Thursday 8 July 2010

Emmy nominations 2010!!!

Sooooo, it has been a while since my last post....my life has been a bit hectic in the past few weeks but I won't bore you with the details. Still, I couldn't let the day end without commenting on the nominations for this year's Emmy awards, which were announced today. How exciting!!! Well, it is for me, anyway. Some of my favorite shows and tv actors have been recognized and that makes me a very happy chappy. On the drama series side, two of my favorites 'Mad Men' and 'The Good Wife' are nominated are best show while several stars from both shows have been individually mentioned. It looks like it will be a hat trick for 'Mad Men', the reigning champ in the best drama series for the past two years. Jon Hamm and January Jones, as troubled married couple Don and Betty Draper, are nominated in respective lead acting categories while their costars John Slattery, Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss feature in the supporting acting categories. These are the first nominations for Jones and Hendricks.
My favorite freshman drama series has got to be 'The Good Wife', which has taken the seemingly exhausted courtroom procedural and given it exquisite new life. Its star Julianna Margulies is the frontrunner in the lead actress category so it looks like Glenn Close will not be winning that third Emmy for her ferocious work on 'Damages'. This past third season has been shakey but Ms Close's performance has never been less than riveting. Back to 'The Good Wife' and I am thrilled to see that the show also landed two nominations in the best supporting actress categories for the elegant Christine Baranski and the exciting Archie Panjabi. How awesome is Panjabi on this show? Her tough, cynical, sexually ambiguous but most definitely sexual investigator Kalinda Sharma has got to be one of the most original characters on network television in the US and how refreshing is it to see a performer of South Asian descent be nominated for such a high-profile award in America....and she's a Brit, no less!!!

The two highest-rated first-year comedy series of the past season have been scored multiple nominations. 'Glee' and 'Modern Family' are arguably the co-frontrunners of the best comedy series award, considering that after three consecutive wins in this category and a fourth season that was still hilarious but no longer as fresh or novel '30 Rock' will probably have to concede the throne to a new victor. 'Glee' scored one nominee in each of the four series regular categories it was eligible for. In addition to the phenomenal Jane Lynch, whose creation of the iconic Sue Sylvester surely makes her the frontrunner in the best supporting actress comedy series race, the other acting nominees from the show are male lead Matthew Morrison, female lead Lea Michele (I can still remember seeing each of them perform back when they were rising stars on Broadway) and male supporting player Chris Colfer, whose portrayal of a gay teenager who strives to express his identity beyond confines of the small-minded mentality of his high school is groundbreaking in its own glorious way. Meanwhile, the cast of 'Modern Family's collective decision to submit themselves all in the supporting categories paid off - well, at least for five of the six adult series stars. Poor Ed O'Neil didn't make the cut (I wonder if he would have been better off had he submitted himself as the show's lone candidate in the lead category) in the supporting male category but Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson were all nominated. On the distaff side, the show's leading ladies, Julie Bowen and Sofia Vergara, were also recognized in the supporting race.
Other stars that I'm thrilled to see on Emmy's shortlists are 'Nurse Jackie's Edie Falco and 'Parks and Recreation's Amy Poehler. It's some consolation to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus getting a nomination for what turned out to be the final see of 'The New Adventures of Old Christine'. Were there some notable snubs? Yes, I think that after mediocre second and third seasons, 'Ugly Betty' truly had a creative resurgence in its fourth and final season, especially in the latter half of the season and it's a shame that America Ferrara and Vanessa L. Williams found themselves off this year's list of nominees. I am also really disappointed that Courtney Cox-Arquette wasn't nominated for 'Cougar Town', after ten years of being snubbed for her work on 'Friends'. Still, when the bulk of the nominees is so fantastic, a true television fan like myself really don't have much to complain about so I will just shut the fuck up now and switch the tv on!!!