AND THE ACTOR GOES TO…

PHOTO COURTESY: Image.net

The 17th annual Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards unfolded yesterday, with predictable victories and disappointments in the television categories. Here’s what I thought of the new Actor winners.

To see a complete list of winners, CLICK HERE

Alec Baldwin (winner) and Tina Fey (nominee), from 30 ROCK

As mentioned by TV TALK earlier (See AWARD FEVER!!), the SAG Awards have a major challenge in giving out the awards for television, considering that they don’t have categories for the supporting cast. It was mentioned, that the SAG jury ends up not doing justice to television actors while picking nominees. And as it turns out, they don’t do justice to the actors while picking out the winners either. Here, I’m mainly talking about Alec Baldwin and his performance in 30 ROCK. Now I agree that he’s a brilliant actor and he does a fine job on the show, but does the Guild seriously think that his performance is so groundbreaking every year to actually give him the award for five consecutive years? I think it’s ridiculous, even if they need to judge performances in isolation from past winners, and not omit someone just because they’ve already won. Now when they announced the nominees, I was appalled performers like Jim Parsons (THE BIG BANG THEORY), Eric Stonestreet (MODERN FAMILY) and Neil Patrick Harris (HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) not even being nominated, when Chris Colfer (GLEE), who clearly overacts, and Ed O’Neill (MODERN FAMILY), for a very ordinary performance, get nominated! Even though I said I wouldn’t be surprised if Baldwin wins again, I still wondered if they had something up their sleeves to make it seem right; but we all know how that turned out!

Betty White

Moving on from that… As I mentioned earlier (and I quote myself), ‘Betty White’s nomination for HOT IN CLEVELAND really seems like a forced courtesy extended to the senior actress (they already gave her the special achievement award last year!), depriving some more deserving women of a chance to win!’ And for them to actually give her the award when there were way more deserving candidates like Jane Lynch (GLEE) and Sofia Vergara (MODERN FAMILY), was truly a disappointment. They might as well have given the award to Tina Fey (30 ROCK) for a fourth consecutive year!

The cast of MODERN FAMILY, with their statuettes

However, while those were the upsets, I think the Guild did one thing right, by giving the cast of MODERN FAMILY the awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. I was almost certain that, like the Golden Globes, they too would give GLEE the equivalent award, but I’m glad they recognized the superior quality of MODERN FAMILY over GLEE. As for the drama categories, they did go the way the Globes did. BOARDWALK EMPIRE shone through, with Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, and Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series for Steve Buscemi. Julianna Margulies, on the other hand, won her second SAG Award for her role in THE GOOD WIFE, making it the next show for me to look out for.

The cast of BOARDWALK EMPIRE, with their statuettes

Overall, the downs at the SAGs did disappoint me, with the ups offering little reassurance. I’m largely disappointed because I really like everything about the Screen Actors Guild, and I really expected better from them. Now, I’d really like to know what you think…