Amy's Robot

Elaine Stritch and the Emmys

The Emmy nominations came out today, and 30 Rock broke its own record for the number of nominations a comedy show got (they're up to 22 from last year's 17.) The show got nominated for everything, including acting nominations for Tracy, Kenneth, and Jenna in addition to Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey, and 3 out of the 6 nominations for Best Director for a comedy. The Directing nominations were for especially great episodes: "Reunion", "Apollo, Apollo", and "Generalissimo".

[here's the full list of nominations]

One great category is for Guest Actress on a comedy: there's Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on the SNL Presidential Bash special (a little weird--that was pretty much a clip show,) Elaine Stritch as Colleen Donaghy on 30 Rock, and Betty White for My Name is Earl playing something called "Crazy Witch Lady", which I have not seen but now sort of want to.

Anyway, in one of those articles with actors' breathless responses to the news that they got a nomination, most of the responses are not especially interesting. Even Tracy Morgan, who I thought we could depend on for something good-- his response was sweet about his manager calling him with the news, but not funny or anything: "He was crying, congratulating me, and then I started crying. It's been a long time, a long journey just to be recognized."

But Elaine Stritch came through. Her quote: "I was overjoyed with my nomination for, what was it, 30 Rock? Because if I get lucky, it will give me yet again another opportunity to express my deepest feelings about 'show business.' Feelings that have been bottled up for 365 days."

She's already won 3 Emmys (one for 30 Rock two years ago) and probably a million Tonys.

In the Guest Actor category, 30 Rock got 3 nominations, too: Alan Alda, Jon Hamm, and Steve Martin.

I don't love overuse of guest stars on TV anymore than I like it on the forthcoming Rihanna album, but last year 30 Rock did a pretty good job with it.

categories: Celebrities, TV
posted by amy at 4:50 PM | #