Friday Night Lights on Emmy Short List?
Friday Night Lights by Paul Drinkwater/NBC Photo
Well, this is good news to come home to. (Thanks, by the way, to all the well-wishers who e-mailed gracious greetings during my time off. Can't recommend Paris highly enough, even during an unseasonably chilly rainy spell.)
If the reporting on TheEnvelope.com site is accurate, the top-10 drama finalists at this intermediate stage of the Emmy nominations includes eternal NBC underdog
Friday Night Lights- which could use some good news, seeing as how NBC yanked its summer repeats for now. (Tell me you didn't see that coming.) While we find ourselves fretting over whether NBC's new post-Kevin Reilly management will stand by this show next season, we can at least take comfort that the industry hasn't entirely forgotten this show. Now that it's made the first cut (adopting a football term) into the popular top-10, we can only hope the judges screening the drama candidates will respond to this show's rallying cry: "Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose."
If you missed the news report, here's what has been reported as the top-10 drama finalists:
Boston Legal, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Grey's Anatomy, Heroes, House, Lost, Rome, The Sopranos and
24.
You can generalize a few things from this list. First, that it's better to be on pay cable than basic. Once again, FX's bold dramas, most notably
The Shield and
Rescue Me, didn't make the cut. I'm thrilled for Showtime's breakout hit
Dexter, but am once again sorry that HBO either didn't make a bigger push for
The Wire or that the Academy membership finds it too difficult (or too something) to appreciate. No way did the guilty pleasure (at best) of
Rome deserve a nod over the fourth, and arguably finest, season of
The Wire.
I would guess that
24 makes the list through good old Emmy inertia. The show has never not been nominated, and it won last year. Still, that's no excuse for rewarding a series that even those in the industry acknowledge fell apart last season. And
Boston Legal? Don't get me started. What a joke.
Heroes? Worth considering, but way too uneven in execution. Give it another year to grow.
Thankfully,
Lost is still in the running, and given the buzz over the terrific last half of the season, not to mention that sensational finale, it has to be considered a strong contender.
My pick from this list as the top five I'd most expect (and like) to see nominated:
Friday Night Lights, Grey's Anatomy (despite its unevenness),
House, Lost and
The Sopranos. Actually, I'd sub
Dexter for
House, but I don't see that happening. Given how graphic and bizarre
Dexter is, it's a minor miracle it cracked the top 10.
As for comedy, the reported top 10 finalists are:
Desperate Housewives, Entourage, Extras, My Name Is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, 30 Rock, Two and a Half Men, Ugly Betty and
Weeds.
Not much to argue about there, although the bias against traditional laugh-track comedies prevails. I wish they'd found room for
The New Adventures of Old Christine- over
Desperate Housewives, anyway: Christine's desperation is much funnier than anything happening on Wisteria Lane lately. And fans of
How I Met Your Mother and CW sleeper
Everybody Hates Chris also have every right to be peeved.
My pick from the above list for the top five comedy nominees: T
he Office, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, 30 Rock and
Two and a Half Men (although I'd prefer either
Entourage or
Extras in that fifth slot).
Honestly, though, there's only one show in any category that I actually care about getting Emmy attention this year. And that's the one that's carrying the banner of the Dillon Panthers. Beyond that, the rest is gray (or is that Grey's) noise.
