Worst of Times for Emmys

When I was growing up, television was magic.

Oh, sure, most of the shows were crummy, just like now. It would be a lie to romanticize the past. If there was a Golden Age of TV, there was also a “vast wasteland.” Remember?

Yet with all that, there was a sense of wonder at this new little box of black-and-white surprises that brought pictorial entertainment and news into the living room and began to supplant our radio shows.

There was a sense of gold dust. Of fun .

I thought of that the other night while watching the disastrous, nasty little Emmy Awards show on TV.

Where was the gold dust? Where was the fun?

There wasn’t any.

I’m not talking just about the show’s overkill in responding to the Dan Quayle-”Murphy Brown” flap.

That’s a one-time situation, after all.

No, there was something else--a startling display, on what is supposed to be TV’s most glorious night, of the openly cynical attitude toward the medium by performers who earn their living from it.

It was like watching the Emmy Awards self-destruct in a suicidal program that hit bottom so hard that a future overhaul of the show seems mandatory.

Otherwise, bring on ABC’s new American Television Awards show that debuts in May, because it can’t be any worse than this latest Emmy fiasco.

In a sense, the Emmy program was historic--a direct and searing reflection of the new, joyless Hollywood, where the fun more often is in the deal than in the entertainment.

No one ever said that show business was a rose garden. The killer mentality has always dominated film and TV behind the scenes. But the facade of the business has rarely been ripped away as brutally as in this week’s Emmy show. And perhaps it was inevitable that it came at the hands of the TV-generation performers who have grown up in an intimate, love-hate relationship with the medium.

All of the wonder and stupidity of TV is in their blood. It has been a part of their lives virtually from birth, like eating and sleeping. And it shows.

The patron saint of TV-generation performers, the single most important entertainer in coming to grips with TV on TV--using it, bluntly seeing it as it is and influencing his colleagues--is David Letterman.

He now is TV’s greatest star, and one of his remarkable gifts is never letting things get out of control, the way the Emmy show did.

While other veteran entertainers were simply on TV and confined their cynicism about the medium to gags and occasional disputes, Letterman made the technics and workings of TV part of his nightly show through his cryptic attitude that spoke volumes about the state of the profession he had chosen.

Over the years, TV-generation performers have illustrated their love-hate relationship with the boob tube in other ways as well, through such devastating satirical programs as “SCTV” and “Saturday Night Live.” There was affectionate rage here, and it was masterful.

On the Nick at Nite cable channel, a sort of benign cynicism permeates the re-packaging and clever marketing of old sitcoms that the TV generation grew up with.

The routines of young standup comedians are packed with countless references--both loving and acerbic--to the inanities of TV shows that were part of their adolescence.

And perhaps it is only fitting that as cynicism toward TV mounts--as exemplified by the Emmy Awards--the best new series of the season is a brilliant HBO sitcom with Garry Shandling, “The Larry Sanders Show,” that skewers the television industry in devastating fashion.

In “The Larry Sanders Show,” Shandling plays a late-night television talk-show host, and the episodes offer behind-the-scenes sequences that are models of restrained comic fury in their depiction of the program, its staff and network executives. Watching the series, even with its exaggerations, is a legitimately honest education about television.

In its own way, “Murphy Brown” is also a hard-boiled show in its comic episodes about a TV news program. Although “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” explored similar terrain wonderfully in the 1970s with its setting in a TV news room, “Murphy Brown,” in another sign of the times, is tough as nails in comparison.

Meanwhile, over on the Comedy Central cable network, the comparison of past and present is constantly on display as the channel alternates the old shows of such performers as Sid Caesar and Steve Allen with the harder-edged, more cynical humor of today. And the overall attitude, if you had to categorize it, is almost pure Letterman and “Saturday Night Live.”

Few programs in TV history have savaged television as scathingly and--at times--magnificently as Comedy Central’s real, live coverage of such events as the recent Democratic and Republican conventions and President Bush’s State of the Union address this year.

Perhaps, in one sense, there was a healthy aspect to the open cynicism toward TV on the Emmy show. The TV generation tends to take television more in stride than its elders and seems less restrained in discussing personal matters and opinions on the tube--which, at its worst, can lead to a show like “Studs,” but, in other scenarios, can result in a kind of refreshing honesty.

Bill Clinton, for instance, qualifies as TV generation, and it is probably one of the reasons why he was willing and able to risk his presidential candidacy by discussing his most intimate personal problems often and at length on many broadcast outlets. It is also why he did well in an MTV interview with an audience of young voters.

Somehow, it seems difficult to imagine President Bush, who is older and has a more conservative style, willingly discussing intimate subjects before a TV audience. And many would find his attitude preferable.

As for the Emmys Awards, cynicism has no place unless it is handled by a master like Letterman or Johnny Carson who knows how to leaven it with stylish fun. Like TV in general, the Emmys have lost their gold dust. And yet the public and Emmy voters have shown us, by their support for “Northern Exposure,” that there is a hunger for shows with warmth, wisdom and fun.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which puts on the Emmys, should not delude itself into thinking things are OK because ratings for the show were reasonably good. The broadcast was a disgrace, and there was no real competition on the other networks.

Note to the academy: Bring back the magic.