Dave on Demand: Emmy abominations

The experts who determine the Emmy nominations are referred to as "blue-ribbon panels." I suspect this is because the selection process entails tying a colorful sash over one's eyes before choosing.

Don't get me wrong: The field of nominees announced this week is, in some ways, livelier and more attuned than in previous years, especially the recognition of deserving basic cable series like AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages.

But in other regards, the blue-ribboners are clearly still in the dark. Let's start with the most outrageous gaffe: James Spader is nominated as best actor in a drama series for Boston Legal. Again.

Most pretentious and mannered performance? Maybe. But best? Not on this planet, buddy. Yet the guy has now won three times and is a favorite to repeat. (OK, technically one of those was for The Practice, but he was still playing attorney Alan Shore. Only the series title changed.)

There hasn't been an Emmy run this bizarre and undeserved since Spader's Boston Legal costar, Candice Bergen, went home with the hardware five times for Murphy Brown. During that entire interval, I don't think Bergen was aware she was in a comedy.

What kills me about this year's Emmy field is the glaring oversights. Not acknowledging Denis Leary for Rescue Me is unfortunate, but ignoring Kyle Chandler for his superb work on Friday Night Lights is criminal.

And how do you justify totally snubbing The Wire, widely acknowledged as one of the great accomplishments in the history of the medium? What was the problem? Too urban? Too real? Too complicated?

Let's face it: The only way The Wire could have gotten an Emmy nod was if James Spader had been cast as a Baltimore bail bondsman, a role he probably would have played in a satin smoking jacket.

Predictably leading the field with 23 nominations was HBO's John Adams, even though the TV movie and mini-series categories have grown increasingly passe in recent years.

I watched all seven episodes of John Adams, but mostly to see Paul Giamatti stomp around under a series of comical colonial wigs. Giamatti, nominated for outstanding leading actor in a mini-series, went through the entire saga with a distressed snarl on his face, as if he had just smelled a loaded diaper. Now that's acting!

Ladies night. TNT brought back its Monday-night chicks-with-badges tag team this week, The Closer and Saving Grace. The stars of both shows, Kyra Sedgwick and Holly Hunter, were just nominated for best actress on a drama series.

While I enjoy both of their performances a great deal, I don't buy either one of them as a policewoman. Sedgwick's Brenda Johnson strikes me as too big a flibbertigibbet ever to command a major investigative unit. And Hunter on a police force? Her outrageous behavior and bad attitude would get her thrown out of most heavy-metal bands.

The return of Karnak? Is David Letterman psychic? On Tuesday's Late Show, he said, "Baseball fans here in the audience? Earlier tonight, the All-Star Game up there in Yankee Stadium - very exciting. And if there's one thing I like, I'm telling you, it's a 41/2-hour game that doesn't count."

The thing is, that "earlier tonight" business is a canard. His monologue was taped long before the Indians' Cliff Lee threw the first pitch. Yet the game, as Letterman prophesied, lasted 4 hours and 50 minutes, the longest All-Star contest ever.

Eerie, Dave.

By any other name. TV Land's new reality series Family Foreman answered the burning question: How do you keep order in a house when you name all five of your sons George, as two-time former heavyweight boxing champ George Foreman did? The solution: nicknames for all the boys (Monk, Red, Big Wheel, Joe, etc.). Left unanswered: why you would do such a thing.

Don't tell Pokey. Sunday's episode of HBO's Iraq combat series, Generation Kill, contains a striking example of Grunt Latin. One of the Marines, after his unit keeps getting jerked around on its mission, suggests that the Corps' slogan is "semper Gumby," which he translates as "always flexible."

Hmm, might make a nice tattoo.