Quick, now…and no cheating: Who is this recently deceased TV legend?

Three separate organizations present the Emmy Awards: the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Each is dedicated to the television industry, and the award the organizations collaborate to  hand out for excellence are intended to serve multiple objectives. Prime among them is to honor and promote the professionals who bring—in theory, at least, quality entertainment into the homes of Americans. The show itself that broadcasts the awards only exists because of their larger mission, which is to say that the Emmy show exists to support the Emmys, not the other way around. The program’s producers, not for the first time, managed to forget their priorities this year, and are getting well-deserved scorn for it both in and outside the entertainment community.

The offense occurred during Sunday’s live telecast, when the show reached its annual “In Memoriam” segment. The Oscars have botched this crucial part of its own show in recent years by failing to recognize the deaths of important Hollywood figures who deserved their final bow and a last ovation. Emmy found a new and different way to insult its own. The Oscars’ omissions were negligent; the Emmys insult was, incredibly, intentional. It’s just that either nobody realized it was insulting, or, more likely, they knew but had other objectives.

This year, the three Academies singled out five of the deceased for special tribute, or “special superstar tributes,” as the show’s opening teaser put it.  Naturally, the choices made an unspoken, and guaranteed to be controversial, assertion that of all the important artists and stars who had perished since the 2012 awards, these were the most deserving, and the rest, noted by a rushed montage of photos, less so. Making such a subjective distinction is a fool’s task: surely the Emmys have noted how the unavoidable distinction of being the last star shown in the Oscar “In Memoriam” parade of death has caused debate and consternation in the past. This plan was bound to annoy fans and family members alike—and it did.

Chosen for special tributes were James Gandolfini of “The Sopranos” fame, memorialized by co-star Edie Falco; improvisational comedian Jonathan Winters, with a tribute by his friend and latter-day equivalent Robin Williams; “All in the Family’s” Jean Stapleton, sent off to the big studio in the sky by the Meathead, Rob Reiner; writer-producer Gary David Goldberg, whose “Family Ties”  launched the career of Michael J. Fox, lionized by…Michael J. Fox, and finally  “Glee” heart-throb Cory Monteith, dead in his twenties of a drug overdose, eulogized by fellow cast member Jane Lynch.

NOT chosen for “special superstar tributes ” (as the Emmy marketing department termed them) among the important performers and other familiar TV figures who died since the 2012 broadcast, were Jack Klugman, David Frost, William Froug, Julie Harris, Lisa Robin Kelly, Eydie Gormé, John Palmer, Michael Ansara, Eileen Brennan, Larry Hagman, Dennis Farina, Richard Matheson, Steve Forrest, Ken Venturi, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Pat Summerall, Annette Funicello, Roger Ebert, Bonnie Franklin, Dale Robertson, Patti Page,  Charles Durning, Deborah Raffin,  Gary Collins, Alex Karras, Turhan Bey, and Andy Williams, and more.

That’s the problem. There is no way one can say that Jonathan Winters had a greater impact on television than Andy Williams. It is absurd to claim that Jean Stapleton was more of a television icon than Jack Klugman, the star of two classic series, a comedy (“The Odd Couple”) and the first of the forensic investigation dramas, “Quincy.” As much as a cultural force as Tony Soprano was, J.R. Ewing, Larry Hagman’s immortal TV villain, was just as important, and he, like Klugman, also starred in a long-running classic sitcom, “I Dream of Genie.”   Williams, Klugman and Hagman’s photos, however, were merely rushed passed TV viewers eyes, in part because of the time taken up by a tribute to…Corey Monteith?

Reponding to the complaints by members of the slighted stars’ families as well as TV critics and fans, Los Angeles Times TV critic Robert Lloyd defended the apparent injustice as just show biz. He wrote:

“The Emmy broadcast is made up of many such choices — who hosts, who presents, what packages and production numbers to include, all arguable. Nor do the awards themselves represent any absolute measure of quality: Deserving people win them, but other deserving people do not. That those decisions are made by a large body does give them a kind of statistical weight, but they are also open to unresolvable dispute. The decision to break out these tributes, with “superstars” honoring the selected departed — the selections seemed categorical (middle-aged actor, young actor, woman, comic, writer) — was no different, really, than the choice to include an appearance by Elton John, justified only by the fact that a movie about Liberace, with whom he shares an instrument and a certain sartorial extravagance, was nominated for a lot of awards this year. And that he is Elton John. It was made for the sake of television.”

He misses both the point of the objections and the reason why this particular choice was unethical. As I began by noting, the TV production of the Emmy Awards is about the purpose of the awards, which in turns is to accomplish the mission of the Academies: promote excellence in the television arts and honor television professionals who do important and memorable work. Sacrificing that mission in the interest of audience demographics or ratings is a breach of organizational loyalty and integrity. The Emmys didn’t owe anything to Corey Montieth, except sympathy; it does owe something, a great deal, to David Frost, Jack Klugman, Larry Hagman, Pat Summerall, Andy Williams, John Palmer, Roger Ebert, even Annette Funicello and Dr. Joyce Brothers, all of whom changed and expanded television, its popularity and its diversity in important ways. To relegate these and other pioneers and icons to second class status, whatever the reason, is indefensible; to do so for the reasons it did are nauseating.

What reasons? Well, Michael J. Fox has a new sitcom that debuted last week, which is why his connection was extolled, giving Fox valuable screen time. Robin Williams is returning to TV too, so the Winters honor was devised to give Old Mork exposure (Jonathan Winters never had a successful TV show, you know); Gandolfini’s death was covered in the kind of excessive media orgy usually reserved for princesses, Kennedys and singing child molesters, so the Emmys were confident that everyone knew who he was. They needed a woman to honor, since political correctness and quotas are de rigueur in LaLa Land, and Jean Stapleton’s fame was more recent than Annette’s, more associated with TV than Julie Harris, and created by a longer-running series than Bonny Franklin (Stapleton was the best of the choices for special recognition).Corey Monteith was a transparent nod to younger audiences, even though he had not “paid his dues,” was a brief comet across the silver screen, and bears considerable responsibility for his own demise. Any of these “choices” are defensible on their own and in a vacuum. I see nothing wrong, for example, with a eulogy for a young and promising star who died tragically before his time….unless it results in a display of disrespect for more deserving figures, in the one television production where those departed individuals, their families and their fans should have been able to count on loyalty and gratitude.

That is exactly what Emmy’s  gratuitous and arbitrary super-star tributes did.

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Sources: LA Times 1,2; Daily Mail