of the Apes mashup) from Nelson Carvajal on Vimeo.

And in other mashup news, this trailer for "Richard Linklater's Apehood" is making the rounds, a cute fusion of two great movies that happened to share this very same opening weekend so I hope you're seeing both this year. Oh, and Land Ho!, too. It's a really really good movie weekend y'all.

Emmy Nom Hangover: Snubs & Peculiarities

Apologies for my radio silence yesterday. Off my game I was for the entire day plus which means I'm know 36 hours behind on writing projects. Hooray. Nevertheless, because Emmy nominations are still very much on my mind after the initial response and the main titles detour (oh don't pretend you aren't still thinking about them) I polled a few members of Team Experience about their feelings. And here's what they had to say on four questions. Answer them yourself in the comments, too. The more the merrier. 

What's the Nomination That Most Perplexes You?

Adam Armstrong: Kristen Wiig – The Spoils of Babylon. When I read her name among the nominees, I was like:

...Pure, unadulterated, ecstatic, confused bliss. 

Andrew Kendall: So many options, but it's impossible for me to let Christina Hendricks in Mad Men just pass - for so many reasons. Everyone loves Joan and Hendricks is one Mad Men's finest actors but in the seven episode "half season" 2014 gave up what did Joan Harris even do to warrant a citation? I'm always willing to defend the Emmy voters when people accuse them of voting without watching (maybe they just have trite tastes?) but can anyone have watched this last season of television and sincerely felt Christina Hendricks did anything of note? Her nomination this particular season is even more of an albatross to the category than Maggie Smith's never ending series of nominations for frowning on Downton Abbey.

Dancin' Dan: Michelle Dockery, Lead Actress in a Drama. Does she actually do ANYTHING remotely interesting or difficult on Downton Abbey? This nomination has always perplexed me.

Anne Marie: Apparently the only people still watching Glee are Emmy voters. It's the only way to explain how it got a directing nomination for an episode with fewer audience members than the population of New Mexico.

Omission You Will Hold Against the Emmys Forever?

[RuPaul, Hannibal, Archer, The Good Wife and much more after the jump]

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Emmy Nods 2014: Full List, First Impressions

The Emmy nominations have been announced for your viewing pleasure... unless your favorites were snubbed in which case here's the list to enrage you. Cable continues to ruthlessly dominate making things very hard for network shows - even hits like Scandal and The Good Wife. And Emmy proved again, as they often do, that they are very slow to change, largely embracing the same performers / shows they've always embraced as if they're only ever voting on the entirety of a show and not its current season.

I know people are very upset about Tatiana Maslany's ongoing snub for Orphan Black. She basically embarrasses every critic that's ever over-used the word "chameleon" to describe an actor; we should've saved the word for her. But this is not remotely surprising in any sense and I'm confused as to why so many people thought it might happen. The show is...  

a) ...not on a prestigious network like HBO
b) ...a genre show and awards bodies from Oscar to Emmy only deign to honor those when they're insanely popular and never just because they're great or an actor is great on them.
c) ...filled with actors (including Tatiana) who are not well known in Hollywood.
d) ...not as good as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica and those genre shows were egregiously snubbed for YEARS despite endless enraged fanbases and critical pleas

BUT ON TO THE NOMINEES...

COMEDY

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