Poll Results - Who Do You Think Should Win The Emmy For Outstanding Actor In A Comedy?

Did you notice that I changed the title of this from what the question I put up on the poll was? This better reflects what I wanted from you. And indeed it seems to have been a bit of an issue for the one person who offered up a comment, my dear blogging friend Linda who said "As for the new poll: it would be more my voting for who I would want to win. (I can't vote for who I think WILL win; I don't even like the guy.)" I'm not sure this makes the poll result more or less valid, but to make it clear what I want is to know who you think SHOULD win not who you think will win. Then again with just six voters I'm not sure that validity actually comes into the equation. But am I bitter? No, actually I'm really not. Given my level of posting recently I can't really expect a lot of people to drop around to hang on my every word. I don't really have a reason to be bitter...over this. There are plenty of other things from me to be bitter over but that's a whole other story that I'm not going to tell.

Okay, here are the results. As I've said there were six voters. Tied for fourth place with no votes are Lee Pace from Pushing Daisies and Charlie Sheen from Two And A Half Men. In third place with one vote (17%) is Steve Carell from The Office. In second place with two votes (33% is Tony Shaloub from Monk. But the winner, with three votes (50%) is Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock.

Right now, this is a category where I don't really see most of the shows – well okay any of the shows – except in moments of boredom when I'm flipping through channels. Sitcoms aren't my thing. I've seen parts of some old episodes of Two And A Half Men and like the Odd Couple style relationship between Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer even if it is an inferior copy of the brilliant original. In fact I might even go so far as to suggest that the reason why the show gets such good ratings – something that is incomprehensible to many and is probably why it gets Emmy nominations but never won the award – is because it is familiar. Pushing Daisies is an undiscovered country for me. Last season I was pretty much locked on CBS on Wednesday nights pre-strike and ABC wasn't good enough to either produce new episodes after the strike or to repeat the show. I know it's a show I should watch if only because it features one of the great objects of my affection, the dynamic Kristin Chenoweth. But I didn't get a chance, and maybe it's really not a show you can pick up in mid-stream.

Moving on to Steve Carell and The Office it's a show that I haven't see much but which I know in my heart is good. Carell's performance as the terminally oblivious Michael Scott, who think that he's a good boss and that the people who work under him actually like him and his team building exercises, is beautifully realised. Or you know, so people tell me. As for Tony Shaloub in Monk, well that's a show that I haven't seen since ABC aired some first season episodes years ago. Yeah I missed the handful of episodes that NBC aired earlier this year as an aftermath of the strike. It's not available here or at least not on any channel that I'm able to get (but that leads to a whole discussion of how broadcast rights are handled in this country which is a topic for another time). As a result I don't think I get why Shaloub is constantly on the list for this award. I mean I enjoyed the episodes that I did see enough so that I hoped that episodes beyond the first season would somehow find their way to something that I could get, but I'm not entirely sure that this really qualifies as a comedy. Sure there are funny moments but there were funny moments in Columbo (a show that Monk is occasionally compared to) and all of Peter Falk's nominations and wins for that show were in the Drama category.

But the big thing about Shaloub is that in my opinion at least I don't think that he rises to the level of the man that the poll results – and I – think should win this category, Alec Baldwin as NBC executive Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock (I'm also betting that this is who Linda was talking about in her comment). Granted, Baldwin plays Jack as someone with an outsized combination of ego, bombast and self-importance, but let's admit that these are exactly the qualities that you'd expect someone in his position to have. In fact I have a suspicion that the Donaghy character is a not particularly subtle caricature of Jeff Zucker, or at least what people think Jeff Zucker is like. It's an outsized unrealistic character (at least it is to those who aren't in the entertainment business if some of the stories that Ken Levine tells are even half true) but Baldwin is strong enough to pull it off. I think he's going to win.

New poll up in a few minutes.