Emmy's News and Notes 9.23.13

Congrats, Bob. It's been a long time coming.

It isn't fun times in the household tonight as I have a sick little girl on my hands but, before the yuck set in, she wanted to watch some of the Emmys. Therefore, I bring you some thoughts on our preeminent television awards show and more.

First of all, thank goodness I'm not a high-stakes awards show gambler, because I would have likely lost the house. I may have called two winners all night: Bob Newhart and Julia Louis Dreyfuss. (Oh... and the Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy since, after a third straight win, they're apparently just going to rename it the Jim Parsons award.) Everything else seemed fairly surprising (for a guy that admittedly doesn't watch much TV). The shows I do watch didn't fare so well. Mad Men got completely shut out and House of Cards grabbed a directing award for David Fincher but all the actors came up empty. Mad Men and House of Cards... I must be extremely white. At least I've managed to avoid Homeland.

One thing I think we can take away from the night is that this may be a golden era of American television. All the more surprising when you consider that we are still squarely in the era of "reality" TV. We have so many highly lauded scripted dramas, it's impossible to watch them all. I try not to watch a lot of television and that's why I don't give many shows a chance. I don't want to get sucked into giving away yet another hour of my week. However, I think we can agree there is something for everyone out there right now. Speaking of, allow me to...

Geek Out

Now is the obligatory portion of News and Notes when I talk about Marvel comics or movies or television shows in some form or fashion. It seems like it always happens and this week is no different because it marks the debut of Agents of Shield on ABC. Basically, I just have my fingers crossed, hoping that the show is close to as good as it could be. I can imagine it being great if they find the right blend of stories and action. Dig through a wealth of material and characters that the films will never be able to get to, and the show could be golden. But I can also imagine it stinking out loud if storylines doddle along and nothing interesting happens. We shall see. They can't shy away too much from the sci-fi and spectacle of the movies and risk being another mundane crime investigation show that happens to include Phil Coulson. The first big litmus test for me will be the revelation of how Phil survived his seemingly fatal wound in The Avengers. If they take a risk and do something interesting (like if they transferred his memories into a Life Model Decoy or maybe even the original Coulson was an android, etc), I'll be hooked. If Coulson just got rushed to the infirmary in the nick of time and got better... thumbs down.

In other news, Wall Street estimates are prognosticating that the Phase 2 Marvel films could easily rake in 5 billion dollars. Five. Billion. I wonder if Stan Lee wishes they hadn't changed his contract that at one time included 10% of all Marvel movie profits. It also appears that Disney knew what they were doing when they bough the once floundering comics publisher for what seemed like a staggering 4 billion.

WSF News

Things are still a bit slow on our end. We're basically inbetween news cycles right now. A lot of work went into Paranormous and now we wait for lots of news about where it goes from here. Plus, I haven't gone full tilt back into Space Cops editing because I've been planning for a trip that I'll talk about here next week.

Come back tomorrow for a complete break down of the most amazing political campaign ad you've ever seen!