TVSquad

It looks like the Emmy Awards are turning into the SATs.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has made several changes to the way Emmy nominations are chosen. For one, series and acting category nominations will be chosen by a mix of a regular vote and voting by a blue-ribbon panel of voters. Second, there's a new "Ellen Burystyn" rule. An actor can only be nominated if he or she was in at least 5% of an episode (Burstyn won a Supporting award last time, even though she was only on screen for 14 seconds). Third, public performances on TV will no longer compete in the music/variety category. They're adding a new special category where more than one performance could win an award.

Oh, and there's one more change: actors and producers will have to submit an essay of 250 words or less as to what their character/show is about and why they think they should be nominated. This wiill come in handy when Jim Belushi has to explain the complexity of his According To Jim character.

When Ellen Burstyn received an Emmy nomination based on a fourteen-second cameo appearance in the HBO film Mrs. Harris, many critics used the nomination as an example of how out of touch Emmy voters were with the viewing public.

Even Burstyn herself was shocked by the nomination as she told AP Radio. This was the first time she made any public remarks about the nomination, and as one would expect, she thought it was as silly as everyone else thought it was. "My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and, ultimately, I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear," she joked.

The critics had a good point; as good an actress as Burstyn is (she won an Oscar thirty-two years ago for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), fourteen seconds is not long enough to determine whether a performance is award-worthy or not. Luckily, she didn't win; he co-star in Mrs. Harris, Cloris Leachman, took the award.

Ellen Burstyn snagged a sweet Emmy supporting-actress nomination for her role in Mrs. Harris, an HBO original film. One good way -- best I can tell -- to get nominated for an award, is to have a shelf-full of accolades already, and Burstyn certainly does.

Ray Richmond goes on a tear over the nomination, which then extends to all behaviors Burstyn and award-related, in a rant that makes for some fun reading at Past Deadline.

I especially take to his point that this calls into questions whether Emmy-nominators actually watch the performances they pick from, or they merely check boxes based on reputations of those involved. Maybe the TV screens at the old folks home are blurry and they thought Burstyn was someone else in the same movie. I would not heed Richmond's call to decline the nomination if I were in Burstyn's position, though. If anyone wants to give you a stupid award, I say let 'em.

[Thanks, tvrayz, for the tip!]

Good news for fans of NBC's short-lived series The Book of Daniel. All 8 episodes of the controversial Aidan Quinn/Ellen Burstyn show are coming to DVD on September 26.

It's going to be a 2-DVD set, but it's only 8 episodes, so I'm going to assume there will be some extras in the set.

The show was canceled rather quickly after several NBC affiliates dropped the show due to its subject matter.

Despite all the publicity leading up to Friday's premiere of The Book of Daniel on NBC, it still didn't do so hot in the ratings. The two-hour premiere, which aired from 9-11 pm on Friday, averaged about 9 million viewers. That's fewer than Close to Home, Numb3rs, In Justice, and 20/20, which all aired against Daniel on CBS and ABC. In Justice and 20/20 barely beat Daniel, each with a little more than 9 million viewers.

I watched The Book of Daniel out of pure curiosity. I like Aidan Quinn and I wanted to give the guy a chance. Plus, I wanted to see whether all the ruckus was justified. It wasn't.

In the middle of his sermon, Reverend Daniel Webster (Aidan Quinn) poses this question to the congregation:

"If there were no temptation, how can there be redemption?"

The Book of Daniel made its much anticipated debut Friday night on NBC with a two-hour episode. If you saw it, you know there were so many subplots that trying to recap them here will make your (and my) head spin.

In a nutshell, Daniel's life is a complicated one, to say the least. This Episcopalian man of the cloth has to deal with his teenage daughter (Grace) being arrested for dealing pot, to having a gay son (Peter) that causes confusion for him, to having an adopted son from China (Adam) who pokes fun at his Asian features and heritage, to having a neurotic wife taken to having martinis as soon as noon passes, to having a female bishop critiquing his Sunday sermons, to finding out his brother-in-law has embezzled $3.2 million from the church, to dealing with a stiff and wooden father who happens to be a bishop, to his mother suffering from Alzheimer's, to interacting with a Mafia-connected Catholic priest. (I could go further but I think you get the general idea.)