'Mad Men,' 'Lost,' 'FNL,' 'Modern Family' Get Some Emmy Lovin'

Emmy nominations in a nutshell:

Mad Men: 17 nominations.

Modern Family: 14 (almost all the show's actors got nominated with the glaring exceptions of Ed O’Neill, who plays Jay, and Rico Rodriguez, who plays Manny)

Lost: 12 (including lead actor nomination for the much-maligned Matthew Fox who I, personally, liked very much as Jack Shephard)

Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler got nominated for lead actress and actor in Friday Night Lights. FINALLY!

Jon Hamm (Don Draper), January Jones (Betty Draper), John Slattery (Roger Sterling), Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson), Christina Hendricks (Joan Harris), Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) and Terry O’Quinn (Smoky Locke) all got acting nominations. Even Andre Braugher, who gave a brave performance on Men of a Certain Age, got a nod.

Missing from the nominations – complete list is here -- Grey’s Anatomy and Rescue Me actors and writers whom I thought deserved some accolades.

Here are the nominees for the two biggest categories:

Best drama: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Good Wife, Lost, Mad Men, True Blood

Best comedy: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie, The Office, 30 Rock

I wrote up my react to the nominations here at CliqueClack TV.

Who are you pleased to see on this list? Who’s missing?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

Matthew Fox and Jimmy Fallon Talk 'Lost's' Big Questions, Like Kate or Juliet?

Matthew Fox, who plays the heroic Island saving Jack Shephard on Lost, appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and “dished” about the show. He agreed to field some of Fallon's odd ball questions including who he’d pick if he had a choice: Kate or Juliet. His answer may surprise you. Or, maybe not.

'Lost's' Matthew Fox and Jimmy Kimmel Share a Weird 'Gorgeous Man' Moment

Matthew Fox appeared on Jimmy Kimmel's show to promote Lost, but he wound up promoting his comedy chops. The two did a video -- which reminded me of Kimmel's video with Ben Affleck, minus the bleeped out expletives and sexual references -- which was weirdly amusing.

Very un-Jack Shepherd-like. (Link to video here.)

My favorite moment: The "In Your Eyes" lip syncing on the roof.

So-So 'Lost' Clip Show But Amusing Jorge Garcia Interview

Last night's Lost clip show was clearly an attempt to camouflage the time travel/can-you-change-the-future?/sci-fi geekness that has been extremely pronounced this season, so pronounced that ABC felt it necessary to create new Lost Untangled videos each week to explain what you saw on the show. The clips focused almost exclusively on the relationships between characters and de-emphasized the more confusing aspects of the show as it has unfolded this season, such as whether the arrival of the Oceanic 6 on the island in 1977 will change future events, what impact saving Kid Ben had or didn't have, etc.

Not that I dislike the relationship emphasis mind you -- in fact that's one of the things of which I'm most fond -- but I felt like the so-called "new" episode last night was a naked attempt to lure new viewers into the last few installments by saying, "Yeah, what you've heard about Lost being complicated and all geeked out with this time travel and killer/judgmental black smoke. Not so much."

Anyway . . . earlier this week while reading the web site Jezebel, I came across this clip of Jorge Garcia (Hurley) being interviewed on the Bonnie Hunt Show (a program I've never watched, though not due to any antipathy for the host). The funniest part about it was when Garcia mentioned that he cannot look at Matthew Fox (Jack) during serious scenes or they'll both crack up. (Link to the video here.)



Tangential note: The Boston Globe's Joanna Weiss cracked me up yesterday. When making her TV recommendations for Wednesday night viewing, she wrote of Lost: "A 'retrospective,' which means a 'clip show.' Which means another week before we learn what Sawyer did to Jimmy Barrett." For those of you not in the loop, Jimmy Barrett is a Mad Men character played by Patrick Fischler, who plays Phil on Lost, an inside joke for fans of Lost and Mad Men, of which I am one.

'Loving Lost:' Entertainment Weekly Cover Story on Writers' 'Master Plan'

Entertainment Weekly promises us that the Lost writers have got an actual master plan and know what they're doing with this whole time travel, back-and-forth stuff.

Its cover story this week says that while season five has been a bit of a head-scratcher thus far, now that the writers have a definitive series end date and they've been creatively unleashed, freed to devise a jam-packed, mind-blowing conclusion for this maddeningly wonderfully confusing drama:

"Though the show was confusing before? Try this on for size: Time travel. Quantum physics. Hydrogen bombs. And a Da Vinci Code-meets-Foucault's Pendulum-meets-Weekend at Bernie's conspiracy to save (or destroy) the world, the linchpin of which involves U-Hauling the corpse of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) back to the Island. When the gloriously strange saga of Lost finally concludes next year, season 5 is likely to be remembered as the one when the series came out of the closet and declared itself."

The article tries to soothe fans' concerns by encouraging Losties to be patient. Matthew Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shephard, says there will be a pay off for sticking with the tangle of storytelling:

"There will be many, many answers, lots of things from past seasons that left the audience thinking, 'That's never going to pay off' -- but it does, in really cool ways that make you go 'Holy s---!' The season has a real feeling of things coming together, and it builds a groundswell of momentum for the end of the show."

Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin Kwon, also urges fans to hold on, no matter how challenging the first half of this season has been, saying, ". . . I like how the writers are showing allegiance to the true fans. The people who stayed with us are being rewarded with the more complicated and nuanced storytelling that they've been hungering for."

I can only hope that they're all correct because those high expectations they've just set with this "master plan" business, they're going to be hard to meet.

Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.