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Emmy Nomination Reaction

It's reasonably well established around here that I don't give two hoots about the Emmys aside from what people choose to wear to the ceremony.

That doesn't mean I don't have a gut reaction to the nominations announced today.  Complete list at We Love Soaps.

That gut reaction: pretty solid except for whatever the hell they were smoking when they came up with the Outstanding Drama Nominees.  How Y&R and OLTL did not make that list, but Days, B&B and freaking AMC did, I have no idea.

I think all the women's nominations were pretty fair, though I would not have had Bree Williamson nominated for anything she did last year (though I've seen much improvement this year), and I would have liked them to find room for Kristen Alderson even though I actually have no problems with any of those that got nominated in the Younger Actress category, especially as Kirsten Storms has been rightfully de-snubbed after last year.

I don't have all that many problems with the guys either, except that the noms for Tony Geary and Cristian LeBlanc just feel like default settings and are no longer interesting.  And as much as I like David Irrizary, was he even on AMC enough last year to warrant a nom?

It is nice to see some more consistent nominating of Days actors.

Now, bring on the red carpet.

Daytime Emmys Fashion - The Polls

poll by twiigs.com

poll by twiigs.com

Daytime Emmys Fashion - Part Three

We'€™ll call part three the complete mixed bag.

Kind of the good, the bad and the meh of the long and the short.

Let'€™s start with the short. While Laura Wright's white mini-dress was too casual, some of those who went short did better. Kirsten Storms' black strapless cocktail dress cute and sophisticated (and her companions didn't come off too badly either).

Lesli Kay'€™s animal print is something I usually wouldn'€™t like, but she kind of makes it work.

Kent Masters King'€™s peach dress was very summer lunch and the gladiator sandals pretty much ruined any potential it might have had.

Daytime Emmys Fashion – Part Two

Yellow is a notoriously difficult colour to pull off, but three actresses with completely different colouring gave it a go. In Rachel Melvin’s case I actually like the dress, and it goes well enough with her colouring, but there are two significant problems. First, to put it as delicately as possible, she’s not really filling the dress out very much is she? Leaving things a little deflated? Second, to put it not delicately at all, her hair, as usual, is an odd mess and very distracting.

Then there’s Claire Coffee who, if anything, looks too sunny. Dress and hair matching isn’t usually a good thing (see our friends in black in the previous post), and well, now that I notice it, she’s not really filling out this dress particularly well either.

Finally we have Best Actress Jeanne Cooper, who I think overdid the bling (but she’s probably entitled), but otherwise I love her yellow-tinged caftan/kimono. I think she looks great.

The other thing she’s got going for her that to a degree her yellow compatriots don’t, is that it’s flattering. Flattering was the word of the evening for me, because it’s where so many fell down. Using the examples above, if you’re not so well endowed, don’t pick a dress that highlights that fact. If you’re of a certain age, don’t pick a dress that highlights the fact that, perfectly reasonably, you no longer have a waif-like waist.

Two of the major offenders in the latter category were Leann Hunley, who choose a swirly number that makes her look like a pink tree-trunk from the armpits down…

…and Melody Thomas Scott whose dress was at the top of the diva rankings, but completely unflattering and not helped at all by her make-up.

Daytime Emmys Fashion – Part One

Oh dear.

Well, let me be generous and start with some positives. There was a lot of great colour. And, um, well…

Look, I think there were many actresses with great intentions to do something interesting or different or colourful or whatever, but unfortunately many, many of them didn’t work. At all. Or it they did they were wrecked by the hair and make-up.

But let me start with those that definitely worked.

Michelle Stafford can do nothing wrong – her dress was my favourite last year too – keeping it simple and delicate. Plus, you know, flattering.

Speaking of delicate, Susan Lucci is obviously too delicate for all this sunshine, so there’s no photo of her where she’s not hiding under an umbrella, but even hiding under there she looks great.

That Grecian draping was extremely popular, which made it boring pretty quick. If inoffensive.

See Tamara Braun – only someone that skinny could wear a dress with a band around the hips and not look chunky.

And Adrienne Franz in a great colour but kind of blah dress.

Moving away, temporarily, from the inoffensive, let’s stop by Best Supporting Actress Gina Tognoni. Now, I see what she was going for here. Something interesting and structured and a bit different.

All well and good, if rather uncomfortable looking. But then you get to the close-up and discover there’s a giant red band – in a colour slightly different to that of the dress – wrapped around her hips!

What the hell is that? I mean, I didn’t really so much like the dress itself, but at least I admired the attempt until that happened. Does it have an in-built cushion in the back to make sure she’s comfortable sitting through all the hours of the show? Is it slightly loose on that hip so she can keep her lipstick in there instead of bringing a clutch? And also, why is her hair auditioning for a Robert Palmer video?

Really, I don’t want to be mean, but I cannot help it.

Especially not when it comes to asking what on god’s green earth possessed the otherwise lovely Melissa Archer to wear a vivid blue trash bag-Austrian blind combination dress?

Surely that would have been laughed out of town at even the 1986 Awards, let alone 2008…

Nomination Station

Righty-o, Daytime Emmy Nominations are out and I, of course, have to throw in my three cents worth (inflation is high around here).

My first reaction was yay! Days got some nominations other than for the Best Hair award.

I couldn’t be more pleased that a show where the performances improved so much after the writing team changed (and before it changed again) got recognised with four acting nominations. Even if I don’t understand all of them.

Let’s start with the one that I definitely understand: Rachel Melvin. That was one nomination well earned. Some of the others seem odd though, largely for who got left out. Judy Evans for Supporting, but not Mary Beth Evans? Not that I don’t like Judy, but what, exactly, did she really have to do? Darin Brooks, but not Blake Berris? I like Darin just fine, especially on the comedic side of things, but again, he’s had far more to work with so far this year than he did last year, vice versa for Blake. As for Thaao, that’s just cool even if I’m not sure he should have qualified for Lead Actor instead of Supporting.

Moving on. Is the Outstanding Lead Actor category the only place in soaps outside Y&R where the veterans rule the roost instead of being subjugated to the youngsters? Is it also the only place where year on year you can choose the nominees blindfolded with your eyes closed months before the pre-noms even come out and know you’re guaranteed to be right because the same four guys are nominated every year with only one slot open to an interloper? And yet while boring you don’t feel that’s wrong because Canary, Geary, Bergman and Le Blanc continue to deliver no matter the crap they’re fed? I do think it’s fun that Penghlis got the fifth spot this year, though I feel like Thorsten Kaye has a right to feel a bit of a snub given he too always rises above the dreck and had a whole lot heaped on him last year.

I can’t comment much on the Outstanding Lead Actress category as three nominees come from shows I’ve never really watched, and Y&R has been so blah that I haven’t seen it in ages either. As for those who got left out, obviously Melody Thomas Scott is a problem and I gather Katherine Kelly Lang did some great work on B&B that has carried over into this year, but I’m not overly surprised about her being left out, or the rest.

As for Younger Leading Actress, I’m going to join in the chorus and wonder where in the hell the nomination for Kirsten Storms is. In my view that’s the most obvious snub across the board.

Supporting Actress, as I have noted before, is the category I have the most problem with, and it seems that some actresses who should have been leads, especially Alicia Minshew, get shot in the foot by nominating the wrong category. To me it seems that the actresses who get pre-noms in this category who do more work generally get screwed over when compared to those who either do short guest stints (like Genie Francis last year) or suffer from being stuck on the back-burner. It’s not necessarily that someone who does more work is better or worse than someone who does less, it’s just that it's comparing apples and oranges. All year-round supporting work seeming quite different to an appearance every few months or for a short stint. But there’s not really that much room to split the category further, I don’t think, and the prime time awards and Oscars suffer from similar problems, especially in this category. Anyway, all that rambling is by way of saying I don’t have much to say about this category. Nor its male counterpart either, really.

Which leaves Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Show, two awards that must be extremely difficult to find enough nominees to fill in this day and depressing soap age. Which probably explains a lot, really: filler.

Word around the general soap grapevine is that One Life to Live, a show I don’t watch, and no one else watches, has clearly been the best show around in recent times. So good for it for its nominations in both categories. Word also is that B&B, which I am more familiar with but haven’t watched in years, has also been pretty good recently. And yet it gets a Writing nod, but not Show. As for the shows I do watch, Days improved but not enough to deserve a nomination, AMC is sucktastic and not deserving of anything but derision, Y&R fell a long way from previous heights but not so far as to lose its annual nominations – largely, I suspect, because of the level of the competition.

Then there’s GH. Which got nominated in both categories. On that front I’ve decided that these nominations are generated solely by two things: (1) the need to fill the categories; and (2) the fact that the Metro Court Hostage Crisis was actually good, and no watched any part of the other 11 months and 1 week of the year in deciding these nominations.

And now, on with the Awards themselves just so we can praise and make fun of the dresses. Because I don’t actually care how any of these turn out. Though it would be kind of cool if Rachel Melvin won.

Full list of key category nominations after the jump.

Do you lead or support?

Right, so, Emmy pre-noms are out.

As usual these things – even with the rule changes – raise questions.

I’ll choose to ignore, temporarily, the actual merits of the lists, mainly because I’m entirely distracted by the categorisations. Also because these lists don’t actually count for much until they’re culled down. Or after that, let’s face it.

But on the categorisations, I do understand the fundamental problem that some actors are leads in some stories and supporting in others (as they should be) and that causes a big category dilemma, especially when shows are actually balanced. There’s no real way around the problem that causes other than to (a) only nominate people who have genuinely fallen into the Lead or Supporting category all year or (b) specify the story for which they are nominated. Though while I’m almost of the opinion that these pre-noms should come with explanations of which stories have been submitted for which performers, perhaps in parenthesis, I actually don’t think either of the above options would really work, so we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

I haven’t paid that much attention to the new rules, but I assume the pre-noms are still offered up by each show based on what the actors/shows categorise themselves as, but that still doesn’t make some of these nominations any less baffling.

Some are simple enough. In 2007 of course Thorsten Kaye, Ali Sweeney, Steve Burton, Peter Bergman, Laura Wright and no doubt several others on shows I don’t watch, were clearly Leads. In individual stories and across the whole year.

But. But.

How on any planet was Alicia Minshew Supporting in 2007? She was so clearly a Lead that I put her automatically in the above list before doing a triple-take on the listing which shows her to be actually nominated as Supporting. Much the same, with slightly less vehemence, applies to Becky Herbst. For many years a quintessential Supporting actor, in 2007 she was absolutely a Lead. And yet is nominated in the Supporting category.

Going in the opposite direction, even with John’s “death” I do not see any circumstances in which Deirdre Hall was a Lead last year. In any story. So far this year, certainly. Last year? No. Also on Days, yes Peter Reckell and especially James Scott were what I’d call Leads last year, and in certain stories so was Stephen Nichols. But Thaao Penghlis? Even with the dual role? Surely he was Supporting? And Brian Datillo, Supporting? Really? Surely Lead?

I think that Tyler Christopher is a classic example of the story Lead verses show Lead dilemma. In past years he’s definitely been a show Lead, though not so much in 2007 – or maybe most of his stories were just so boring that I fast-forwarded a lot – though clearly in the Black & White sweeps story he was a lead and deserves a pre-nom for it.

I think they got the Supporting category right for GH’s guys – Bradford Anderson (proving himself older than I would have thought), Rick Hearst and Sebastian Roche were all clearly Supporting, even if that is a waste of a certain Mr Hearst’s talent once again. In fact all the other GH noms feel about right, Megan Ward was clearly a Lead, Nancy Lee Grahn is a Lead simply by her presence even if the bulk of her airtime was at the beginning of the year, and Carolyn Hennesy and, sadly, Kimberly McCullough were Supporting.

Over at Days, I’m not quite sure how Judi Evans was nominated as Supporting given that she was barely on, while it’s both sad and appropriate that Mary Beth Evans only made Supporting instead of Lead because she also didn’t have enough to do to justify it.

Which brings me to another point that I’ve just noticed in typing that last sentence. What does it say when in many cases an onscreen partnership splits the categories? Thorsten Kaye is a Lead, but his onscreen partner is Supporting? Stephen Nichols is a Lead but his onscreen partner is Supporting? Steve Burton is a Lead but his onscreen partner is Supporting? Christian Le Blanc is a Lead but his onscreen partner is Supporting? Notice the genders there? The only flip of that on the shows I pay any attention to is Alison Sweeney being a Lead with one of her onscreen partners being a Lead and the other Supporting. I some cases that’s clearly a product of under-use of the female partner, in others already mentioned its silly miscategorisation. Either way, why is the woman always losing out?

As for the Younger categories, it always strikes me as odd that the genuine child actors get nominated in the same categories as those in the 20s. Dylan Cash and Josh Duhon in the same category? It’s clearly the kids verses the college sets and maybe the category should just get split to over 18s and under 18s, with the second category not being something that has to be awarded every year. Though it is nice to see the younger sets of both Days and GH have an opportunity to get some recognition – and it’s nice to see Days acknowledging both their longer term players as well as Kristin Renton and Matthew Florida who were both instrumental in layering out the sorority story and making it work so well.

Again, none of the above comments have anything to do with who I think should or should not have been nominated because that is a whole other ballgame. I’ll leave off weighing in on that until the actual nominations come out.

In the meantime, this being highly subjective, what’s your take on the categorisations of Lead and Supporting? And should the over 18 but under 26s get their own space or be left to fight it out with everyone else in the Lead and Supporting categories?

2007 Best & Worst Part Three – Days of Our Lives

Best Casting
Shelley Hennig as Stephanie Johnson. She doesn’t look like a Johnson, but she’s wound up doing really, really well. See below.

Worst Casting
I don’t actually need to write this, right? Okay, for the sake of completeness: Marcus Patrick as Jett Carver.

Biggest WTF?
Santo and Colleen’s letters determine that Sami must marry EJ to end the feud? Sure they do.

Most Disappointing Performance
Brian Dattilo’s performance as Lucas, simultaneously flat and yelly in the second half of the year, has annoyed me no end. I don’t think it’s all him, some of it’s the writing, but still.

Most Improved
Stephanie Johnson. She returned to town all inexplicably slutted up and stupid, and looking nothing like her parents, but over the last six months she’s developed depth and is now far, far more interesting, and it didn’t even take the rape to get her there (not that it should, but so often it’s the soap way), she had progressed a long way before that.

Best Couple
Bo and Hope.
There was plenty of competition this year, but Steve and Kayla didn’t get enough time and Chelsea and Nick had such a roller-coaster, but Bo and Hope showed that a couple could be chemistry-laden and fun and happy together without having to be under threat of break-up every other minute. It was a breath of fresh air this past year.

Couple Every Moral Fibre of My Being Says I Should Hate But I Love Regardless
Stephanie and Max

Story That Shouldn’t Have Worked, Yet Did
The sorority story. Nothing about “Stephanie and Chelsea join a sorority” should have been a success, and yet, everything was.

Most Successful Bringer of the Funny
Steven Earl Johnson, as if there were any doubt.

Best and Worst Dressed
See, this is too hard on this show, because so much of the time no one is dressed well, no one. I just couldn’t single anyone out as being any better or worse than anyone else.

The Jane Elliot Ageing Gracefully Yet Spectacularly Award
This is kind of hard on this show too, because so many of them are doing so well: Mary Beth Evans, Peter Reckell, but in the end it has to go to Stephen Nichols. No one should look that hot at his age. It’s wrong. And yet oh so right.

Biggest Waste of Potential
The Brady-DiMera feud. They could have done so much more with this than they did, and to have the whole thing wind up as an excuse to get Sami and EJ married was just a waste.
Dishonourable mention to the reintroduction of Jeremy Horton.

Worst Story
Tinda Lau. It had some competition, but Belle and Shawn on the run and stuck in an island bar with a couple of lunatics and yet still being utterly boring wins in the end.

Best Story
This is tough too, mainly because so many of the stories were weak on the pay-off or still going on. But in the end the winner has to be – no matter what has happened since – Lucas and Sami’s wedding and Lucas standing by her when the truth came out. So, so satisfying.

But what’s your take? Other story suggestions welcome in the comments, of course.

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more at twiigs.com...

2007 Best & Worst Part Two – General Hospital

Best Casting
Megan Ward as Kate Howard.
With a note that this is consistently the one area where there is competition for the “best” title on this show. Honorary mention this year for Josh Duhon as Logan Hayes.

Worst Casting
Whatsherface and her Big Hair as Did You Know My Family Escaped From Iran?

Biggest WTF?
James Craig is Jerry Jacks. Arg.

Most Disappointing Performance
Tony Geary’s exceedingly hammy portrayal of Luke’s heart attacks. With the hospital stuff since he’s been great, but the actual attacks were laughably bad.

Most Improved
Maxie Jones and Kirsten Storms in playing her. Take a relentless bitch and turn her into a still bitchy, extremely fun character with layers. Love her. And when you add in Storms’ heart-breaking performance over Georgie’s death at the end of the year, you have a real winner.

Best Couple
Patrick and Robin. They put them through crap, insanity and occasional personality transplants and they’re still golden.
Honorary mentions to Luke and Tracy (not enough time) and Logan and Lulu (too fast, too fast).

Story That Shouldn’t Have Worked, Yet Did
Noah and Anna’s Eli Love story. First, they actually used some vets that they’d lured back. Second, they used them in a way that fitted their schedules and didn’t leave them languishing on the back-burner when done. Third, they involved the kids. Fourth, it actually turned out to be fun.

Most Successful Bringer of the Funny
Diane Miller.

Least Successful Bringer of the Funny
Lulu’s Three Stooges.

Best Dressed
Kate. Which is only right, really.

Worst Dressed
We already covered that one.

Worst Trend of the Year
The serial killer targeting young women. Boo to both GH and AMC on that front.

The Ageing Gracefully Yet Spectacularly Award
Goes to Jane Elliot. She looks better now than she did as Angelica Deveraux 20 years ago. So much so, that from now on this award is named after her.

Biggest Waste of a Movie Rip-Off
The Departed. A story that could actually have worked for this show (actually, red herrings aside still could). Where did it go? Does Sonny even remember that Coop works for him?

Worst Story
Post-Metro Court Hostage Crisis Sonny-Carly-Jax “triangle” as manifest in Marble Wars 2007. Dishonourable mention to Jax’s rape. Another dishonourable mention to Scott’s sudden desire to get custody of Laura and actually getting it!

Best Story
The Metro Court Hostage Crisis.
Whatever happened later with trying to repeat it or Craig as Jerry, this original go at a real-time event was great pretty much all around.

But what’s your take? (And yes, it was much easier to compile one of these lists than the other.)

more at twiigs.com...

more at twiigs.com...

2007 Best & Worst - Part One, A Category in Isolation

We’ll begin the awarding of this year’s Best & Worst with a category that deserves it’s own post. The Worst Dressed Award.

And the Loser is…

Carly Benson Roberts Spencer Quartermaine Corinthos Corinthos Corinthos Alcazar Corinthos Jacks

Was there really any doubt? You knew when it got isolated into its own post, didn’t you?

Now, I can’t say there was no competition at all, and I can’t say that she didn’t improve later in the year largely thanks to spending a month in an attractive black strapless dress, and her wedding dress was lovely, but really, this competition was over as soon as the Summer of Backlessness At All Costs began.

In case you have any doubts as to why Ms When Bad Clothes Happen to Good Hairstyles won this award, I give you the year in Carly’s wardrobe:

Oh, and my vote for absolute worst outfit of the year? The yellow backless number she wore to visit Jason in jail. Inappropriate on every single level.

Dis-honourable mentions in this category to Days’ Kate Roberts and GH’s Sam McCall, the latter’s wardrobe for most of the year I have to believe was the most successful part of Amelia’s revenge plan.

The rest of the Best & Worst, for Days and GH, will roll out over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to Clarissa for the caps.