What We Watch

I apologize. I would love to feel as invested in the Emmys as I do to the Oscars, but I don't. Of course, that's not because I don't watch television. I watch a lot of television. I always have. I continue to. A lot of the movies I watch these days are on television. Partly because of the new way we all watch television. On demand. Streaming. Lazy.
Which is kind of the whole deal about television, right? Television comes in half hour bits, with breaks built in for toddling out to the kitchen for a snack or the bathroom for relief from said snacks. And if you miss something, there would always be a rerun. TV just comes barging into your home, usually invited, but not always. Sometimes things get preempted and you end up watching something that isn't very entertaining at all. It's like news or something. And yet we sit there on the couch, wading through these interruptions as if it were part of the program. What I can't figure out is this: Why do they put commercials in the Emmy Awards Show?
Okay. I get it. Television is different from movies. It makes sense that the show that honors them would be different. Except that now TV is supposed to be so awesome and great and golden and better than that dreck that is playing in tn he concrete bunkers we have taken to calling theaters. We have these television providers who are going out there and making movies and pushing them through our cables and Internets. Sometimes they come in two hour chunks, and sometimes they come trickling out over weeks and months or even years. Unless you get it into your head to do that binge thing, which doesn't tend to happen as much with movies.
Unless you get it into your head to watch all five of the original Planet of the Apes movies in a day. With limited bathroom breaks. And even the documentary that came with the box set. For which I believe we deserve some sort of award. Not an Emmy or an Oscar, since we didn't create anything. We managed to sit through it, after all.
Which is how I feel about watching the Emmys. There isn't a huge amount of drama or suspense built in. I can't recall ever supporting or becoming involved in an office Emmy pool. But the Oscars? That's a different deal. Want to know how I know this? Because this year the Emmys gave a prize to the director of the Oscar telecast. And it was the best moment of the night. Go figure.