Somebody Got Nominated For Emmys, Or Something

This is the morning when we’re all supposed to care who got nominated for the prime-time Emmy awards.

You know the drill. Every year there are some shows and actors who get nominated seemingly out of habit, like Tony Shalhoub, Mariska Hargitay, Jon Cryer, and Dexter for Best Drama. Then there are the deserving people getting some overdue recognition, like Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights.

There are the snubs that people can get upset about, like Community, The Big Bang Theory and Parks & Recreation all getting shut out of the Best Comedy category. (Community didn’t get nominated for anything important — TBBT and Parks got acting nominations — suggesting that the love for it among fans and critics hasn’t really spread to the Industry.) There are the shows like Glee and Nurse Jackie that allow us to carry on the “is this really a comedy?” debate. (For the record, the answer is “no” in both cases.) And finally there’s the biggest category, people who got nominated as expected and probably deserved it.

And then there’s the big news that everybody’s going to be talking about, which is that Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show got a nomination for best comedy/variety show and neither of Jay Leno’s shows (or any of the other network talk shows, actually) did. So now we have a set storyline for the Emmys: will O’Brien win and embarrass NBC? Will NBC care? Should they? (The answer to the last question, again, is probably “no.”) It should provide a decent publicity boost for TBS, anyway.

Also, even though the Emmys flooded Modern Family with maybe more love than it merits, Ed O’Neill didn’t manage to get a nomination, continuing his record as one of the most-snubbed men in Emmy history. Of course it’s always a problem to get a nomination on an ensemble show, because almost everybody is a “supporting” actor and that means there’s a vicious knock-down drag-out fight between multiple actors from the same show.