Grid Effect

Alright, I have managed to calm down after getting alarmingly inebriated, sexually harassing three female coworkers, beating my boss mercilessly with his own desk chair, passing out, waking up in a jail cell, having bail set and processing when my fed up girlfriend generously went into her own pocket to spring me from my cage. Seven hours later I am back to summarize my thoughts on the rest of the Emmy field, only unemployed and with a splitting headache that would stop an elephant in its tracks. When I am finished with this I have every intention of flying to Vegas, putting all my money on black and being back home with triple my current net worth for a late dinner and in time to watch the Mad Men pilot on AMC at 9pm et (which we will have a review for tomorrow).

(See, anyone can write for 24, you just need to expedite everything in a comedically short amount of time, and do it all with a straight face).

Truth be told, I did find a lot of sanity in the comedy nominations. Though still need to vent about FNL, which was passed over for every acting and writing category. There just isn’t much logic in many of these nominees. Connie Brittion and Kyle Chandler should have both been locks to lose to Edie Falco and James Gandolfini. In the earler post I concurred with Leary’s nomination for best actor, but he was an afterthought when compared to Chandler, who’s portrayal of conflicted, honorable yet flawed high school football coach Eric Taylor, was an acting clinic when compared to the usual swill that is on the broadcast networks. It sure as hell was better than Leary’s third season of Rescue Me, which for the first half of seemed primarily concerned with how many different sex positions Leary could simulate.

Everyone raves about the two leads on FNL, but there is a slew of supporting talent that went unrecognized. Gaius Charles playing the troubled NFL hopeful running back in Brian “Smash” Williams, who spent an entire season bouncing back and forth between Smash the public persona and Brian the well-intentioned but misguided teenager. Or Scott Porter (Jason Street) or Adrianna Palicki (Tyra Collette) or Zack Gilford (Matt Saracen) or Jesse Plemons (Landry)… the list is endless. Maybe its like in heisman voting, when two players from the same school are viable candidates, but they split their region’s votes, and end up cancelling each other out because another player from a diffrerent part of the country was unanimous in his region. Either way, I just felt the need to vent.

But yeah, the comedy portion we have much more laudatory opinions on. If you just take a gander at the best supporting actor category, which features Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute), Jeremy Piven (Ari Gold) and Kevin Dillon (Johnny Drama) are all nominated and all prominent roles on series we watch here, in addition to Neal Patrick Harris for his work on How I Met Your Mother, we have a pool of four strong candidates. And it really should be five, as Alec Baldwin is not a leading role and should replace Jon Cryer in this category, but he submitted himself as a lead, so, what can you do? Ego trumps logic, though his field is equally as competitive as well, going up against Steve Carrell and Ricky Gervais.

Also, Jenna Fischer was nominated for her work as Pam Beasly on The Office, Martin Landau was nominated for best guest actor on Entourage and the best comedy field is pretty stiff competition as well, even though we only watch two of them and one of the nominees is Two and a Half Men.

Really, all the comedy nominations did was enlighten us as to how little comedy we have watched recently around here. All the people we wanted to see nominated and had a realistic shot of doing so, were. Otherwise the comedies we have enjoyed over the past few years have either been cancelled (AD), were on hiatus (Curb) or I would have been deluding myself to think they stood a chance in hell (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Extras, South Park).

So there you have it folks, your 2007 Emmy nominees. With little to no objectivity exhibited in these two posts so far, let me wish the fine people of Grey’s Anatomy and Boston Legal the best of luck on Emmy night.