Jimmy Fallon, courtesy NBC
As an awards show, I’ll say that last night’s broadcast of the 62nd Annual Emmy Awards was okay. It has some fun moments, but by and large, it wasn’t the most interesting presentation we’ve seen.
On the plus side, the Glee-style opening number was good, even if Joel McHale made it really obvious why he should not be dancing and host Jimmy Fallon proved why he can sing, at any rate. The bit with style guru Tim Gunn made things even funnier. And I have to give Kate Gosselin her props for her sense of humor about her hideous turn on Dancing With the Stars.
I also loved the Elton John impersonation Fallon did while saying good bye to 24, Law and Order and Lost. But the guitar bits he did between the different areas of focus only worked okay. Better yet, were George Clooney’s poignant reminder that charity is a 24/7 kind of thing, not just when we’re all excited about the latest disaster, and Jewel’s very simple singing for the In Memoriam (aka the dead people’s section) – and we had some notable losses this year.
Family-wise, there were a few moments that had me wincing. Fallon screamed out “bitch” at one point, grabbed Jane Lynch’s breasts in the opening number and there were a few mildly off-color jokes sprinkled throughout. Not enough to be totally off-putting. But I was glad I didn’t have any six-year-olds watching with me.
So what do you do when you’re watching with your kids and something pops up that you find inappropriate?
A lot depends on the ages of your kids, what happened and how they react. The first thing to do (and sometimes the hardest, ‘cuz, like, when these things happen it’s often a surprise) is to stay cool. That may have been a supremely filthy double-entendre somebody just slipped past the five-second delay, but chances are, your five-year-old isn’t going to get it. Ignore it and chances are, she will, too.
Some of the more obvious stuff, like bad language and inappropriate grabbing, that’s going to be trickier. If you’ve got a little one going, “Mommy, he did something naughty!” your response is simple – “Yes, he did. Grown up people sometimes do things that are naughty. That doesn’t mean we have to. We know better.” With older kids, the response is more complex, but then they’re ready for more complex. Still, the message is the same, just because you see people doing it on TV doesn’t mean you have to. You can ask if what they think about Fallon grabbing Lynch and listen to their response, quietly reinforcing the idea that a woman’s breasts are her personal space and you don’t grab them without permission. Period.
Our kids are faced with all kinds of negative images – even in arenas you’d think would be relatively safe. If you’re ready to push the idea that these are negative images, then chances are, they’re going to question what they see when they find themselves trolling music videos and other less “safe” areas. The good news remains – we’re the strongest influence on our kids. Yep. We can beat the media at their own game.
What did you think of the Emmys and did you have kids watching with you? Please share and we can all learn something.
