Cinerant

Reactions

I don’t get the Emmy nominations.

Sure, there were some things the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences got right. (Jean Smart, Denis Leary, Chandra Wilson, Will Arnett), but there are so many head-scratching omissions that I can’t make any sense of it.

Here’s what I’ve surmised. The new system worked, kind of. Of last year’s big six winners—Lost, Everybody Loves Raymond, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Arquette, James Spader, and Tony Shaloub—one (Shaloub) got a nomination this year. So clearly, there won’t be many repeat winners in the big prizes. The supporting nominations are familiar nominees—Shatner, Danner, Alda, Mullaly, Hayes—with only a few (Smart!, Itzin, Wilson, Pressly, Perkins, Arnett, Cryer, and among them) new faces. Others like Bergen and Woodard are new to their nominations, but very familiar faces to the Academy.

So if the goal was to get new nominees, the system worked. But if the idea was to give smaller shows a chance, it didn’t. Of all the major nominees, the only ones that are not on a major network or HBO or Showtime are Kyra Sedgwick’s nod for TNT’s The Closer and Denis Leary’s nod for Rescue Me on FX.

And still no Lauren Graham or Kristen Bell.

Yet somehow, Stockard Channing got nominated for a show that nobody watched. Man, this Academy loves this woman.

But the most confusing part of the whole nominations are the omissions and disconnections between the series and acting nominees. How in the world did The Sopranos get nominated, but neither Edie Falco or James Gandolfini get nominated? I’d already seen much speculation that she had the Best Actress award sewn up and that the Best Actor award would be a face-off between Gandolfini and Hugh Laurie. I guess that means that Laurie has it…WAIT! He wasn’t nominated either. I can’t even begin to figure that one out.

Overall, the nominations are what you would expect from the Emmys—somewhat confusing, somewhat expected, and not accurately representative of the best of what’s on television. Otherwise, there would nominations for Battlestar Galactica and The Shield. Alas…

posted by cinegod @ 7:46 PM