I'm not the most sensitive guy in the world, but even I cringed a bit when Conan O'Brien's opening sketch featured the Emmy host in a plane crash, on the very same day 49 people died in a plane crash in Kentucky. Sure, the bit was probably taped days ago, but couldn't they have edited that scene out and had a regular opening? They probably could have just opened with Conan already on the island, meeting Hurley.
TV station owners and other officials in Kentucky weren't too happy with it either, but it was a live telecast and they didn't know about it beforehand. Dateline Hollywood gives their take on the skit and a video.
What do you think?
[via TV Tattle]














Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-28-2006 @ 1:49PM
Chris W said...
I didn't even make the connection, personally. I thought it was just a send-off of Lost. And call me crazy, but were those affected by the oh-so-recent plane crash really watching an Awards show in the wake of their personal tragedy?
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8-28-2006 @ 2:06PM
sean johnson said...
I didn't have an opportunity to see the the opening. Does anyone have a clip of it?
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8-28-2006 @ 2:07PM
Thomas said...
It didn't even occur to me to link the two things, mainly because there is no link. People die in car accidents every dat but do TV shows not depict car crashes or any other bad thing? Of course not. Sometimes I think people are just looking to be offended.
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8-28-2006 @ 2:26PM
tom said...
I think that if NBC had decided to remove the skit, it would have been awful because it was hilarious bit. I don't think a majority of people would make the connection, the people who were watching, watch Lost. I actually think that because of the skit and the various gags that this was one of the best Emmys presented.
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8-28-2006 @ 2:33PM
SouthBeachCasa said...
I agree w/the other posters. Isn't this being a little oversensitive? It was a skit about a TV show. That's it. If you read more into it then is that the network's fault?
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8-28-2006 @ 2:36PM
SJ said...
Sheesh people are just so damn sensitive these days. When the plane started to crash I had a feeling that a lot of people will complain, and it is true. It's life...shit happens (I'm not trying to be insensitive).
@sean johnson,
You can find the clip on youtube. I'm too lazy to search for it sorry.
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8-28-2006 @ 2:40PM
TedSez said...
People who've been in auto accidents are made uncomfortable by seeing them realistically depicted on TV. But that doesn't stop stations from replaying that awful "you are there" Volkswagen crash commercial 20 times a day.
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8-28-2006 @ 2:46PM
DanGarion said...
The moment I saw the skit last night I told my wife that I bet you it's going to cause a stir. And I've read at least 4 articles regarding it this morning. I don't see a problem with it myself.
Here is a link to the video.
http://hotair.com/archives/2006/08/27/emmy-parodies-planecrash-hours-after-kentucky-accident/
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8-28-2006 @ 3:00PM
Carissa said...
I never made the connection - I knew immediately it was about Lost. Honestly, people are sick and dying EVERY DAY and just because their situation doesn't make the national news doesn't mean their situation has any less impact. My first thought is that a program like the Emmys shouldn't be on the lookout. Apparently we have no problem showing a sketch about sexual predators when a girl in Germany (or whereever that was) was just released after 8 years of captivity. This is television entertainment for craps sake. I just don't see the problem.
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8-28-2006 @ 3:04PM
Toby OB said...
I'd never be so insensitive as to say this to anybody who's life was affected by that Kentucky plane crash, or by any plane crash, but to those commentators who are only trying to look holier-than-thou in condemning it: Oh, boo hoo hoo! Get off your high horse.
I don't think most people made any kind of connection except to where it should have been made - to 'Lost'. Attitudes like that would have kept 'Lost' from being shown in the first place for fear of offending those who lost family members to plane crashes out at sea.
I'll bet you the same type of poo-poohing will be heard in the tri-state area tomorrow, should the finale of 'Rescue Me' have any scenes of a devestating fire in the wake of the fatal fire in the Bronx over the weekend. One firefighter died, another is critical, and that's a tragic thing, but it shouldn't have an impact on the fictional happenings in a TV show.
I'll bet half the TV columnists or op-ed writers out there who wrote about it probably just wanted the opportunity to condemn something to sell more copies.
Cynical? Sure. But I think so are they for trying to connect the two.
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8-28-2006 @ 3:21PM
Lora said...
Dude, I was following the Ky. crash all day as the news unfolded on the TV news and online, and all throughout that skit I didn't make the connection even once. Because the skit wasn't mocking plane crashes, it was poking fun at the television show Lost. The whole time my mind was thinking, "Lost, Lost, Lost." Yeah, if you think about it, it was ill-timed. But I don't think a huge majority of people thought about it that much, and I don't see what NBC has to feel bad about. It's not like they knew there would be a real-life plane crash on the day the show aired, when they probably filmed that sequence weeks ago.
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8-28-2006 @ 3:59PM
kel said...
I wondered about the sensitivity issue when I first heard about the skit. I had been keeping up with the news of the crash because I have friends in the area who travel. I don't know about editing it out nationwide, but at the very least NBC should have given the local Lexington affiliate a heads up. They had just finished day long coverage of the crash and then they went to the awards (and the skit).
I wonder though, what the reaction would have been if this skit had been aired the day on 9/11.
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8-28-2006 @ 4:04PM
chris said...
I can't believe some people connected these two things. This is life. Bad things happen. This skit was probably written days or weeks ago. I thought it was a good send-up of LOST(love LOST). Besides, barely anyone watches the EMMYS anyway. The only people that do are TV people.
As an earlier post stated, people die in car crashes everyday. We all see it in the local/national 5 PM, 5:30 PM, 6:00 PM news shows EVERYDAY. Is the network gonna tinker w/ its shows just because some content is related to the days events. No. And it shouldn't. It's not insensitivity. It's reality.
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8-28-2006 @ 4:05PM
Sam Goldman said...
It should be noted that, by the applause I heard at the show, the audience there didn't think anything of it, although Conan may have said something before the show started.
I don't know; I was cognizant of it, I guess, but I knew Conan's intention was to be funny, and I trusted him to see where this was going. It would be different if, say, someone was running a dramatic movie about a plane going down last night, but it wasn't. Who knows; maybe I'm just jaded.
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8-28-2006 @ 8:34PM
PanAsianBiz said...
I didn't make the connection between the opening skit and the Kentucky plane crash either. In fact, it only came up when I started reading blogs by people condemning the decision to go ahead with the skit. I don't think NBC was being insensitive at all, and like another poster said, I doubt anyone who was personally affected by the recent tragedy was watching the Emmys.
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8-28-2006 @ 8:43PM
Charles said...
So, were all the "outraged" people the dozen-or-so people who never saw "Lost"? Because you just need to have seen COMMERCIALS for the show to have reckognized it as a blatant parody of the island drama, for two reasons:
A) The scene is set on a PLANE. What other TV show continues to uses parts of a wrecked plane as a integral part of their set? Lost.
B) It's the freaking EMMY's. They lampoon TV shows in the opening sketch, not current events. That's the Daily Show's job.
I'm willing to bet a nickel that half the people who are "outraged" have just seen the web video of the plane scene, without seeing the island part, the Office knockoff, or the other parodies that followed. Most probably didn't even watch the Emmy's, but saw the bright red lettering on the Drudge Report and decided that they should be outraged as well.
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8-28-2006 @ 9:12PM
Bill said...
Most people may not have made a connection to the actual crash but those of us in Lexington certainly did. The NBC station that showed the awards had just completed 12 hours of coverage of the crash when it switched to the awards show. I can understand not pulling the skit from the show but would it have been too much trouble for NBC to alert it's Lexington affiliate and let them possibily swithc over to the awards show a minute or two late? And yes, I may be over sensitive, but I did spend yesterday finding out that a close friend had burned to death in that plane crash.
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8-28-2006 @ 9:22PM
Crutnacker said...
I'm torn. I spent most of the day watching local (Louisville, KY) footage of the crash. I think that they could have cut out the plane crash, (or at least cut out the shots of the plane violently descending) and not lost a thing with the rest of the skit. I honestly think they'd have been smart to remove it. But I cannot deny the whole sequence was darn funny, and had the crash never happened, I'd have not given a second thought to the fact that the show was making a joke out of a plane crash.
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8-29-2006 @ 8:33AM
Kesey said...
It's amazing, a plane crashes and all of a sudden there's some sort of politically correct grace period before you can broaddcast one in a spoof, tv show, movie trailer...
It's fiction and it's not like they were downplaying the seriousness of what happened in KY.
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8-29-2006 @ 11:52AM
Lora said...
I hope that Kentucky news anchor is proud of himself, using something as inane, in the grand scheme of things, as the EMMYS to create a controversy in the middle of people's very real and very traumatic grief. Because really, the only person stirring up trouble is him.
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