While the number of awards shows is increasing all the time, each individual show pops up on television only once a year. So you’d think the networks that present them would try to make each show special and better than the year before, right? But we’ve noticed that MTV and Fox have failed with that celebratory assignment over the past week.
Last Sunday, MTV held its annual Video Music Awards, a show wrought with irony considering MTV stopped showing music videos a long time ago.
As we all know, Britney Spears was a disaster. That story has been beaten to death over the past week, but what we don’t understand is why MTV let Britney open the show when they had to know she would crash and burn.
The show itself was claustrophobic, as various performances were held in rooms that were barely bigger than storage closets. Some performances were cut off in the middle so MTV could squeeze in another commercial break. Some of the awards categories just seemed silly, like “Monster Single of the Year.” What does that even mean?
Overall, the ceremony lacked purpose and structure. But if we were hoping that Sunday night’s primetime Emmy Awards on Fox would be much better, we were wrong.
Ryan Seacrest was called upon to host the ceremony. While he wasn’t exactly bad, he wasn’t anything to write home about either. His jokes, though few, ranged from creepy to mean to dull. Maybe he was just tired from hosting the E! red carpet, right before the show.
The ceremony proved to be little more than a Fox promotion fest. The show was opened with a musical number from Stewie and Brian from “Family Guy.” While this could have been funny, the number was simply rewritten from a musical number about the FCC that had already been on a “Family Guy” episode.
And speaking of the FCC, Fox’s method of censoring the awards was jarring and insulting. When Sally Field accepted her award, she began to say that “if mothers ruled the world, there would be no -” but before she could finish her sentence, Fox cut to a shot of the ceiling and completely turned off the sound. They did the same thing when Ray Romano began to joke about Patricia Heaton’s new show by beginning to say something about sexual relations between Frasier and his television wife. However, when Brad Garrett made an inappropriate joke about the size and state of Joely Fisher’s breasts, the Fox censoring was nowhere to be found. Way to stay classy, Fox.
Even the stage itself was a disappointment. While an awards show presented in the round might have seemed like a good idea, no one wants to see the faces of potential winners or losers in the background of someone’s acceptance speech.
Like birthdays, individual awards shows happen once a year. The Oscars usually manage to be a prestigious affair while still managing to be fun. It’s too bad the VMA’s and the Emmy’s couldn’t hold themselves to that standard.
