THE ONLY THING I'M GUILTY OF IS LOVING PAWNEE. AND PUNCHING LINDSAY IN THE FACE AND SHOVING A COFFEE FILER DOWN HER PANTS: For a long time, the Emmys have occupied the awards-space that the Grammys used to fill -- not respected for who was nominated or who won, and a lousy three hours of tv on top of it. Well, the Grammys fixed the second (and marginally improved the first), and today's Emmy nominations suggest significant improvement on the nominating front.
Critics' darlings abound: Friday Night Lights for best drama, and its two leads in the acting categories; multiple Justified and Louie nominations; Parks and Recreation for Best Comedy (but no love for Ron f'n Swanson?); Game of Thrones and Peter Dinklage (and Miss Blankenship!) all among those recognized. And then the expected stuff for Mad Men, The Good Wife, 30 Rock, The Office, Modern Family (four best supporting actor noms), Boardwalk Empire and the like.
We'll be digging in the weeds all day (two more noms for Timberlake-as-lyricist, and one as SNL host; Pig Vomit nominated for his portrayal of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve!; Bill Simmons gets an Emmy nomination for the 30 for 30 series), and supplementing this post as we can.
added: Linda Holmes: "The Twitter vote for Most Aggravating Snub (Again) seems to be going to Community, which was completely shut out. In fairness, some of its more likely nominees might have been in the supporting categories, and Modern Family — where this year, all six of the major players were nominated — takes up a lot of real estate in those categories.... Runner-up is probably either Fringe or Ron Offerman of Parks & Rec, and while Offerman would be a great and worthy nominee, again, when one show takes four nominations in a single category, it's hard to break in. David Simon's Treme also got a big nothing, but at this point, fans of his past work (including the aforementioned The Wire) expect very little from the Emmys."
Alan Sepinwall: "Overall, though, the good far outweighed the bad this year. There will always be bad when you have this many shows, often being voted on by people who have neither the time nor interest in watching a lot of TV until they get the submission episodes for the nominees, and who have their own biases just as much as I do. But I look at Parks and Rec, at Friday Night Lights and Margo Martindale and Louis C.K. - and I have pie-in-the-sky fantasies about some of the less-famous nominees walking up to the stage - and I'm mostly content with how these nominations turned out, especially given how angry some past lists have made me."
