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September 05, 2006 - Image 8

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Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 2006-09-05

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Tuesday
September 5, 2006
arts.michigandaily.com
artspage@michigandaily.com

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0

The end of 'must see'
TV COLUMN

The Emmy Awards have
come and gone. Didn't
notice? Don't worry, you're
hardly alone. Whether because it's
the only major award show that
doesn't take place in award season
or simply because it does crazy
things like nominate
three "Desperate
Housewives" one
year, and then none
the next year (to men-
tion nothing of Ellen
Burstyn's nomination
for a 14-second role in
"Mrs. Harris"), people ,
just don't give a damn
about the Emmys.
I would try to IM
change that, but even I
can't watch the entire S
show. While the awards
remain largely arbitrary and even
the event aspect of the Emmys pales
in comparison to any other major
awards show, there are always a
handful of happenings worth the
awareness of anyone who styles
himself a TV fan.
First of all, it's an empty-handed
goodbye for "Arrested Develop-
ment." The comedic creation of
sheer genius that everyone seems
to talk about, but apparently no
one watched, was cancelled after
its shortened third season. The
show won a total of six Emmys
and a Golden Globe in its run, but,
of course, Fox chose to cancel it
while leaving the offensive and
downright pointless "The War
at Home" in its stead. More on
that fantastic development in a
moment.
Steve Carrell's rise to upcom-
ing king of TV comedy (achieved
thus far by Jerry Seinfeld alone)
was momentarily halted by his
surprising loss in the Outstanding
Lead Actor in a Comedy category
for his role in "The Office." Tony

Shaloub ("Monk") won for the
third time in four years. That,
along with another six nomina-
tions for "Will & Grace" (bringing
that tired series's total haul up to
an incomprehensible 79 Emmy
nominations), only further proves
that Emmy is out of
touch with what is
good in television
now. It took them five
years to realize the
icon that Jack Bauer of
"24" has become for
contemporary action
drama (Kiefer Suther-
land finally bagged an
Outstanding Actor in
[RAN a Drama award this
year), so perhaps in a
YED couple of years Car-
rell's Michael Scott
will get his too.
And speaking of giving awards
based on reputation alone, how
about Julia Louis-Dreyfuss
("Seinfeld") winning Outstanding
Lead Actress in a Comedy for her
role in CBS's midseason replace-
ment, "The New Adventures of
Old Christine?" Fans of "Sein-
feld" will know that Louis-Drey-
fuss has an uncanny knack for the
terse tensions of sitcom subtlety,
but have you seen that new show?
The jokes consist of one or two
words, and even if they manage
to coax a smile, the laughtrack
is unbearable. And why does the
whole show look like it's filmed
in someone's basement?
Despite Carrell's unfortunate
upset, "The Office" pulled an upset
of its own by snagging the Outstand-
ing Comedy Series award. Perhaps
now those Thursday ratings will
pick back up for NBC. "The Office"
and "My Name is Earl" make up
the best hour of comedy on TV any
night, but viewers so far have still
See TELEVISION, Page 9A

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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ANGELA CESARE; FROM LEFT: Courtesy of UPN, bensguide.gpo.
FROM LEFT: Kristin Cavalleri, Mount Rushmore, Yung Joc, "The Da Vinci Code."
THE LAST FRONTIER
IN AMERICA, POP CULTURE IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT

By Evan McGarvey
Managing Arts Editor
Australian novelist and two-time Man
Booker prize winner Peter Carey said
recently in an interview that the main
difference between
America and the POP NOTEBOOK
rest of the British
colonies (and a major source of Australia's
inferiority complex) was that, in America, a
conquerable, important wilderness seemed
to exist everywhere. You tell a young, pre-
industrial Australia to go west and a gen-
eration of boys die tied up in tumbleweed,
flushed with dysentery somewhere in the
Northern Territories. If you're a young
Canadian and heed that exploratory urge,
hordes of stout families end up starving on
ice floes in Hudson Bay.

America didn't have the most, say,
humane time articulating that Protestant-
fueled Manifest Destiny (eg. "Blood Merid-
ian," the destruction of the overwhelming
majority of Native Americans), but, unlike
the other colonies sharing this hunk of
rock, every piece of our space came up
roses. Oregon. California. Florida. Texas.
The Great Plains. Each battle, each massa-
cre and each loss of life gave us the great-
est farmland, the most exquisite ports and
natural resources and wildlife bordering on
Eden. We could not lose. Wars don't even
touch us. We have the biggest cars, the
hugest pants and the best buffet lines. We
are invincible. Gas prices too high? Fuck
you, Alaska/Iraq/Saudi. Give it to me now.
Someone yell at you on the street? Fuck you,
meet my lawyer. Ass gets too big? Make my
car's seat wider. Our nation's highways are

now inadequately narrow. We beat nature.
We beat the world. We are God's favorite.
We are fundamentally unoccupied.
Once we got bored (WWI, All Gods
Dead, Left Bank, D-Day, A-Bomb, et. al.)
we started making things to let us skirt
the wilderness (suburbs, cars), or at least
insulate our lives from what we didn't
like. Then we found the greatest thing
ever - the most important construct of
the last 50 years. We made a new space
and shoved everything we couldn't con-
trol into it - American pop culture, the
second wilderness, omnipresent, undy-
ing, impenetrable. It's the last essential
part of American life.
It's our final embrace of the absurdity
that other countries learned through war,
colonization, famine and other events
See FRONTIER, Page 11A

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4

THANK YOU TO ALL THE AEs!
Con<KATILA TIonS
to:
Nick Assanis
Allison Kimmel
Nicole Kulwicki
Tiffany Lin
Sarah McCarter
Zach Riegle
for being great Account Executives
this past summer!
And David Dai
for being a great co-manager!
Without all of your hard work and dedication
this paper would not be possible.
You all made it a great summer!

4

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From your manager,
Ben Schrotenboer

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