1996 Emmy Nominees: Seems Like Old Times

It somehow fits that a business famous for cloning extends the tradition to its annual awards.

Yet how can you get excited about a process whose nominees are so repetitive year after year? In other words, unless you are one of the chosen or ABC, which is telecasting this year’s Sept. 8 event, how can you get worked up about the Emmys?

Some thrill, some excitement. No wonder the Emmys haven’t the allure and fascination of the Oscars or the Grammys, or even the suspense of the Tonys.

You could argue that other awards shows are more of a kick than the Emmys because performers in movies, music and theater often project an aura more magical than the TV stars whose characters viewers get to know so intimately, almost as an extended family. There is another dynamic at work here, however.

Although predictable at times, the Oscars, Grammys and Tonys at least aren’t nearly identical from year to year. The Emmys are a striking contrast.

Take the 1996 Emmy nominations that were announced Thursday, for example. The operative word for many of them is “ditto,” if not “bor-r-r-r-r-ing.”

Welcome (yawn) to television’s annual valley of the dulls. To wit: The five comedy series nominated for Emmys in 1996 were also nominated for Emmys in 1995. The five drama series nominees, too.

Four of five lead comedy actors nominated in 1996 also are returnees from last year. As are three nominees for best lead comedy actresses, which probably would have been four had not five-time “Murphy Brown” winner Candice Bergen not taken herself out of the running.

Moreover, four of this year’s nominated lead actors in drama series are also returnees from 1995. As are three lead drama series actress nominees. And four supporting comedy actor nominees. And two supporting actress nominees. And three nominees for best supporting actor in a drama series. And four nominees for best supporting actress in a drama series. Plus three comedy series directing nominees. And two drama series directing nominees. And three nominees for directing a variety or music program. And so on and so on.

Measuring these categories as a group, you find that nearly two-thirds of 1995’s nominees are also on this year’s honored list announced by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

But ABC did not take on this telecast as a charity. So, you ask, if TV’s top awards are such a drag, why do the Emmys still attract a sizable audience?

Well, why do so many Americans still watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos”? Why do we gawk at freeway crashes? Why does Jerry Springer still have a talk show? Why didn’t freshly bankrolled $17.1-million-a-year man Shaquille O’Neal’s nose grow to 7 feet 1 when he claimed he didn’t join Lakerdom for the money? Why does Mr. Blackwell get quoted?

Go figure.

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There are, however, occasional nice goodies or surprises in the weekly series categories of the 1996 Emmys. Although snubbing his fine series, the academy has belatedly noted the sizzle (or “Braugher power,” as the New Yorker phrased it) of Andre Braugher as co-lead detective Frank Pembleton in NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street.”

Good for the academy, as well, for recognizing the superior supporting work of both Stanley Tucci (as enigmatic Richard Cross) and Barbara Bosson (as prosecutor Miriam Grasso) in ABC’s hard-to-adore, but harder-to-ignore drama, “Murder One.” And also for giving Janeane Garofalo a supporting nomination--perhaps resulting from her flowering film career--for her charming au naturel performance as the booker Paula in TV’s best comedy, HBO’s renominated “The Larry Sanders Show.”

But no thanks to the academy for again omitting ABC’s “Grace Under Fire” and its star, Brett Butler, from the comedy list, and for filling the traditional Bergen slot in that category with Fran Drescher, the high-volume star of “The Nanny” on CBS. The likable Drescher has her moments, but the academy could have and should have picked instead either Butler or that leggy clown supreme, Tea Leoni, who constantly rose above her material in “The Naked Truth,” a comedy set to resurface on NBC at mid-season after a lumpy first season on ABC.

What makes the Emmys any fun at all are the arguments the awards produce, especially in the non-series categories, whose nominees aren’t duplicated yearly.

In the outstanding miniseries field, for example, NBC’s “Gulliver’s Travels” and A&E;’s BBC rendition of “Pride and Prejudice” deserve their nominations. But two other uncited Brit-bred productions that aired on PBS, “Final Cut” and “The Politician’s Wife,” surpassed the nominated “Hiroshima” from Showtime and “Andersonville” and “Moses” from TNT, all of which were sizable efforts whose execution did not match their ambition.

And the movie category--pu-leeeze! You could make slender cases for HBO’s “Truman,” “Tuskegee Airmen” and “The Late Shift” in this thin field. But TNT’s “The Heidi Chronicles” and Lifetime’s “Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story”? Get a grip. Superior to that bunch was “A Streetcar Named Desire” on CBS, which was inexplicably found lacking by the academy despite earning three acting nominations (including one unmerited one for John Goodman, the production’s weak link) and another for art direction. With these kudos, just how bad could it have been?

Some other oddities:

* Omitting Ian Richardson and Ron Silver from the lead actor list in miniseries and specials. Richardson, that grand player of bloodless cads, lit PBS like a Bethlehem Star in “Final Cut.” And it was Silver’s persuasive Henry, not the nominated Beau Bridges’ overcooked Dick, who energized TNT’s “Kissinger and Nixon.”

* Skipping over Jennifer Ehle, such a rewarding Lizzie in “Pride and Prejudice,” in the nominees for lead actress in a miniseries/special. Jessica Lange as Blanche DuBois is this category’s class. What’s boggling is passing over Ehle for Sela Ward (as Savitch) and Ashley Judd from HBO’s “Norma Jean and Marilyn.”

* Making A&E;’s stunningly uneven “Biography”--a chain of often superficial, ground-out, headline-driven, celebrity pumped profiles--a nominee for the new President’s Award, honoring a work “that best explores social and education issues and encourages and promotes, directly or indirectly, changes that help society. . . .”

One of which would be less swollen, less haughty descriptions of Emmy awards.