Lather/Rinse/Repeat: It's the Emmys!

What is there to say about last Monday night's Emmys except "same old, same old"?

It's certainly nothing new for Emmy voters to pick the same winners year after year. You know, like Candice Bergen,who won five Emmys for Murphy Brown, or Don Knotts, with five for The Andy Griffith Show. 

Ed Asner as Lou Grant

And then there's Cloris Leachman, who won eight over the years for different shows and Ed Asner, who won seven, five of them for playing the role of Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Lou Grant.  MTM herself also has seven Emmys on her mantel. Tyne Daly is right behind with six, with four for Cagney and Lacey. I'm not going to quibble with any of those, although I have to say, the winning streaks of John Larroquette (who won four consecutive Emmys for Night Court) and Rhea Perman (with four for Cheers) certainly gave me pause back in the 80s.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep

Given the Emmy predilection for repeats, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Jim Parsons collected his fourth Emmy this year as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for The Big Bang Theory or that Julia Louis-Dreyfus won her third in a row as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Veep. Louis-Dreyfus already had two on her mantel, with a Supporting Actress Emmy for Seinfeld and a Lead Actress Emmy for The New Adventures of Old Christine. Allison Janney, who won two this year, is another perennial fave. She'd already taken home four Emmys for playing C. J. Cregg on The West Wing, so this year's wins as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Mom and Guest Actor in a Drama Series for Masters of Sex gives her six overall. Jessica Lange can't compete with those numbers, but she did just win her third Emmy in the Miniseries/Movie category and her second for American Horror Story.

The two big Supporting Actor categories -- for Drama and Comedy series -- gave Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul his third and Modern Family's Ty Burrell his second. Anna Gunn also took home No. 2 for Supporting Actress for Breaking Bad, while Kathy Bates, who has been nominated twelve times, won for only the second time. Hers was for her Supporting turn in American Horror Story: Coven, in the Miniseries/Movie category.

Even though it's a repeat, I'm still glad that the very deserving Bryan Cranston took home his fourth Emmy as Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for Breaking Bad after not hitting the podium for a few years, and that Juliana Margulies was recognized again as Outstanding Actress for a stellar season of The Good Wife.

That leaves Benedict Cumberbatch alone among the Lead Actor nominees. His win for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for Sherlock was his first. What a surprise! His Sherlock cohort, Martin Freeman, was also a first-time Emmy winner, although he was nominated in two categories this year.

The show winners were just as much a part of the lather/rinse/repeat cycle. It's five in a row for Modern Family as Outstanding Comedy Series. And two for Outstanding Drama Breaking Bad, although this will be the end of that road, since the show has finished up for good. After eight wins for The Daily Show in the Variety Series category, The Colbert Report has now won two. But everybody looks like pikers next to The Amazing Race, which has now won ten Outstanding Reality/Competition Emmys.

Since 2010, television movies and miniseries had been lumped into the same category, but this year they were split up, meaning that Fargo (the mini) and The Normal Heart (the movie) could both win. If they put it all back together next year, there's no telling who will win.

That's just one of the television academy's tough choices, like what constitutes a guest actor as opposed to a supporting one.

The guest honors were handed out in the Creative Arts ceremony a week ago, with Uzo Aduba from Orange Is the New Black emerging as a winner over two castmates plus Joan Cusack from Shameless and two Saturday Night Live hosts. "Guest" used to mean a one-off. No more. Adube has appeared in 38 of the show's 39 episodes, according to IMDB. Joe Morton also won as a "guest" for Scandal, although he was in the credits for all 24 of this season's episodes, and winner Allison Janney was in seven of Masters of Sex's total 24. By contrast, Jimmy Fallon won for hosting one episode of SNL.

But then, there are a lot of questions about Emmy definitions. Why are Fargo or American Horror Story considered miniseries instead of plain old series, when True Detective is a series, not a mini? Why are Orange Is the New Black and Shameless called comedies instead of dramas?

It's part -- along with the repeat winners -- of the reason the Emmys bug me. Still, they got good ratings this year. So you know they will be back, handing out statuettes to The Amazing Race and Allison Janney one more time. 

THE GOOD WIFE Hits the Fan Again Tonight at 7:30

CBS's The Good Wife has been enjoying a banner season, with many critics calling it the best drama on television. Trouble and intrigue have been brewing for some time inside Lockhart Gardner, the law firm where the "good wife" in question, Alicia Florrick, played by Juliana Margulies, was made partner at the end of Season 4. It's also the law firm where Alicia's ex-lover (the Gardner in Lockhart Gardner) had to fight off charges of bribery and corruption to remain at the top of the food chain. For awhile now, Alicia has been torn between her feelings for Will Gardner, played by Josh Charles, and her loyalty to her family, including two complicated kids and an ethically challenged husband, the newly-elected Governor of Illinois, portrayed by Chris Noth. He's the guy who cheated on her in the huge scandal that started the show back in 2009.

Tension inside the firm, unresolved passion inside and outside the firm, problems with finances and ethics, dicey cases that put Alicia's prowess as a lawyer on the line... Let's just say there was lots of fuel for drama there. Push came to shove in the fifth episode of this fifth season, in an episode appropriately called "Hitting the Fan," when Alicia and a cadre of unhappy junior associates finally walked out on Lockhart Gardner to start their own firm. Since then, as we've seen various characters plot and counterplot, maneuver and manipulate, as everybody fights over turf and some new characters have introduced new complications, things have gone downhill a bit in my estimation. I would send a check to CBS myself if they would put an end to the beyond-annoying pregnant woman (and "ethics adviser") who works for the Governor, the new, mob-connected, somehow untouchable lawyer at Lockhart Gardner who keeps committing "pranks" that are actually felonies, and two old cranks at the firm who continue to stir the pot in ways that would and should get them disbarred. I'd also like to see Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) get more to do than just hop between the sheets and some focus on Cary (Matt Czuchry), Alicia's new partner, who seems to have been sidelined, as well.

There have been some positive developments, however, from bringing back America Ferrera, Nathan Lane and John Noble, to showing different sides of campaign manager Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) and the shifting alliances and divided loyalties Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) has been playing with.

And I have to say, if I have my objections to the way The Good Wife has followed up on Alicia & Company exiting Lockhart Gardner, it doesn't take anything away from "Hitting the Fan" itself, which was just about as perfect an hour of TV drama as you could wish for.

To help you catch up on The Good Wife, CBS is streaming all ten Season 5 episodes, from "Everything is Ending," the season premiere, to "The Decision Tree" from December 1. You can watch them all in order and decide for yourself if you agree with me on the perfection of "Hitting the Fan" and the annoyance factor in the five episodes since.

CBS is also showing "Hitting the Fan" all by itself at 7:30 pm Central time tonight, a bit earlier than The Good Wife's regular slot. By highlighting this episode, it would seem that CBS recognizes the brilliance of that particular episode. They aren't alone.