This year’s Primetime Emmy nominations were announced Thursday, and as usual, the Pen15 Club took great interest in their cockeyed wisdom. Despite having limited its regular TV viewing this season to Arrested Development, Desperate Housewives (the gays love heterosexual actress Marcia Cross!) and any reality show that involved Faye Dunaway or fashion (the gays love to hate Wendy Pepper!), the Pen15 is endlessly fascinated by voters’ fatwa-like conviction that The West Wing is still watchable.
Gin-soaked Blythe Danner scored nominations for not one, not two, but three lily-white dowager roles: Supporting Actress in a Drama Series as Hank Azaria’s emotionally distant mother on Showtime’s Huff, Guest Actress in a Comedy as Will’s emotionally distant mother on Will & Grace, and Lead Actress in a TV Movie for something called Back When We Were Grownups.
The Danner invasion reflected the Academy’s general predilection toward over-the-hill grandes dames. We appreciate that television offers greater opportunities for women of a certain age, but the Supporting Actress categories read like the patient sign-in sheet at Pritikin: Danner, Conchata Ferrell, Stockard Channing (scratch Pritikin, make that Betty Ford), Holland Taylor, Doris Roberts, Tyne Daly…Tyne Daly?! Again?! Admit it, did you even realize these women still had regular series gigs? Can you accept that the Supporting Actress - Comedy category contains Roberts and Ferrell but not Nicollette Sheridan or even Portia de Rossi (relax, lesbians, Holland Taylor is speakin’ your truth)?
If the Oscars have sold out in recent years by throwing the Best Actress trophy at whichever ex-model cries the most in an indie that year, the Emmys betray a singular bias against young, pretty actresses. Note that the Best Actress - Comedy category features Marcia Cross, Teri Hatcher and Felicity Huffman, but not the youngest, most pinup-friendly housewife, Eva Longoria (no, we don’t think she’s pretty either, but she is allegedly under 30 and she did do a Maxim cover). Rounding out the category are Friend of Terri Schiavo Patricia Heaton, whose admitted gallons of cosmetic surgery haven’t made her any less ordinary-looking, and the always-dumpy Jane Kaczmarek, whose character on the apparently-not-cancelled-yet Malcolm in the Middle is basically Huffman’s 10 years down the line. Also ignored: Gilmore Girls’ brilliant, sexy Lauren Graham, who apparently won’t stand a chance until she self-immolates on live television (but not on the WB, which voters apparently refuse to watch for any reason).
On an equally mystifying note, the lead actor categories are awash in former ’80s teen heartthrobs, from Jason Bateman on the comedy side to Kiefer Sutherland and James Spader in drama. Which makes it even stranger that Charlie Sheen was overlooked.
Also, the Academy apparently hasn’t forgiven World’s Tallest Woman Allison Janney for her “Mariska! Come on stage! We’re both wearing beautiful green dresses!” stunt from last year. The reigning Best Actress - Drama Series was mercifully left off the nomination list.
You bitches is funny.
This is cool, you have to try it. I guessed 53528, and this game guessed it! See it here - http://www.funbrain.com/guess/
Hi Rob, I just found this site, and read your comment above (about, amongst others, Blythe Danner) and I wonder : what’s wrong with elderly actors and actresses getting nominated for a role played well?
You seem to think the TV-academy must have thought : “Ohhh, those poor elderly actresses, let’s humor them and nominate a lot of them this year, so we can get on with the younger generation in the following years to come, far more fun!”.
I admit, I haven’t seen Huff yet (unfortunately we’re always running “behind” on good shows over here in the Netherlands), but some two months ago Presidio Med aired on Dutch TV, IMHO it was a well-balanced show, with some great actresses, including Blythe Danner and Anna Deavere.
(sorry, I can’t “see” Dana Delany without picturing her in China Beach….my fault entirely, she probably was good in Pres. Med as well)
BTW, what’s wrong with the American TV-viewers : how on earth can they not like a show like Presidio Med, and make it flop after only 14 episodes, and instead vote for a show like for instance “Strong Medicine”…..geez, the script of that series doesn’t even remotely come close to being as good as that of Pres. Med.
I’d never heard of Ms.Danner before I saw her in Presidio Med (yes, LOL, I live on another planet), and her acting was very convincing to me, I ALMOST forgot she was doing just that : play a role. If she is as good in Huff as she was in Pres. Med, I think she fully deserved a nomination, and rightfully won the Emmy for her role in Huff.
And I object to your remark : “……..categories read like the patient sign-in sheet at Pritikin……”, Ms. Danner certainly doesn’t bore me, on the contrary. (can’t comment on the other actresses you named, haven’t seen them in a play or series lately)
Sincerely
Fruttel
rationalization:searchingly accessibly tastefulness,quartered consolidation extraction ears
recess porters moralities sod.trillionth Scots punish revise