Felicity Huffman Earns Her Emmy

Monday, September 19, 2005

It's deja vu at Emmys as past winners are recognized again

There are a lot of prognosticators out there with some serious egg on their faces this morning, and one very deserving actress with an Emmy. Felicity Huffman surprised a lot of people by winning the Emmy for Best Actress, Comedy over her co-stars Teri Hatcher and Marcia Cross.

I have to say that I'm surprised that the Emmys recognized Felicity, but she definitely deserved the award with her portrayal of the executive-turned-mother of Wisteria Lane. Although the storylines involving Hatcher and Cross get more media attention, I think that the show owes its success to Huffman's character. The rest of the show has such outlandish plotlines that without the grounding of her realistic and relatable harried mother trying to keep her marriage together it would be otherwise ridiculous. Basically, it's the glue that holds the show together and too many self-styled critics have completely missed how essential her performance is to the success of the show.

While Eva Longoria's character has an out-of-reach glamour, Hatcher's character is dizzyingly flighty, and Cross' character is borderline creepy; many a viewer can empathize with the struggles of Felicity Huffman's character - allowing them to inhabit Wisteria Lane alongside these other larger than life personalities. Without her the audience is on the outside looking in at the soap opera-esque antics of a bunch of strangers: with her, the audience can live in the neighborhood too and every scene becomes a guilty look inside the neighbor's window.

So congrats to Felicity...it's well-deserved recognition for a very underrated role...