I figure since the nomination lists came out today, it would be a pretty good idea to do a post about them. The nominations this year are pretty good. Here's some of the ones that matter (I've also underlined the nominees I hope will win):
Outstanding Drama
"Breaking Bad"
"Dexter"
"The Good Wife"
"Lost"
"Mad Men"
"True Blood"
Outstanding Comedy
"30 Rock"
"Curb Your Enthusiasm"
"Glee"
"Modern Family"
"Nurse Jackie"
"The Office"
Outstanding Actor in a Drama
Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad")
Hugh Laurie ("House M.D.")
Jon Hamm ("Mad Men")
Kyle Chandler ("Friday Night Lights")
Matthew Fox ("Lost")
Michael C. Hall ("Dexter")
Outstanding Actress in a Drama
Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights")
Glenn Close ("Damages")
January Jones ("Mad Men")
Julianna Margulies ("The Good Wife")
Mariska Hargitay ("Law & Order: Special Victims Unit")
Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer")
Outstanding Actor in a Comedy
Alec Baldwin ("30 Rock")
Jim Parsons ("The Big Bang Theory")
Larry David ("Curb Your Enthusiasm")
Matthew Morrison ("Glee")
Steve Carell ("The Office")
Tony Shalhoub ("Monk")
Outstanding Actress in a Comedy
Amy Poehler ("Parks and Recreation")
Edie Falco ("Nurse Jackie")
Julia Louis-Dreyfus ("The New Adventures of Old Christine")
Lea Michele ("Glee")
Tina Fey ("30 Rock")
Toni Collette ("The United States of Tara")
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama
Aaron Paul ("Breaking Bad")
Andre Braugher ("Men of a Certain Age")
John Slattery ("Mad Men")
Martin Short ("Damages")
Michael Emerson ("Lost")
Terry O'Quinn ("Lost")
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama
Archie Panjabi ("The Good Wife")
Christine Baranski ("The Good Wife")
Christina Hendricks ("Mad Men")
Elisabeth Moss ("Mad Men")
Rose Byrne ("Damages")
Sharon Gless ("Burn Notice")
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy
Chris Colfer ("Glee")
Eric Stonestreet ("Modern Family")
Jesse Tyler Ferguson ("Modern Family")
Jon Cryer ("Two and a Half Men")
Neil Patrick Harris ("How I Met Your Mother")
Ty Burrell ("Modern Family")
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy
Holland Taylor ("Two and a Half Men")
Jane Krakowski ("30 Rock")
Jane Lynch ("Glee")
Julie Bowen ("Modern Family")
Kristen Wiig ("Saturday Night Live")
Sofia Vergara ("Modern Family")
Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series
"The Colbert Report"
"The Daily Show With Jon Stewart"
"Real Time With Bill Maher"
"Saturday Night Live"
"The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien"
A couple of quick comments on the nominations. In general, I think the comedy nominations are good. The Outstanding Actress nominations (including supporting) for drama series suck though. I really don't care at all about either of those categories. Why are none of the ladies from Dexter on there? None of the ladies from Lost, House, Bones, 24? (I'm still waiting for them to make a Worst Supporting Actress category so that Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe O'Brian from 24) can win her Emmy) On another topic, how awesome is it that while the Jay Lenno show is BOMBING every night, Conan got a nomination for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series? He only ran the show for 7 months, got fired in a humiliatingly public fashion, and then receives an Emmy nomination? I'm just wondering if the industry can find any MORE ways to point out how stupid NBC is. Finally, big props to Glee for receiving a total of 19 Emmy nominations. I really hope that they clean house, because they deserve it. If you aren't watching Glee, you're missing out big time. That show is absolutely awesome in all ways.
Bad Idea - Emmy Categories
The main categories that people care about are pretty interesting. The ones I listed above for example, people might care about. I can even see throwing in Best Director, Best Producer, and Best Writing, but after that, the categories get a little ridiculous and boring. For example, does anyone care which show wins Outstanding Art Direction for A Multi-Camera Series? How about for a Single Camera Series? More importantly, what does that even mean? I thought I understood that it meant they just used one camera or multiple cameras, but Lost, Glee, Heroes, Modern Family, and True Blood all count as single camera series. I don't believe for a second that Lost only uses one camera. And Heroes has been canceled and has sucked for 2 seasons, why is it nominated for ANYTHING?!?!
What's even weirder is that they nominate the show EPISODES, not the specific show or actor/actress. For example, in Outstanding Voice Over Performance, The Simpsons takes 3 of the 6 nominations (which I will agree is an awesome and funny show)(Seth Green for Robot Chicken and H. Jon Benjamin as Sterling Archer are the other two I care about). Why can't they nominate the voice actor/actress on their body of work, not just one episode?
Finally, why are award shows the only place that women don't care about sexism? Women seem fine with having separate categories for Outstanding Actress and Supporting Actress. What exactly are they trying to say? A woman could never beat a man in the same category, so we'll make another one. If we owned a store and had "Employee of the Month" and "Female Employee of the Month" we'd have feminists crawling all over our store and every female employee would be suing us. But the Academy and Emmy association are ok with this? Seems like their protests are only for when they're discriminated against, not when its in their favor. Not real fair, huh?
1) Lost is filmed with a single camera, just like almost every other show is now (the only exceptions I can think of are CBS and TBS comedies). They use a B-camera to get some of the action or to film B-roll (footage that doesn't involve actors), but the rest is all shot with one camera. That's why it takes so long to make a season of a TV show, every scene with dialogue is shot probably a minimum of 4 times to get every angle. It's the same way feature films are shot.
ReplyDelete2) It's impractical to expect every voting member of the academy to watch every episode of every show that gets nominated - we'd probably have to wait another year just to get everyone caught up. Instead, the shows submit specific episodes for each category and those individual episodes are reviewed and voted on. That's how it's always worked because no other system makes sense.
3) I imagine splitting the actor nominations into male and female is just intended to allow more people to get nominations/awards. Doubling the amount of categories doubles the amount of potential recipients, allowing more people who deserve recognition to get it.