Emmys 2013: Night of the Living Dead

65th Primetime Emmy Awards – Show (Photo credit: samsungtomorrow)

Leave it to the Television Academy to screw up their biggest night, the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards.  But then again, when haven't they? Whether it's undeserving actors or TV shows winning awards, or a telecast that makes you feel as if you wasted half your life just watching it, that deserves a special Emmy of its own.

Still, this year's Emmy telecast on CBS did have its moments:

• Will Ferrell drags three bored kids from soccer practice to the ceremony to watch him announce the awards for Best Comedy and Drama shows, which were won by ABC 's "Modern Family" (for the fourth consecutive year) and AMC's "Breaking Bad", in that order.
• "The Ryan Seacrest Center for Excessive Hosting" skit was all too true, in the case of host Neil Patrick Harris.  By now, you expect him to host every awards show there is.
• Merritt Wever of Showtime's "Nurse Jackie", surprise winner for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy, said it best:  "Thank you so much.  Um, I gotta go.  Bye!"
• Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report" breaks the decade-long dominance of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in the category of Best Variety Show.
• Jeff Daniels of HBO's "The Newsroom", not Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm, wins for Best Actor in a Drama.

If there was one overriding theme for this year's Emmys, given Hollywood's current obsession with zombies and vampires, it was death.  It would have been understandable had there been a recent national tragedy, or if a major star had passed away shortly before the ceremony.  Neither happened this time.

Instead of the typical "In Memorium" segment, where images of deceased performers fly by like spirits across our TV screens while someone like Sarah McLachlan croons "I Will Remember You", we got the spread-out approach.  During the course of the Emmy telecast, five people were singled out for tributes--Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker on "All In The Family"), Jonathan Winters, James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano on "The Sopranos"), Corey Monteith (TV's "Glee") and Gary David Goldberg (produced the 80's sitcom "Family Ties").  All the tributes were tastefully done by the people who knew them.

But Andy Griffith, Jack Klugman, Larry Hagman and Andy Williams also died in the past year.  Where were their stand-alone tributes?  Instead, they were all lumped into a separate "In Memoriam" segment with other notables and TV industry folk, deserving of nothing more than black-and-white head shots and mournful cello music.

You'll also notice that there were no clips of the deceased's performances during any of the tributes.  Is it because the Emmy producers couldn't afford the rights to the clips?  Or did they think the show had gone on long enough?

Other segments of the Emmy telecast also reminded us of people who are no longer here.  They even gave an award to a writer from "Homeland" who had passed a few months ago, which his widow accepted on his behalf.

Michael Douglass, Matt Damon and Elton John paid tribute to Liberace, the subject of the HBO movie "Behind the Candelabra" (which won for best TV movie).  Liberace died in 1987.

Don Cheadle hosted a segment on how TV covered the major events 50 years ago:  The March on Washington, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the Beatles' first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show".  Then you remember that not only is JFK dead, but so are Martin Luther King, Walter Cronkite, Ed Sullivan, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Then there were the musical numbers, where Harris sang and danced, and a group of dancers interpreted the nominated shows.  If Harris had been born 20 years earlier, he might have had his own TV variety show.  As it is, song-and-dance men went the way of the old Hollywood musical.

Come to think of it, TV as we knew it is also pretty much dead or dying.  The broadcast networks are struggling for survival.  Cable is being threatened by Internet streaming.  The nomination of "House of Cards" means that a show doesn't have to be on TV to be successful.  Most of us are no longer stuck watching a show at the same time on the same station, thanks to smartphones and tablets.

As the Emmys spent three-plus hours on broadcast TV congratulating themselves, they were also tolling the bell for the way TV was.  The future is literally in the palm of our hands.