Saturday, May 6, 2017

Thoughts on the Daytime Emmys 2017

Here are my yearly thoughts on the Daytime Emmy Awards. Below I list the winners and anything else that caught my interest during the 44th annual awards.

Again there wasn't a broadcast show, it was just on Periscope and Facebook Live. At least this year the live streams were official, and not someone's camera phone. Unfortunately, there was no stream of the creative arts awards on Friday. The video of the actual show was put on YouTube on Wednesday, three days after the awards. I'm going to link it and embed it.



Now on to the show and the winners...here is a quick list (but in order of importance not including the Spanish programming I'm not familiar with and I don't want to misspell them though I did appreciate the speech from the woman from Venezuela.) Having a "General Hospital" fan help present the award with Jeffrey Vincent Parisse was a nice touch.  There was only one repeat soap actor repeat winner.

  • Outstanding Drama Series: "General Hospital" - last year it was GH
  • Outstanding Game Show: "Jeopardy!" - last year it was "The Price is Right"
  • Outstanding Morning Show: "Good Morning America" - last year "CBS Sunday Morning"
  • Outstanding Talk Show/Information: "The Dr. Oz Show" - last year "The Chew"
  • Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment: "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" - last year "The Talk"
  • Outstanding Entertainment News Show: "Entertainment Tonight" - last year "Extra"
  • Outstanding Lead Actress Drama: Gina Tognoni, "The Young and the Restless" - last year Mary Beth Evans, "Days of Our Lives"
  • Outstanding Lead Actor Drama: Scott Clifton, "The Bold and the Beautiful" - last year Tyler Christopher, "General Hospital"
  • Outstanding Supporting Actress Drama: Kate Mansi, "Days of Our Lives" - last year Jessica Collins, "The Young and the Restless"
  • Outstanding Supporting Actor Drama: Steve Burton, "The Young and the Restless" - last year Sean Blakemore, "GH"
  • Outstanding Younger Actress Drama: Lexi Ainsworth, "GH" - last year True O'Brien, "Days"
  • Outstanding Younger Actor Drama: Bryan Craig, "GH" - repeat winner
  • Oustanding Guest Performer: Jim O'Heir from "Community" for B&B - last year Obba Babtunde, "B&B"
  • Outstanding Game Host: Steve Harvey "Family Feud" - last year Craig Ferguson, "Celebrity Name Game"
  • Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host: "The Talk" - last year "Live! with Kelly & Michael"
  • Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host: Steve Harvey - last year Dr. Oz
  • Outstanding Drama Series/Writing Team: Y&R - last year "The Bold and the Beautiful"
  • Outstanding Drama Series/Directing Team: "General Hospital" - repeat winner
At the craft Emmys on Friday night, new approaches drama (now called digital drama) went to "The Bay" who has won this show three years in a row There was a best actor and actress award for digital dramas and Kristos Andrews and Mary Beth Evans were the winners again with Nick Coster and Carolyn Hennessy winning from that show in supporting roles. In the past, there weren't supporting awards.

The show was just over 2 and a half hours, though that partially can be blamed for the very long speech Mary Hart gave as the winner of the lifetime achievement award. Also the Emmys posted the version with the "breaks", which can be fast forwarded on replay. It was hosted by Mario Lopez and Sheryl Underwood, and much of the host banter was her sexually harassing him, which wasn't needed. One sexual comment due to this being her shtick, but it just wouldn't end. The show opened with a group of soap actors singing "Seasons of Love" from "Rent", as a montage played and then people walking on stage who would be presenting later.  Click here to watch that short video. This was a mishmash of the 1997 Daytime Emmys where the montage was to that song, which was accurate for that era, and the 1st Daytime Emmys where you see people walking outside. (Unfortunately I don't know enough about 1973 in soaps to recognize who was there.) The people who were involved in the singing were Robert Palmer Watkins, Tristan LeBeau, Jacob Young, Reign Edwards, Eric Martsolf, Nadia Bjorlin, and Karla Mosely along with a high school choir. Point of reference in 1997, it was Montel Williams, Linda Dano, and Alex Trebek who announced the montage. Of course, 20 years ago many more people in the industry were directly effected and probably experienced loss due to HIV/AIDS, but this post is about the Daytime Emmys and not eulogizing anyone. There was a portion where many basset hounds who are up for adoption came on stage, which for many probably was the most heart-touching moment of the broadcast that had nothing to do with honoring someone who passed away.

Agnes Nixon got a special tribute in honor of her passing, and Susan Lucci announced it though I wish more had been mentioned from before hAMC and OLT. This was well done having actors who worked with and for Agnes specifically at "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" speaking about her. It was the usual suspects meaning people we've heard speak about Agnes before like Eden Riegel (about Bianca's coming out), and Darnell Williams (Jesse). I had no problem with who was chosen from AMC, though I was surprised by the inclusion of Brynn Thayer from OLTL, though that is not a complaint. It ended with showing the audience, and presumably her family. There was a 30th anniversary montage for "The Bold and the Beautiful" and John McCook and Katherine Kelly Lang presented it after giving a speech thanking people. It was to the "Scars to Your Beautiful" by Alessia Cara, which is about bullying and being criticized for your personal appearance. Then the rest of the cast and Brad Bell came out to take a bow. Jim O'Heir who won for his guest part on B&B also was out there, along with the newer cast, who came out in 2017. It was a more female-orientated montage, and clips from throughout the years were included. I do wish they'd have shown Ian Buchanan's James Warwick if only due to how he was the first supporting actor from that show to get a Daytime Emmy.

For the acting awards, we actually got clips, which was appreciated. This is something that I'm always glad to see. Max Erich, best known as Fen on Y&R sang "Hallelujah" for the In Memoriam montage.  They posted that video as a separate four minute clip here. The only people I could think of that died in 2016 and/or 2017 that weren't in the montage that had a tie to soaps were Meg Mundy who was Mona on "The Doctors" though not sure when she passed in 2016, but she wasn't in the 2016 montage either. She had a Daytime Emmy nomination for her work on the show and Robert Mason Pollock, who was one of the writers at the program in the time frame that is airing on RTV. Also Jean Rouverol who wrote the "Writing for the Soaps" wasn't included. I thought it was cool that they included Reg Grundy though he was listed for his game show work ("Sale of the Century" was his), though he produced and created many Australian shows including "Neighbours". It ended with Joe Mascolo and thankfully didn't forget Claire Labine. That said I was a bit annoyed by the guy from NATAS making a smart remark about the 1st Daytime Emmy show's location. It took place in Rockefeller Center as it aired on NBC daytime. That's an extremely appropriate place to have an event of this nature, so making a negative comment made no sense. It wasn't a random park with no ties to television. If he had just said daytime has changed a lot since the first awards when most of the shows were taped in New York City, and there were only two acting awards given I would have had nothing bad to say about his speech.

Now about the winners, well Scott Clifton is the first male performer to get younger, supporting, and lead actor awards. So that's a new record, though I didn't enjoy that story at all, and found it disgraceful. (Now we're supposed to enjoy Quinn, after she was a rapist and kidnapper, but I digress.) Gina Tognoni won for lead actress, after getting two for her supporting work at Guiding Light. How she called Peter Bergman, who she acted with on her reel. "sir" was rather amusing, but not inappropriate.  Kate Mansi was a lead on Days for the months she was on, but since she wasn't on all year, being in support made sense. Steve Burton left Y&R this year, but was on the entire 2017. This was his second Emmy with his first coming from General Hospital back in the 90s. Bryan Craig's repeat wasn't a surprise due to the degree of difficulty for his material during his character's departure story. I hope Lexi Ainsworth's win means that GH will give her an actual story, but it was cool that Kelly Monaco could present it to her. What she won for was a short-lived social issue story, which was primarily dropped. The writing win for Y&R was for the previous writing team (Chuck Pratt) and he was mentioned by name.  I hope when Steve Harvey won, it wasn't a jeer from the audience as you couldn't tell if someone said "boo" or "woo" though he wasn't there to pick up any award he won. There was a lot of fuss that Frank Valentini only thanked Maurice Benard by name and not the rest of the cast or the fans. My first reaction was nothing against Maurice, but he isn't John Bernadino or Emily McLaughlin, who were on GH from day one until their respective passing -- which was a little over 30 years for him, and 28 for her. While Sonny is a dad to numerous characters, he isn't exactly the guy who reads the Christmas story at the hospital to the sick kids. (If you want to blame me for putting that into the universe, well sorry in advance.)

"The Talk" had on the winners like last year, and have posted clips on their YouTube Page.  Gina and Scott's clip is here and is just under five minutes. Steve and Kate's clip is here and is just under five minutes also. Bryan and Lexi's clip is here and just over three minutes. James Patrick Stuart, Donnell Turner, Michelle Stafford, and Vinessa Antoine from GH were there for the best show win in a clip that was just under six minutes, which is linked here. It was nice that GH was allowed to participate this year.

Those are my highlights of the Daytime Emmys for 2017. My biggest disappointment over than it not being broadcast was how I wasn't able to see Harry Friedman's award presentation that Vanna White announced on Sunday night. While Harry's worked for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune for years, his earlier work in other game shows perhaps was touched upon on friday night. The clips being shown again was great, though I wish they'd said what episodes were nominated for the soaps, the clip from Maury was the best as he did submit a DNA episode. I hope they continue on the way it was this year, except for less sexual harassment posing as comedy.

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