Here are my yearly thoughts on the Daytime Emmy Awards. Below I list the winners and anything else that caught my interest during the live feed.
If anyone is easily offended please stop now...
The show began with a red carpet. If one goes on twitter or reads the media, you'll have seen the very negative reaction that it elicited. While last year's red carpet on HLN was only an hour and barely included any soap opera people at least it was respectful. This was a snark fest, and while I like my snark there wasn't enough background information to make it really entertaining. Have you ever watched something that was so bad that you were entertained in a sick manner, the red carpet had elements of that kind of programming. Brittany and Lauren handled the red carpet, while Jessica and Meghan were in the "social media room." Jessica mentioned that she was named after Jessica Buchanan from One Life to Live, though I wish her mom had been on or at least could have coached her if she still keeps up with soaps. I also wish she hadn't asked that unfortunate question to Lawrence Saint Victor. Meghan seemed to know something about soaps in comparison to the others, and made me face palm the least so good job. There were a few things that people were incredibly offended by tvline.com's Matt Mitovitch does a good job explaining all of them.
One of the things on the red carpet that wasn't mentioned was how Chad Duell was ignored and just treated as Kristen Alderson's date when they are both were nominated this year. In a way, though I did appreciate that he wasn't sexually objectified, but there was a lot of that going on the red carpet. I'm the last person to say anything about being honest that someone is hot. I had an experience over the weekend watching the ESPN soccer coverage. One of the guys on the panel was so ridiculously hot I was melting as I couldn't believe they would have such a handsome man as a commentator. That said if I was a red carpet reporter, I would research all the people ahead of time to avoid the embarrassment of unexpected hotness. That may sound crazy, but that would be part of my studying beyond the "normal" things like names and pictures of the nominees, former winners and presenters. Suzanne Rogers (Maggie) from Days actually came off well on the red carpet, which was cool. Almost everyone else's "interview" was about hotness or if two people were speaking about some non-existent relationship like Maura West and Tyler Christopher from GH aren't a couple and neither are Greg Vaughn and Kassie DePaiva from Days. People who know a bit about the real lives of soap performers wouldn't run into that difficulty. Anyway I enjoyed the reactions to the insanity a lot on twitter last night, though I wish the red carpet show hadn't gotten so many people so irate.
Now on to the show and the winners...here is a quick list (not in live blog style, but in order of importance not including the Spanish programming I'm not familiar with and I don't want to misspell them and they weren't mentioned on the major sites I visited like tvline and ew)
Outstanding Drama Series: "The Young and the Restless"
Outstanding Culinary Series: "The Mind of a Chef"
Outstanding Game Show: "Jeopardy!"
Outstanding Legal/Courtroom Show: "The People’s Court"
Outstanding Morning Show: "Good Morning America"
Outstanding Talk Show/Information: "Steve Harvey"
Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment: "The Ellen DeGeneres Show"
Outstanding Entertainment News Show: (tie) "Entertainment Tonight," "Extra"
Outstanding Special Class Special: "The Young and the Restless: Jeanne Cooper Tribute"
Outstanding Lead Actress Drama: Eileen Davidson, "Days of Our Lives"
Outstanding Lead Actor Drama: Billy Miller, "The Young and the Restless"
Outstanding Supporting Actress Drama: Amelia Heinle, "The Young and the Restless"
Outstanding Supporting Actor Drama: Eric Martsolf, "Days of Our Lives"
Outstanding Younger Actress Drama: Hunter King, "The Young and the Restless"
Outstanding Younger Actor Drama: Chandler Massey, "Days of Our Lives"
Outstanding Culinary Host: Bobby Flay, "Bobby Flay’s Barbecue Addiction"
Outstanding Game Host: Steve Harvey, "Family Feud"
Outstanding Talk Show Host: (tie) Dr. Mehmet Oz, "The Dr. Oz Show," Katie Couric, "Katie"
Outstanding Drama Series/Writing Team: "The Young and the Restless"
Outstanding Drama Series/Directing Team: "One Life to Live"
New Approaches in Drama: "Venice the Series"
At the beginning of Kathy Griffin's intro, the audio and video cut out for everyone. That sucked, but eventually it did come back so we saw most of her monologue. Since it was Kathy, there was swearing involved since it wasn't on regular television thankfully she can't be fined by the FCC. She told stories of what happened at last year's Daytime Emmy Awards. Kathy's complaints were on point and humorous. She also shared what happened with the people who she ended up sitting with so we got reality show horror stories. Later in the show, she spilled the old information about the fighting between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Susan Lucci at All My Children back in the 90s.
Due to how voting is done for the Daytime Emmys, the winner of the most pre-nomination votes is the ultimate winner of the category. While I get why pre-nominations exist, so the voters don't have to view as many videos, I wish that the awards were based solely on the final nominees. Some may say it makes no difference, but I wish it could be proven either way, as I feel it may have an impact. To give a simple example, for best show the nominees were B&B, Days, OLTL and Y&R. AMC and GH were also eligible, but weren't nominated. It is possible someone who ranked either AMC or GH highly would change their vote based on their reel preference if they weren't in the mix.
Billy Bush announced the supporting actor and actress awards. Eric Martsolf (Brady from Days of Our Lives) and Amelia Heinle (Victoria from The Young and the Restless) won with their first nominations. Some records were tied/made in these categories as Melissa Claire Egan and Bradford Anderson both lost their respective categories five separate years. While neither is close to reaching the record by Susan Lucci, I was hoping one or both would finally break through and win as that's a lot of nominations without a win. Getting back to the winners, Eric's character Brady was dealing with addiction and not children, which made his material stand out from the others. During his speech he mentioned his time at Passions, and truly if I was to give an award for most improved actor who was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2014, he would win it. Amelia Heinle's been in soaps for years first Loving/The City as Steffi Brewster, then as Mia on All My Children and now as Victoria. Her reel dealt with Delia's death.
Then awards for non-soap opera categories were given. Kate Mansi and Casey Moss from Days presented (and the actors who play siblings matched), as did Mario Lopez (who used to be on B&B). There were a lot of no-shows, for obvious reasons like Katie Couric got married again the day before the Daytime Emmy show.
Sharon Case and Camryn Grimes from Y&R presented the award for best writing to their show, which submitted material regarding Delia's death. Darin Brooks, Scott Clifton and Kim Matula presented the award for best directing after Darin did some "directed" acting. One Life to Live won, which was a happy surprise. What was even better was the person who spoke for the team Jill Mitwell has a long history in soaps. She mentioned the other lost east coast soaps in her speech, and how they came together to make the show. That made me wistful, but in a positive way.
People from The Talk (Aisha and Sara, I think) announced the younger awards. Hunter King from Y&R and Chandler Massey from Days won. Hunter picked a good reel as Summer, so I understand why she won her first award. Chandler won his third in a row in this category tying Jonathan Jackson (who won in three non-consecutive years). Chandler is also the first actor from Days of Our Lives to win three Daytime Emmys for acting. The only other person to have multiple acting Emmys for their work on Days is the late MacDonald Carey. Of course, the best part of Chandler's speech was how he acknowledged that they showed the wrong clip.
There are more non-soap awards. Mo Rocca, who did a Y&R cameo presents, some talk show awards and was followed by Brooke Burns and "The Beast" from "The Chase" on GSN, who do morning talk shows in both English and Spanish. Judge Christina Perez announces game show and special class, which went to Y&R's Jeanne Cooper special. Then Kelly Monaco, Michelle Stafford and Jason Thompson come on and during the banter Jason makes it sound like he wants his character Patrick to hook up with a man. That would be an interesting change for Patrick and at least there is no way the man could get pregnant as Jason's character has been in "baby hades" for years. They announce entertainment program in Spanish and entertainment news. The woman executive producer from Entertainment Tonight talks for a very long time, and due to how long she speaks I wonder if the program will ever get nominated again. This was the first year they had this category and Linda Bell Blue, has been around for ages, if anything she was one of the early tabloid journalism producers due to her work at Hard Copy. I recall people being worried she'd sleaze up ET, as Hard Copy is a lot like TMZ.
Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl from the Talk come out and Sharon goes on a tear. She also didn't appreciate the length of the speech. They announce lead actor and actress, which go to Billy Miller of Y&R and Eileen Davidson for her work as Kristen on Days. I was worried Billy wouldn't win based on his reel, but he did so I was glad. It was his third Emmy though he has another two in supporting, while this was the first win for Eileen whose been in the business for about 30 years. That being said in the 90s, there is no way Eileen would have won for Days just due to the campiness of Kristen's material, though as the years have gone on the character while still a villainess has a lot more moments of clarity.
The last two awards of the night were presented by Donna Mills in a red dress, when she came out they played the Knots Landing theme. She gave out new approaches and Crystal Chappell, Hillary B. Smith and Katherine Kelly Lang among others came up on stage though Crystal obviously as the creator spoke. Drama series went to Y&R and Jill Farren Phelps spoke though she was interrupted by Kathy Griffin during her speech. I wonder if this was intentional as this happened to JFP in the past or just a "happy coincidence".
I was amazed that no winners were missing because they were in the bathroom as there were no commercials during the webcast. It was strange that some of the incidental music sounded like Michael and Donna's signature song Tender Love, which played through many of their scenes in the 80s on Another World. I liked how the awards were given in a more traditional order, though it was interesting that the children's programming awards were all passed out during the Creative Arts Emmys. The Lifetime Achievement award also was announced on that show, and not even mentioned on the webcast, which I found annoying as honoree Russ Morash was a producer for a cooking show and the culinary awards were part of the main broadcast. I liked that they had clips for the nominees, though I miss the classic clip package montages, but having the nominee clips were a step in the right direction. Also GH and B&B were completely cut out of the big show as they only won technical awards. AMC wasn't even nominated in the main categories, but won technical awards too. I wish they had at least mentioned the technical winners, even if we didn't see clips of their speeches.
To wrap this up after two hours of writing, I felt the actual award portion of the Daytime Emmys was the best I've seen in many years. I liked that there was no superfluous singing or over promotion of products that were perhaps only tangential to daytime television. Since so many winners in the non-soap opera categories skipped the awards it was finished in under two hours. I hope next year, the program is aired again on television though the language will have to be cleaned up for broadcast. While I was surprised by some of the winners, which are a lot harder to predict when you only get to see 4 or 5 reels of the nominees and not the entire field, I wasn't horrified. Other than in the younger awards, all of the actors had at least a decade in daytime.
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