Emmy Nominations

The Emmy Awards amuse me. The media and industry tend to treat them like the red-headed stepchild of awards shows - perhaps because few kids grow up dreaming about making an Emmy Acceptance speech. Nope, it's always Oscar, right? So the Emmy's get even less credibility than the Golden Globes - even though actual movie stars (Holly, Glenn, Kyra) have cropped up on TV in growing numbers in recent years.

This year, the folks at the Emmy's have made some interesting moves, like inviting Neil Patrick Harris to host (huzzah) and expanding the number of nominees in the big categories. The latter move has yielded some mixed results:

• Jim Parsons gets a nomination for The Big Bang Theory, as does Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Chonchords. Still doesn't stop Charlie Sheen for getting yet another nomination for phoning it in on Two and a Half Men.
• How I Met your Mother is up for Best Comedy (huzzah, again). So is Entourage (um, what?).
• Somehow, only Michael Emerson makes the cut for Lost, while the brilliant Elizabeth Mitchell gets squeezed out by multiple nominees from In Treatment and Grey's Anatomy. On the plus side, no Katherine Heigl.

Interesting to note that I'd heard nothing about the expanded categories, while the Oscar's (lame) decision to increase the number of nominees for best picture to 10 (so Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen can squeek in?) was all over the news. Yet more proof that the Emmys are still the Rodney Dangerfield of awards shows.