I’m excited about reacting to this morning’s Emmy nominations in this post, in part because it harks back to the very first PEN15 post, which was also about the Emmys. This means that the PEN15 Club has celebrated its two-year anniversary, and I didn’t even realize it. So good for us.
Now onto the Emmys. Here are my thoughts:
1. I’m glad that no dowager character actresses are nominated three times this year (Tina Fey has three nods, but she writes as well as acts, and runs the funniest show currently on TV).
2. It was a good year for newly out-of-the-closet gays, as both T.R. Knight and Neil Patrick Harris ended up with nods.
3. The death of the television comedy series continues unabated, as the Academy appropriately showers praise on The Office and 30 Rock, but then somehow expects us to believe that they honestly think Entourage, Ugly Betty and Two and a Half Men are funny. They’re not. (It would have killed them to nominate Extras?) Thank God Curb Your Enthusiasm returns this year.
4. New voting procedures (a popularity contest decided a top 10 for each category, which was then judged by a blue-ribbon panel of people who presumably were forced to actually watch an episode of each show) favored crap like Boston Legal in the drama series category over more complex, serialized fare such as Friday Night Lights, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire and Lost.
5. Kathy Griffin is back in the reality show category, so her faux-diva outburst at last year’s Creative Arts Emmys obviously wasn’t held against her. If she loses to that cokehead douchebag Ty Pennington again, she should burn the place down.
6. The drama series actress categories remain the Domain of the Fallen Film Actresses: Patricia Arquette, Minnie Driver, Sally Field, Rachel Griffiths, Lorraine Bracco, Kyra Sedgwick. In the mid-’90s this could conceivably have been an Oscar lineup.
7. Despite the popularity of The Office and 30 Rock, there was no love for either John Krasinski or Jane Krakowski. I wonder if voters got them confused.
Emmy nominations list [Variety]
18 months ago I’d have agreed about Boston Legal, but it’s actually a rather good show once you get past the annoying camera quirks. But Emmy worthy… hmmm.
And word about Tina Fey being hilarious. Though what with the Emmy tradition of the least deserving entrants winning, there is no way she will take anything home.
Do you have no love for Betty?
It makes me sweat a little to see Ugly Betty in the same sentence as Entourage and 2.5.