No Debate: It’s Great TV; "And the Emmy goes to ... the presidential primaries."

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Television: The Emmys
No Debate: It’s Great TV
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: June 8, 2008


(Dana Edelson/NBC)
Top, Darrell Hammond, Amy Poehler and Barack Obama on “Saturday Night Live.” Above, Ms. Poehler and Hillary Rodham Clinton on the show.

AND the Emmy goes to ... the presidential primaries.

In a sense the debates, speeches, negative ads and primary election nights served as a real-life version of “The Sopranos” in its infancy, a saga that changed the way we watch and drew new audiences to the set, including younger people who mostly ignore the news and download their entertainment from the Internet. The campaign’s television season began in earnest in 2007 and hasn’t finished yet, but early on, the narrative grew so compelling that many viewers who got addicted to 24-hour news channels during the writers’ strike never kicked the habit to return to shows like ABC’s “Lost” or “House” on Fox once regular programming resumed.

It wasn’t always easy. There were moments when the primaries looked a little like “Lost,” with each political party loading viewers down with huge casts of candidates, all of them carrying their own story arcs and personality clashes. But unlike “Lost,” which tried the public’s patience, the primary contest quickly winnowed down, and the remaining mythic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing in on a suspenseful, action-packed finale.

News programs, be they on NBC, CNN, PBS or even Comedy Central, noticed the rise in ratings and quickly tried to satisfy the public’s rekindled interest in politics, but they can’t claim responsibility for the surge in voter excitement. “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” may deserve more credit — those hugely popular talent contests gave young Americans their first real taste of the power and import of their vote.

Bad times and good candidates also made a difference, and no one changed the status quo more than Mr. Obama, who quite obviously deserves an Emmy for his role as the lead actor in a Democratic primary....Mr. Obama is the “Mad Men” of the election season, an entirely new and different political persona whose cool and easy elegance (and former cigarette habit) referenced an earlier postwar era of American confidence and optimism but also revived old, still unresolved issues of race and gender. Mrs. Clinton, of course, dominates the lead actress category, but she has suffered not only from her own mistakes, but also from the projections of voters who impose the scrim of their own marriages and careers over her candidacy — in all its multiple personalities....

***

All the candidates did star turns on late-night talk shows and skit comedy programs....

Election years usually drive viewers to Comedy Central. Yet neither “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” nor “The Colbert Report” stood out this time around; on many nights the writers couldn’t keep up with fast-changing campaign moments and late-breaking election results. When news is interesting, mockery becomes less so....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/arts/artsspecial/08stan.html?ref=artsspecial