The Emmys, Mad Men, Glee, And Me

OMG, last night DVR stopped being my BFF and had me saying WTF!

After watching the Emmys for an hour, we decided to record the rest and switch to Masterpiece Theatre, because Inspector Lewis is rather cool in his own curmudgeonly way, and there are no commercials on PBS.

Okay, no problem. Lewis first, Emmys later. We’d skip the commercials and cut off the (mostly) boring speeches.

And then it got complicated. That damned notice came up saying that we were recording two shows: the Emmys and Boston Legal, and would have to get rid of one recording to change channels. At 10, we were recording Mad Men and at 10:30, Entourage, so the same thing would happen then.

Panic! We could record Masterpiece and watch it any old time. But Mad Men? Gotta see it Sunday night. Entourage is a close second.

We could watch The Emmys until 11, commercials, speeches and all — or, switch to Entourage at 10:30, meanwhile recording Mad Men at 11. But that would take us to midnight, and we’d have to watch all those commercials, although, mercifully, no speeches.

We are used to seeing MM On Demand: 45 uninterrupted minutes of brilliant material plus eye candy for both of us. John! Marsha! Don! Joannie. . . . Watching it in real time is like getting a series of phone calls during a delicious dinner.

We were so confused.

Emmys? Could live without them. But what if something dramatic happened? You want to see that sort of thing in real time. Today’s Times notes that a lot of the winners were the same as last year, and that Edie Falco called her victory “ridiculous.” On the other hand, Hugh Laurie, always nominated but never quite winning, “couldn’t suppress a look of dismay — or dyspepsia,” wrote Alessandra Stanley. Funny. But doesn’t he always look a little dyspeptic?

On the other hand, Jane Lynch looked, well, gleeful . . .

We saw the Glee thing at the beginning, but it probably would have been more fun if we’d ever seen the show. Will do.  Also must check out The Good Wife and Breaking Bad.
That makes it The Good, The Bad, and The Silly.

Meanwhile, back to Sunday night.

•The Emmys go on forever (8 to 11), with commercials.
•Masterpiece Theatre, 9 to 10:30, no commercials.
•Entourage, 10:30 to 11, no commercials.
•Mad Men at 10-11 and 11-12, commercials.

•And Boston Legal was at 10. In a last-ditch effort to untangle this mess, I searched frantically for another time to catch the same episode, Bella Something, but alas, no luck. We are addicted to Denny Crane and Alan Shore, and I program episodes of Boston Legal to be recorded whenever they air, then feel very smug when I “catch” one. It’s like putting out a line and getting a great “fish,” which we can enjoy while zipping through the commercials. 

What to do?
Lose Denny? Lose Lewis? Watch Mad Men with commercials? Ditch the Emmys? Move to Tahiti?

At 10:00 I did what any reasonable person would do. I kept Boston Legal and PBS recording, set Mad Men to record at 11, went to my computer in the den where there’s another TV, turned on the Emmys and sorta watched them while answering emails, until 10:30, when I returned, armed with mint chocolate chip ice cream for two, in time to see Entourage. My husband had abandonned responsiblity for the whole thing, but he ate the ice cream.

After that, I did the nighttime rituals: the setting up of the coffee pot, the taking of the pills, the brushing of the teeth, and so on, and took my time about it because we could start Mad Men any time after 11.  We watched it without commercials until it caught up, a little before 12, and then we were done.

So what if I’m a little sleep deprived today. And that Vincent Chase is dating a porn star who is so affectless I want to scream (but then, I am a woman and may not fully appreciate her not so hidden charms)? And that he looks a lot the worse for wear than he does in this earlier photo, partly because of his horrible new haircut, but ironically mostly from “blow”— of the cocaine kind?

Which takes us to, ah, Don Draper, falling asleep with one woman and waking up with another, interrupted by a call from his angry ex-wife. That woman is always angry. That was one wild weekend, Mr. D. Talk about complications.

By comparison, I lead a simple life. Just excuse me a minute while I go DVR The View, because they’ll surely talk about the Emmy’s, most of which, as you know, I missed.

But I suppose we all have our problems with the DVR thing, don’t we? Do you?

And did I miss anything on the Emmys? Please let me know. The View was a rerun . . .