Tuesday September 5, 2006 arts.michigandaily.com artspage@michigandaily.com AlR filigattSBailv 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 ,,. , .. e ",: 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 I I 4 THANK YOU TO ALL THE AEs! Con