If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it at least seven or eight times. Some enterprising showbiz reporter — where have you gone, Steve Kmetko? — will shove a microphone in a dejected actor’s face after they have just lost at an awards show and ask them, “How are you coping in the face of such monumental disappointment?†The actor’s stock answer is, of course, “It’s an honor just to be nominated.†Well, my fine, feathered Vulture readers, this post will have none of that false sentiment, for these fine actors (and showrunners) won’t even get a chance to stand in front of a mirror to practice looking dignified in the face of defeat, as they have been epically SNUBBED by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences this morning.
Probably highest on the list of snubs for Vulture fans is HBO’s True Blood, which was Golden Globe nominated in the drama category back in January but found itself on the outside looking in this morning. Not only was the show completely overlooked by the faction of snobs who put together this year’s noms, but this year’s Golden Globe winner for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama,†one Anna Paquin, also felt the vengeful wrath of the voting bloc. What do Emmy voters have against fangbangers, anyway?
As much as we love True Blood, though, we can sort of see the justification behind its snub (it’s a popcorn show that straddles the line between comedy and drama, which makes it tough for voters to muster up a lot of sentiment for it). The same cannot be said for Entourage’s Jeremy Piven, though, as the three-time Emmy winner fell victim to the professional fallout from the Sushigate debacle earlier this year. Say what you will about the Pivs, his personal life and his professional dedication, but his turn as Ari Gold is still among the best on television. Or, we suppose, was.
And even though some of the categories for this year’s Emmys expanded to seven (!) nominations, there were a handful of other prominent shows that surprisingly found themselves on the receiving end of the Heisman this morning. Recently wrapped critical darlings like Battlestar Galactica, ER, and The Shield were swiftly kicked to the curb, their memories left to rot on the street corner like a pile of unwanted garbage. Perennial Emmy nominee and terrorist-ass-kicker Kiefer Sutherland was dissed, as was Mad Men’s January Jones (who, we thought, pretty much owned that show’s second season).
And we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Flight of the Conchords. We nearly passed out from excitement when we saw that the show landed a Best Comedic Series nod and that Jemaine Clement had scored a Best Comedic Actor nomination, but once the initial shock wore off, our hearts immediately went out to his partner in crime, Bret McKenzie. Bret’s snub will surely result in a complete rip of the comedy-time continuum, and historians may one day look back at July 16, 2009, as the day when success made a failure of the Conchords’ home.
Related: Emmy Nominations Announced!