I'm old enough to remember when the word amazing had meaning. Now every star is amazed at everything. If we played the drinking game where we took a shot everytime a star uttered the word "amazing" during an awards show...we'd all be in an alcoholic coma.

"... it's a little sad that women have to be referred to as desperate, ugly, old or stoned to catch our attention."

Heather, this tiresome remark is beneath you. How many comedies aren't built around hapless characters? The women have gotten more hapless because they are the STARS of these shows. Unlike a hundred other shows in the "According to Jim" mode. You are apparently looking for a comedy built around a perfectly great role model of a woman with no significant shortcomings. Yeah, that would be HILARIOUS.

I'm expecting you to recant this remark, because it's just that dumb.

Jay, I'm with you, that comment was out of left field. The truth of the matter is that tv characters, male and female,are usually about some kind of niche or stereotype.

And for the record Mary Louise Parker's character isn't stoned, she's just sells pot. Big difference.

I have just one question: where the fuck was The Wire? The best show on television, by FAR, was ignored *again*?????????????????

Do you know? The Wire is so good, I can't watch anything else, because everything else on television is so crappy by comparison. Except if I'm slumming with something like American Idol.

I cannot believe The Wire got ignored again. Hollywood is full of no-taste dopes.

The ladies weren't the only ones tearing up during America Ferrera's speech. Even Will Smith looked a little misty. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house.

Good job, America!

Don't you know The Wire is filmed in Baltimore and uses local actors and crews? It can't possibly be of the quality of something geniune and real like Gray's Anatomy?

actually there was another, aside from the jibe about gonzalez inarratu having his papers in order. the director/writer/someone from "the queen" remarked that 2 million people camped out in london to make the brits recognize lady di's death. he went on to remark about the power of public protest and acting on matters really important.

he was then immediately given the "please wrap up" cue card and shuffled off the stage.

Would've been nice if Jennifer Hudson, who has always dreamed, but never dreamed this big, had said a quick Happy Birthday to MLK.

the golden globes are always great, because everybody sits at tables and gets loaded, guaranteeing a mixture of uninhibited, off-color acceptance speeches and clumsy, inarticulate mumbling from honorees who apparently never took an improv class and forgot to scribble down the names of their agents, publicists, and spouses before taking the stage. kyra sedgwick was bad, but forrest whitaker gave his speech as if he were playing peter sellers playing chauncey gardner in 'being there.' given the fact that whitaker has been a heavy favorite to sweep most of the major acting awards this year for his turn as idi amin, he seemed oddly unprepared. maybe he should have gone to the restroom with prince beforehand.

for me, the highlight of the evening was the double-awarding of the luminous helen mirren, still the foxiest woman in the room at 61. ever since she donned that anatomically-correct silver breastplate in john boorman's 'excalibur', i have had a raging crush on dame helen, who, along with meryl streep and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, jennifer hudson and america ferrera, gave us a rare night on which charm and talent trumped eating disorders and cosmetic surgery as the key ingredients for hollywood acclaim.

heather, i'm surprised you gave such an easy pass to warren beatty, who was worse than a drunk insurance salesman at his retirement party, blathering on about his beautiful grandkids and the good ole days before computers and MBA's. this is the second or third time beatty has been given one of these big career honors, and each time, i have come away feeling more baffled as to how a gifted actor, writer, and director, well-known as one of hollywood's most legendarily suave playboys, could be such an inarticulate mess in front of not just a room full of peers, but the millions watching on TV.

i can remember not so long ago there being serious discussion about the possibility that warren beatty--who grew up in washington and has long been outspoken on politics--might run for office, first as California governor and then, perhaps, following in Ronnie's footsteps, for the highest office. one can only hope that beatty's clumsiness and tediousness at the dais is yet another role, created under the assumption that the US public now expects our candidates for president to be inarticulate imbeciles.

hey, annette's ready for the job--she's already played the first lady, and she clearly knows how to smile and look radiate while her husband is onstage making an ass of himself.

I enjoyed the Hugh Laurie speech. Sadly, I am the person who works with a crew of drunken thieves who smell of cheap perfume and Axe body spray, not newly mown grass. And I don't even get to be in show business.

Bill Nighy made me chuckle as well.

"As nice as it is to see so many female-dominated comedies on the air these days, it's a little sad that women have to be referred to as desperate, ugly, old or stoned to catch our attention."

Seriously, if every woman-dominated TV show featured teeny, tiny supermodels, would you be as irked? My god, woman, can ANYONE make you happy?

Yeah, that comment was very Broadsheetish in the way it seemed add a dubious and tiresome "cautionary note" to take a positive.

Spot on, chas.

I feel the exact same way: It's hard to watch other television after watching The Wire because you realize just how bad and basically insulting to your intelligence the rest of it is. It's like the way people reacted when Nirvana came out. How could you take hair bands seriously on any level after hearing Nirvana? They basically killed off an entire genre of music. How can you watch a show like 24 after having seen The Wire? I used to be a huge 24 fan, but now it's just ok.

I didn't want to be one of those people who say things like "how can you say you like watching TV and not like The Wire?", but I have become one.