There's always a quickie montage of the deceased, of course, but the show singles out several stars each year for special memorials. This year, those specially honored will be James Gandolfini ("The Sopranos"), Jean Stapleton ("All in the Family"), Jonathan Winters ("Mork and Mindy", among other things), Gary David Goldberg (producer of "Family Ties"), and Cory Monteith ("Glee").
Among those special honorees, it's Monteith who's raising some people's hackles. It's understandable when you consider that not only had Monteith not won any Emmys, but that three other major stars were left out of the special-memorials segment: Charles Durning ("Evening Shade"), Larry Hagman ("I Dream of Jeannie", "Dallas"), and Jack Klugman ("The Defenders", "The Odd Couple", "Quincy, M.E."). Klugman's son Adam is incensed, pointing out that his father won three Emmys over the course of his half-century career.
One could argue that Durning was better known as a movie star, but not giving either Hagman or Klugman a special memorial segment does seem indefensible. Both men starred in multiple popular and long-lasting TV series, with Hagman especially creating characters that endured in viewers' hearts and minds. (I didn't like either of Hagman's two iconic series, whereas I loved "The Odd Couple", so I'm not a Hagman partisan by any means.) I didn't watch "Glee"; nevertheless, I don't know how you can defend snubbing Hagman or Klugman in favor of Monteith. However promising his career was, he hadn't accomplished a fraction of what Klugman or Hagman had.
Ah, well. I'd rather be thinking about this than the far right's plan to destroy the U.S. economy by shutting down the government.
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