Jon Cryer

I didn’t have a chance for an Emmy live-blog (which would boil down in any case to “somebody just won something” over and over, especially since I’m not very good at writing about the important thing: clothes). I’ll have some thoughts after the full list of winners is available. I will say that the Hairspray songwriting team, which wrote Neil Patrick Harris’s song material for the Tonys and Emmys, should just write special material for him all the time. Harris is fun, though he seems to have a sore throat at times and isn’t always great at thinking on his feet and coming up with a “saver” or a response to an unexpected audience reaction; that’s what professional comedians are good at doing, but I think it’s worth trading that off to get Harris’s likability.

If there ever was a show conceived in bitterness, it’s The Famous Teddy Z. In the 1987-8 season, creator Hugh Wilson gave CBS Frank’s Place, an acclaimed, Emmy-winning, unique comedy-drama that became the cause celebre of every ‘”quality television” group. CBS not only canceled it, they canceled it in the worst possible way: after pre-production had already started on a second season, when it was too late for most of the people to line up jobs for the fall of 1988.  It’s not surprising that when Wilson came back with another show (again on CBS — like Joss Whedon with Fox, sometimes you just can’t quit the network that cancels your shows), it was a more mainstream, multi-camera comedy on tape; it’s also no surprise that it took a sour attitude toward show business itself.