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I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, King of the Beach edition.

It's Wednesday, September 1st, 2010, and on today's program, we're going to talk about the Emmy ceremony,

the new book True Prep, which is an updating of the old official preppy handbook from the 80s, and what is or was the song of the summer 2010. Joining me is Slate's foreign editor, June Thomas. Hi, June. Hey, Dana. And our music critic, Jody Rosen. Hi, Jody. Hi, Dana. So, June, because you're our resident TV scholar, I'm going to fork the Emmys topic over to you. We all watch the Emmys. Jody and I, not being the TV watcher loyalists, that you are, don't know quite what to make of the Emmys. Do you have an overall thought about this year's ceremony and where the awards went and whether it was a bore or a surprise or what? Well, there's two parts of an award ceremony, right? There's the whole kind of the emceeing or whatever we want to call the role that Jimmy Fallon had, the hosting. And I thought that he was a pretty engaging host. There's this new trend in awards shows to have all these musical numbers. And he's really good at that. He's a very accomplished, what would we call it, impersonator. Song parodist? Yeah, parodist. And also a vocal

impressionist. Yeah, exactly. And so that, I thought, was really effective. And I felt like the

ceremony moved pretty quickly. Now, I have to confess up front that probably like a lot of people, I turned off at 10 o'clock because I wanted to watch Mad Men and I hate the third hour of the Emmys, which is the miniseries and TV movies, which I think they should just call the TV shows that no one watches. It's funny, actually, that they shove that to the end of the ceremony because you'd think that they would want to do, like, the Oscars and leave the juicy stuff that everyone wants to see at the end. Yeah, and there are two big awards at the end. There's the best comedy, the best drama. So in a way, they still do, like, the big finish, but I have a feeling that a lot of people have drifted away. And I like the fact that they do, you know, they separate comedy and drama and this third.

Right. Unlike movie awards, for example, right? Which means that comedy always gets shafted. Yeah. And that's, you know, that really does allow for those first two hours to be really, I thought, very swift, very entertaining. But then that third hour is a big drag. And I wish they would just get rid of so many of

those awards. As far as I'm concerned, that last hour is just an opportunity for people to get their

egot. Can you explain what an egot is? We were just talking about eGOTs before the show we get.

Well, as everybody who watches 30 Rock knows, an eGOT is a very special kind of person. I believe there are 12 in the world.

People who have an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. Though, I see Jody Rosen looking at the

EGOT. He's eye and the EGOT. He's got only four awards to go. Yeah. As you were pointing

at you, and it's the Tony that's the tough part, right? Well, the Oscar and the Tony. But, yeah, it's... Who were some of the people? Liza Minnelli has an Egot? Helen Hayes. Barbara Streisand. Rita Moreno. Rita Moreno. Richard Rogers, we discovered it has an EGOT. Mel Brooks? Yeah. Also, Mel Gibson. Little known fact, you got. No, no. Braveheart, the musical. Wait, before we get into Who Got What? In the awards, we all had something to say about musical numbers and the way that award shows are sort of turning into the new variety show, right? Like, it's this truism that variety shows can't make it on TV anymore and nobody wants the Carol Burnett show. But awards shows kind of are the Carol Burnett show now. Well, I just, I wonder if people do want the Carol Burnett show, you know, between the rise of American Idol and Glee and the success of these, you know, the viral video success of, you know, Neil Patrick Harris. That's what I'm saying. I think there's a secret desire for the Carol Burnett show.

It's just that it can't work in the old format somehow.

Yeah, I mean, what I was, what we were saying at the beginning of the show,

we were talking about Jimmy Fallon's big opening production number for Sunday nights,

Emmy broadcast, which was this glee version of Bruce Princeton's Born to Run.

And it was great in all that. But like those Neil Patrick Harris numbers, there's this flaming irony about the whole thing. And I think the same is true to a large extent of the show, Glee itself. And it certainly was, you know, at the same time, it's like, you know, everybody enjoys these things. They're a hoot. I feel kind of sad because of someone who loves, I don't actually love musical theater per se.

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