Last night James Spader won his third Emmy in four years for his work as ethically-challenged attorney Alan Shore from Boston Legal<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Spader, I thought, didn’t have a particularly challenging year as Shore — he was sidelined through much of the first half of the season, ironically due to a storyline that would have been perfect<\/i> for Spader’s talents — so I had no expectation of Spader picking up another Emmy.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the Emmy Academy disagreed, and awarded Spader another statue.<\/p>\n
On a message board I frequent, however, this is seen not so much as a win for Spader as it’s seen as a theft from Hugh Laurie. “Spader’s won his, he doesn’t need anymore.” Or, “Laurie’s awesome, and he deserves an Emmy.”<\/p>\n
My response:<\/p>\n
When Spader beat Laurie after the first seasons of House<\/i> and Boston Legal<\/i>, I remember an outcry, “How can people look at Laurie’s performance and not<\/i> be amazed by it, when compared to his work on Jeeves & Wooster<\/i> and Blackadder<\/i>?”<\/p>\n
And yes, in comparison to his body of work, Laurie’s performance is<\/i> nothing short of amazing.<\/p>\n
However, Emmy voters get one<\/i> episode on which to make their decision. And obviously someone at Fox or Bad Hat or Laurie’s own people are making bad<\/i> decisions on what to send the Emmy voters.<\/p>\n
This year, I’d have picked the episode with the rape victim who bonds to House as the episode to send.<\/p>\n
As for Spader, I thought he had a weak season on Boston Legal<\/i>. There wasn’t a lot that challenged Alan Shore. The episode I’d have picked? Probably the episode where he had to defend his ex-girlfriend, the one who stabbed her fiance with scissors in the courthouse.<\/p>\n
While Laurie’s work in the third season on House<\/i> was more challenging and more consistent than Spader’s work on Boston Legal<\/i>, the voters thought that Spader’s single hour was better than Laurie’s.<\/p>\n
It’s a single hour making a difference, not the body of work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Maybe next year, Laurie will have that one superlative episode that makes the difference. Maybe the listing ship of House<\/i> will learn how to steer again. We can hope.<\/p>\n
In comparison to bodies of work, Alan Shore isn’t that different than any other smarmy character James Spader has portrayed. And Greg House is<\/i> that different than any of the goofball characters Hugh Laurie has played. But that’s not what the Emmy voters are looking at — one episode in a vacuum is what they’re looking at.<\/p>\n
No one was robbed.<\/p>\n
Congrats, Mr. Spader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night James Spader won his third Emmy in four years for his work as ethically-challenged attorney Alan Shore from Boston Legal. Spader, I thought, didn’t have a particularly challenging year as Shore — he was sidelined through much of the first half of the season, ironically due to a storyline that would have beenContinue reading “On James Spader’s Emmy Win”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[366,4119,187,420],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","tag-boston-legal","tag-house","tag-hugh-laurie","tag-james-spader","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}