Emmy Nominations Are Out, "Mad Men" Is In, and "Friday Night Lights" Was Robbed

Nominations for the 2008 Primetime Emmy Awards were announced this morning, and the verdicts are clear. AMC is latest cable-network darling to catch the eye of the voters, with Mad Men getting more than twice as many nominations as any other drama series, and with Breaking Bad being noticed, too.

Meanwhile, NBC's Friday Night Lights was, in a word, robbed.

The family drama series, in its second season, was given just a single nomination, for Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series. Yet if the cast is so outstanding -- and it is -- how in the world do you ignore the work of the show's brilliant stars, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton? You shouldn't. But the Emmy voters did.

Why? I suspect, in part, because of a long-standing, simmering, but wholly unnecessary inferiority complex. When Emmy voters are confronted with too many talented actors or actresses in a given category, movie stars always seem to be favored over stars from TV itself.

In the Lead Actress in a Drama Series category, for example, Glenn Close from Damages and Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer ae movie stars who deserved their nomination, but did Holly Hunter of Saving Grace, or even Sally Field of Brothers & Sisters, given the other possibilities? Especially since Connie Britton was overlooked?

And while the Lead Actor in a Drama category is loaded with perhaps the strongest field in the race this year -- Michael C. Hall from Dexter, Hugh Laurie from House, James Spader from Boston Legal, and category newcomers Jon Hamm from Mad Men, Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad and Gabriel Byrne from In Treatment -- Kyle Chandler really, really deserved to be in there.

Other shifts, spurns and surprises?

The Wire, in its final year, was dismissed again, given only one nomination, for the script for the finale. Rescue Me got nods only for cinematography and guest actor Charles Durning -- even though Denis Leary is another actor deserving of a best-actor nod. And David Duchovny from Californication didn't get a comedy Lead Actor nod, even though Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men did.

Where are Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard from The Riches? How in the world did Ken Burns' The War fall through the cracks, nominated as neither Outstanding Nonfiction Special nor Outstanding Nonfiction Series. Clearly, it was one or the other, so where is it? And how and why did Desperate Housewives fall so far out of favor? It had a very strong year, yet drew performing-category nominations only for guest actresses Polly Bergen and Kathryn Joosten.

The same category, though, did make room for Edie Falco, Elaine Stritch and Carrie Fisher, all from 30 Rock. And while Alec Baldwin has been nominated before for that show, as he was again this year, this year he absolutely deserves to win.

Then again, so does Kyle Chandler, and he's not even in the running...