The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Five Emmy Nominations for “The Office”!

July 6th, 2006

In the list of Emmy nominations released today, NBC’s “The Office” nabbed spots in “Best Comedy Series,” “Lead Actor in a Comedy Series” (Steve Carell), and “Writing for a Comedy Series” (Episode: “Christmas Party”), as well as good camera editing stuff in two episodes.

Which means that–oh, no!–the two lead actors from the two American shows I watch will be up against each other. Tony Shalhoub is nominated every year for his obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk, and he deserves every win (so far, 2003 and 2005). Even when “Monk”’s plots suffer from the screenwriters’ lack of new ideas, Shalhoub manages to subtly keep developing his character. And then there’s Steve Carell, who is immensely talented and who is in my current favorite TV show. But I really don’t think Dunder-Mifflin manager Michael Scott is really his best role. The heart of the show really belongs to Jim (Jim!), Dwight, and Pam. (By the way, Michael Slezak of Entertainment Weekly agrees with me that John Krasinski should have been nominated for Jim. Maybe they had a hard time deciding whether he would be classified as a “lead” or “supporting” actor. Same for Rainn Wilson’s Dwight, who, as far as I’m concerned, could deserve a nomination too).

So much internal conflict! Several people have pointed out that I can be happy if either Shalhoub or Carell win, but that’s far too easy a solution.

On a random note, I wonder . . . what would happen if you put Michael Scott and Adrian Monk in a locked room together?

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