Familiarity breeds favor on awards night

There are a few things -- and perhaps only a few things -- one can say with real assurance about Thursday’s Emmy nominations, the 56th annual, and one can say them whether or not one has watched the least bit of television in the last, or any other, year.

Some worthy entrants have been overlooked. Some nominations have been based on something other than the work in question -- reckoning a whole career or making up for a mysterious previous lack of recognition, or sentimentality, or laziness (see below). And because there is only one winner per category in a competition in which objective judgment hardly pertains, it is also true that these choices are to some extent arbitrary.

That does not mean that the nominees have not done good work -- the overlap of Emmy nominations and good work is substantial. But these awards are as skewed by habit and partial knowledge on the part of the relevant polity as is any other opinion poll. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which hands out the statuettes, recognizes this, and uses the adjective “outstanding” rather than “best” in the naming of categories.

Indeed, when the big night comes, some winners will say the award could well have gone to any of their fellow nominees. Because it is true. I am the first in line to say that television is mostly Styrofoam peanuts, but at the same time, there are more fine programs on it than the nominations reflect. As with the Grammys and the Oscars, the nominees and winners are chosen partly out of laziness. Or not laziness, exactly -- it’s just that there’s too much television (too many albums, too many movies) for any minimally occupied person to take in. Like the rest of us, the folks who decide the Emmys have only so much time and will sensibly spend whatever portion they allot to television on shows they know or suspect they’ll like; they vote for what they’ve seen.

And so the nominations tend to reflect favorite series or TV events with a lot of advance buildup. This is possibly why shows that dominate the big categories also tend to dominate the technical awards, and why relatively few programs claim most of the field. Twenty-one nominations for “Angels in America” may seem like a lot, but it only reflects the movie’s huge profile. (It doesn’t hurt that it was very good.) Ditto the 20 for “The Sopranos,” 12 for “The West Wing” and 11 for “Sex and the City.” (The 11 for “Deadwood” is a little surprising, though given that 11, I’m also surprised that Ian McShane is not among the nominated.) A small clutch of TV movies ate most of the relevant awards -- besides “Angels in America,” there were “And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself” (nine nominations), “Something the Lord Made” (also nine), “The Reagans,” “Ike: Countdown to D-day” and “The Lion in Winter,” all of them well publicized in advance and featuring familiar names.

The academy loves familiar names. This year, as always, there is a preponderance of repeat contenders, with a few new faces, some of whom will join the ranks of the habitually renominated. And so, for example, in the category of outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, you have Sarah Jessica Parker nominated every year since 1999; Jane Kaczmarek nominated every year since 2000; Patricia Heaton nominated every year since 1999; Jennifer Aniston nominated every year since 2000. Only Bonnie Hunt muscled in for 2004, and it’s taken her long enough. Some of the choices seem reflexive, like William H. Macy in “Stealing Sinatra” -- a fine but not brilliant performance in a mediocre film -- or the rosters of outstanding guest actors and actresses, all of whom are otherwise well known (Bob Newhart, William Shatner, Matthew Perry, John Cleese, John Turturro, Laura Linney, Sharon Stone) and who could in a pinch be voted for strictly on the basis of previous work.

My own favorite show of the eligible year -- “Wonderfalls” -- lasted three weeks on Fox this winter. This sort of thing seems to happen a lot. And so I would propose an additional category for 2005: outstanding prematurely canceled series. That race, at least, would belong to the newcomers.