{alltv} Emmy nominations full of surprises and snubs

The Karaoke Channel Online Member Community

Several new faces join the 2011 Emmy race with nominations announced early today in Hollywood, but no series dominated the list.

NBC's Parks and Recreation and CBS' The Big Bang Theory joined returning nominees Glee, The Office, 30 Rock and last year's winner Modern Family as best comedy contenders. And in drama, HBO's new Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones joined returnees Mad Men,The Good Wife and Dexter, while Friday Night Lights— shared by DirecTV and NBC — won its first series nomination for its final season. Actors Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton also won nods.

Left out of top-series contention: AMC's brooding mystery The Killing and zombie hit The Walking Dead, HBO's splashy True Blood and FX's Justified, though the modern-day Western won four acting nominations.

HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce topped the list with 21 nominations, followed by 19 for AMC's Mad Men, which has won best drama for the last three years. Boardwalk had 18 and ABC's Modern Family, 17.

MORE: List of nominees
BLOG: Celebrity reactions and more updates
PHOTOS: A look at the nominees

Other newbies, at least for their current roles, were best-actor nominees Louis C.K. (FX's Louie), Timothy Olyphant (Justified), Johnny Galecki (CBS' The Big Bang Theory), Laura Linney (Showtime's The Big C), Melissa McCarthy (CBS' Mike and Molly), Martha Plimpton (Fox's Raising Hope) and Matt LeBlanc (Showtime's Episodes), along with Boardwalk's Steve Buscemi and Mireille Enos of The Killing.

Kathy Bates, an eight-time nominee, got her ninth for NBC's new Harry's Law as lead actress in a drama. Bates, Enos and Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss (nominated as supporting actress last year), bumped Damages' Glenn Close, The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick and Mad Men's January Jones out of contention.

Among perennial nods, 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin and The Office's departing Steve Carell won their sixth consecutive nominations as best comedy actor (only Baldwin has won, in 2008 and 2009), and Rock's Tina Fey got her 18th and 19th nominations, including several for Saturday Night Live.

And the controversial The Kennedys miniseries, which was dropped by History Channel and moved to ReelzChannel, won four major nominations, for best miniseries, lead actors Greg Kinnear and Barry Pepper and supporting actor Tom Wilkinson, though Katie Holmes didn't make the cut. Other movie/miniseries contenders are HBO's Pierce, Too Big to Fail and Cinema Verite, Starz' Pillars of the Earth and PBS' Downton Abbey.

Actors from Modern Family and Glee took eight of the 12 comedy supporting-actor nominations. Among other highlights: Whoever wins best-drama actor — Buscemi, Chandler, Olyphant, Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Dexter's Michael C. Hall and House's Hugh Laurie — will get their first Emmy. (Three-time winner Bryan Cranston, for AMC's dark drama Breaking Bad, was ineligible this year, because the show did not air during the June 2010-to-May 2011 nominating season.)

In the reality-competition category, perennial winner The Amazing Race is poised to battle last year's upset victor Top Chef along with American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Project Runway and So You Think You Can Dance. Antiques Roadshow, Deadliest Catch, Hoarders, MythBusters, Undercover Boss and Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List are reality series contenders.

And shows led by Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon and Bill Maher will compete with Saturday Night Live in the variety, comedy and music series category.

McCarthy and Fringe's Joshua Jackson presented the list of nominees; the Emmys will be handed out Sept. 18 on Fox.