2017 Emmy Awards – Comedy

Emmy_statueWith the Emmy Awards scheduled for Sunday night, here are my predictions for the awards for Comedy shows.  I most likely have seen most of these shows, so, unlike my annual Oscar predictions, I will not mostly be going on gut feel and word of mouth, but will have a somewhat informed decision.

Outstanding Comedy

Atlanta

Black-ish

Master of None

Modern Family

Silicon Valley

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Veep

Veep has won for the past two years and would seem to be a good choice to three-peat, so I’ll go with that.

Outstanding Actress In A Comedy

Pamela Adlon, Better Things

Jane Fonda, Grace and Frankie

Allison Janney, Mom

Ellie Kemper, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Tracee Ellis Ross, Black-ish

Lily Tomlin, Grace and Frankie

Julia Louis-Dreyfus won this award the past four years, and I see no reason why she won’t repeat again this year.

Outstanding Actor In A Comedy

Anthony Anderson, Black-ish

Aziz Ansari, Master of None

Zach Galifianakis, Baskets

Donald Glover, Atlanta

William H. Macy, Shameless

Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Jeffrey Tambor brought home the award the past two years for his gender-bending role on Amazon’s hit series, but I’m going to go out on a limb and go with Donald Glover.

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Post Mortem – Community

communityOn September 17, 2009, I found myself watching a new comedy on NBC despite my best intentions.  Starring the guy from The Soup and Chevy Chase, I was sure that this show, titled Community, would be a dud.  Surprisingly, I ended up liking the pilot and came back the following week.  Eventually, Community rose to the top of my watch list and became one of my favorite shows.

Sadly, despite critical acclaim and a fiercely loyal fanbase, the fandom for this particular show was small.  Every season, the show was on the bubble and it probably would have been cancelled years ago if NBC wasn’t totally desperate for anything resembling a hit.  But along the way, we got three tremendous seasons.  When showrunner Dan Harmon was fired after season 3, the show seemed doomed once again, but it came back for a surprise 4th season, which saw more trouble and the eventual departure of Chase.

Given all of that, it was a foregone conclusion that the show would be cancelled last year.  Once again, the little show that could surprised the world by not only being renewed for a 5th season, but by bringing back Dan Harmon to once again helm the show.  A throw away line from early in the shows run, six seasons and a movie, had become the rallying cry of the shows fans and now seemed to be within reach.  Sadly, after a 5th season which saw the departure of Donald Glover, NBC finally pulled the plug.

So I say thank you to Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Jim Rash, Ken Jeong, and, yes, Chevy Chase for a wonderful run.  #SaveGreendale #SixSeasonsAndAMovie

Things I Love

In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are some things I love.

Community has been off the air for a few months now, and I still miss it every Thursday night when it isn’t on.  I understand that people have a problem following a sitcom that doesn’t follow the normal tropes of the genre, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take when NBC continues to air the likes of Whitney, the silly Chelsea Handler show, and Grimm.  The cast is phenomenal, especially Donald Glover, Danny Pudi, and Alison Brie.  Speaking of whom…

 

Aside from her role on Community, Alison Brie also appears on Mad Men and made a big screen appearance last year in Scream 4.  Continue reading →