Of Emmys and Chickens

Well, the Emmy nominations were announced, so please excuse me while I go pound my head against a rock until one of us gets bloody.

I'll rant more about this in the comments after I've had some time to process and to think about what I'm going to write for tomorrow's paper, but my initial reaction is that this is even worse than I was expecting. When the TV Academy announced its plan to revamp the nominations process, I was optimistic for about a half-second about the idea that the likes of Lauren Graham and "Veronica Mars" might finally get some love. Then I realized that the new process involved the same kind of blue-ribbbon panels that, until a few years ago, were responsible for all those years of Tyne Daly and Candice Bergen winning over and over and over again. The people who have the free time to sit on a panel tend to be either unemployed, retired, and/or old, and their tastes don't reflect the working body of the membership.

My fear was that we would just get more of the same nominees, but rather than obvious repeats, we got Emmy's Golden Oldies: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stockard Channing, Geena Davis, etc., etc., etc. James Gandolfini? Snubbed? Hugh Laurie? Snubbed. Edie Falco, who all but won the damn award with "Sopranos" episode two? Snubbed.

There was a sprinkling of fresh blood -- "The Office," Denis Leary, the First Couple from "24" -- but overall this is a fiasco. Not that "Desperate Housewives" was good this year, but the fact that neither of last year's comedy or drama series winners were even nominated this year makes me think that the Academy is going to do an about-face on the new system in, oh, two or three days.

Meanwhile, today's column link: a preview of "Big Brother: All-Stars" that's really a look back on that wonderfully catastrophic first season of the show.