14 DAY TRIAL // Since the TV Academy announced one of the 5 In Memoriam segments at tonight’s Emmys 2013 awards would be dedicated to “Glee” star Cory Monteith, there’s been a lot of speculation on whether he really deserves it. Jack Klugman’s son believes he doesn’t.
In a new interview cited by Entertainment Weekly, Adam Klugman says Monteith’s inclusion and his father’s exclusion is nothing but a sign that the TV Academy is dumbing down the Emmys.
It’s ridiculous to include a tribute for an actor who died young (of a drug overdose, no less) and had hardly scratched the surface, to the expense of a man who shaped television, such as Klugman did, Adam explains.
It’s “criminal” to do such a thing, he believes.
“My dad was at the inception of television and helped build it in the early days. It’s an insult and it really seems typical of this youth-centric culture that has an extremely short attention span and panders to only a very narrow demographic [of young adults],” the late actor’s son continues.
As for the Emmys producers’ explanation that Monteith was included in the tribute because his role on “Glee” had reached millions of people and, because of it, could not be excluded, Adam says it’s equaling value with popularity.
“What about the people who should be introduced to somebody like my father? I don’t mean to say anything disparaging about Cory, but he was a kid who had won no Emmys and it was a self-induced tragedy,” he says.
This last part is the same argument used by other industry people who thought Monteith’s Emmy tribute was a bit too much, too soon: sure, he was talented and, without a doubt, he would have ended up achieving great things.
That does not change the fact that he died of a drug overdose, had been an addict for many years, and had hardly gotten to do any work outside “Glee.” Including him instead of other, more experienced television actors means doing them an injustice only because Monteith could have been great.