Golden Globe ponderings: Tina Fey takes on the haters, Jenna chats up the girls and I rain on 30 Rock’s parade
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- January
- 12
I don’t have the stomach for most awards shows, so I have a great appreciation for Heather Salerno’s most excellent wrap-up of the Golden Globe Awards.
I’m also loving Hulu’s mini-clips, giving me the good parts and basically watching TV so I don’t have to.That said, there’s a few things I want to weigh in on, and the first is the timing of 30 Rock’s big take at the Globes, which follows its clean-up at the Emmys last fall.
Now this is one of my favorite shows, and at varying times my favorite show, depending how I’m feeling about The Office or Battlestar Galactica on a given day. But this third season has been a bit of a disappointment, kind of a post-sophmore season sophomore slump.
The stuntcasting has gotten old, the Liz-adopts-a-baby storyline isn’t working for me, the funniest characters (Tracy, Kenneth, Jenna) get too little screentime. Heck, I’m still missing the Rachel Dratch cameos that used to be a staple.
I haven’t hated this season by any stretch, but it’s been underwhelming at a time when the show could have really set itself up for a long run. Ratings are up, by as many as 2 million viewers on average through December compared last season. USA Today posits that Sarah Palin may deserve more credit for that boost than any shiny new trophies.
But all those new eyeballs are, in my opinion, seeing a lesser show than the one I’d been obsessing over touting the prior two years.
The awards are deserved because there’s still hardly a better half-hour on television. But it could be even better. We know that because we’ve seen it.
I hope that doesn’t make me an online hater, because we know how Tina feels about the haters.
Check out video highlights after the jump.
A fellow Office fan pointed out to me that that show reached its creative pinnacle right around the time the awards started pouring in, and the show hasn’t quite reached that level ever since. (Like Rock, though, it’s still a great show.)
It’s an interesting point. Maybe creative types rest on their laurels. More likely, network suits see a potential profit earner and get more involved in creative decisions that limit what a show can be.
Or, more likely than anything else, it’s just hard to be really great for a really long time.
Now, about those Hulu clips.You can go to hulu.com and search “Golden Globes” to watch all of them. But here’s a selection to start with, and you don’t have to go anywhere to view them.
Rainn Wilson plugs his big-screen work…
Joey Fatone sandbags Tracy Morgan with a question about his drinking…
Steve Carell, with wife (and one-time Office co-star) Nancy Walls, says very little but still manages to be funnier than anyone else…
Jenna brings “the girls” to the party: self-explanatory…
(Photo: AP)
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 12:04 pm by Brian Howard.
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