It's awards season.
Let's start from the top with Best Television Series - Drama. If you look closely at this one, I believe you'll find that "one of these things is not like the other things", if you know what I mean. It's been at least a year, if not two, since I stopped watching House, but I don't see any scenario where it belongs in a category with shows of this caliber (or one with Best at the beginning). Don't get me wrong, I love Hugh Laurie, and he's well-cast and entertaining in this role, but I have a hard time believing in that the year or so since I've watched, the show has gotten any less formulaic (Lupus? Sarcoidosis?), and thus, any better. Maybe the Best Actor nomination is deserved, I don't know. The rest of this category is pretty straight-forward, obvious, and accurate. And though Mad Men is basically the odds-on favorite for everything, I think Dexter may be on its heels in this case with a season that was initially uncertain, but taken as a whole, may be its best yet. So possibly some excitement here.
Best Comedy Series, Actor/Actress and Supporting Actor/Actress after the jump...
I'm aware that...
a. this is primarily a TV blog
b. the Emmys were way back in September, and
c. "awards season" is really just Oscar season
...so the subject of this post may seem irrelevant.
However, because I love awards shows, the Oscars in particular, I'm being indulgent. But perhaps most importantly, the little old Golden Globes are kind of the beginning of awards season (Oscar-lite/practice Oscars) and they happen to include awards for excellence in television. So although I could go on and on about many of the film nominees (the fact that I haven't even seen Up in the Air yet but am already totally behind it, the question of the deserved/undeserved hype surrounding Avatar and James Cameron in general and whether or not it/he deserved a nom) we're going to stick to more familiar territory for now, the television categories. If that wasn't enough explanation for you, feel free to depart. Moving on.
In case you've been living under a rock and haven't had a chance to glance over the nominations, or read one of the many nominee-by-nominee rundowns somewhere in the past week, the entire list can be found here.
Let's start from the top with Best Television Series - Drama. If you look closely at this one, I believe you'll find that "one of these things is not like the other things", if you know what I mean. It's been at least a year, if not two, since I stopped watching House, but I don't see any scenario where it belongs in a category with shows of this caliber (or one with Best at the beginning). Don't get me wrong, I love Hugh Laurie, and he's well-cast and entertaining in this role, but I have a hard time believing in that the year or so since I've watched, the show has gotten any less formulaic (Lupus? Sarcoidosis?), and thus, any better. Maybe the Best Actor nomination is deserved, I don't know. The rest of this category is pretty straight-forward, obvious, and accurate. And though Mad Men is basically the odds-on favorite for everything, I think Dexter may be on its heels in this case with a season that was initially uncertain, but taken as a whole, may be its best yet. So possibly some excitement here.
As for the Best Actor/Actress nominations for Drama, again mostly accurate. From the 1 1/2 episodes of CBS' semi-predictable The Mentalist I've watched with my grandparents I still don't know much about Simon Baker, but he seems to do well enough. And interesting to note in the Actress category, 3 of the 5 have already received this award. Perhaps it will be someone new this time around (fingers crossed for January Jones?)
Best Comedy Series, Actor/Actress and Supporting Actor/Actress after the jump...
