2007 Emmy Nominations

For the most part, the usual suspects snagged Emmy noms this morning.

But... lo and behold... there are some genre shows among the Outstanding Writing--Drama category nominations!

No, really.

Ron Moore scored his first-ever writing nomination for the Battlestar third season premiere "Occupation/Precipice" -- his only solo writing credit on the show since the first episode of Season 1 ("33"), and arguably the best episode *since* then.

So good for him! Let's hope he writes more of the final season than he has of the series-to-date. (To be fair, he probably rewrites almost every episode to some extent, and is certainly involved in breaking every plot in the writers room -- but that's not quite the same thing as a solo writing credit.)

And Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof were nominated for the brilliant, paradigm-shifting season finale of Lost, "Through The Looking Glass."


The Sopranos took up the other three slots in the category, with David Chase scoring two nominations himself (nothing new there). And he will probably win (again, nothing new there)... though with luck, the vote will be split, letting Moore or Lindelof & Cuse squeak out a victory.

For God's sake, honor a sci-fi show in this category just once!

In the comedy category, (my beloved) The Office and (my be-liked) 30 Rock scored two nominations each.
Office showrunner Greg Daniels was nominated for the hysterical episode "Gay Witch Hunt," and 30 Rock creator/showrunner/star Tina Fay for the "Tracy Does Conan" ep.

Ricky Gervais & Steven Merchant were nominated for the Daniel Radcliffe episode of Extras Series 2 (which, to my mind, was probably the least of that season's episodes... The Orlando Bloom seg was clearly the funniest and best of the series).

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Anyway, among the other notable nominations was:

Felix Alcala for directing Battlestar's "Exodus Part 2"

Michael Emerson (Ben Linus, Lost) for best supporting actor--drama (though, sadly, not Elizabeth Mitchell for Juliette--maybe next season)

Judith Light (Claire Meade, Ugly Betty) as guest actress--comedy (by far, the best actor on that show)

Martin Landau (Bob Ryan, Entourage) as guest actor--comedy (now, that's something I might be interested in)

However, Deadwood failed to garner nominations in anything other than technical categories -- which is fucking criminal. (Cocksuckers.)

Anyway, find the full list of noms here.

Battlestar Ends with Season 4

Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff, attending the Saturn Awards, told IESB.com that the fourth season of Battlestar will be its last, which should come as a shock to absoultely no one who has paid attention to the ratings.

I hope this allows them to go full-throttle toward a satisfying ending. This show never did filler episodes particularly well, anyway. One exception was the labor relations ep last season cowritten by Jane Espenson (now on staff for the final season).

I always blamed the inability to do good stand-alones not on the writers but on the budget situation. If they had the money to really explore the civilian ships--maybe even establish some recurring civilian characters and situations--the stand-alone episodes could've been really interesting. Then again, they never explored life on Colonial One, either, so who knows?