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Like The Sopranos, Lost was a serialized drama whose finale had fans buzzing for months in advance. Like The Sopranos, the Lost finale received mixed reaction and, copying Sopranos creator David Chase’s MO, Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Cartlon Cuse too went MIA shortly before the last episode aired. On the Lost-themed edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live Sunday, Lindelof and Cuse even had actors from the show reenact the final scene from The Sopranos as one of Lost’s “alternate” endings. But will Lost be able to match Sopranos’ feat of scoring a best series Emmy for its final season?
Lost is one of three veteran drama series which ended their runs over the last two days, along with Fox’s 24 and NBC’s Law & Order. (Though L&O is still hoping for an afterlife on TNT.) Like The Sopranos, each of the three has one previous best drama series Emmy Award and is looking to add a second for its final hurrah. In addition to The Sopranos, only one other recent primetime series, CBS’ comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, was able to score a best series Emmy for its final season. (The Dick Van Dyke Show also accomplished that some 44 years ago.) Like The Sopranos, it had won another best series Emmy a few years earlier. But no series has been able to bookend its run with top Emmy Awards for its first and final season, something that Lost will attempt to do this year after first winning after its freshman cycle in 2005.
Among Lost, 24 and L&O, Lost has the best shot at a best series Emmy win as the critics’ support for 24 and L&O has waned over the past few years. The last time 24 has received a best series Emmy nomination was in 2006 when it won the statuette, and the real-time drama is coming off a mixed-bag final season. Flagship L&O’s streak of 11 consecutive best drama series nominations ended in 2003, and the crime procedural has not received any Emmy nominations since. In comparison, after not making the best series nomination list in 2006 and 2007, Lost returned to the Emmy field and has been nominated in the best drama category for the past two years. In fact, Lost, along with Fox’s House were the only two widely popular nominees in the best drama group last year, joined by cable series Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Big Love, Damages and Dexter. The Emmy Awards producers would certainly hope that more recognizable broadcast titles like Lost, 24 and L&O make the cut this year, and the trio of departing series will probably get some sentimental votes from TV Academy members. But speaking of new broadcast blood to the best drama field this year, CBS’ freshman The Good Wife seems to have the best chance of breaking through the formidable cable competition as AMC’s Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Showtime’s Dexter and FX’s Damages are all likely to return, with HBO’s Big Love on the fence after mixed reviews for its most recent season. HBO’s other two solid drama contenders, David Simon’s New Orleans-set Treme and Alan Ball’s hit vampire series True Blood, both have hurdles to overcome. Simon has never received a best series Emmy nomination as his widely-praised HBO drama The Wire was never recognized by the TV Academy. And the Academy too has persistently ignored genre series, shutting out Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica and, most recently, True Blood last year.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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Fact: Emmys have a long history of ignoring scifi/ horror shows. It took the X Files several years. I’d put True Blood right there along with Buffy as a show that didn’t get the nomination it richly deserved. Some of season 2′s episodes were truly great, much better than the 1st season. 1st season was just campy drivel.
Couldn’t agree more about the academy’s ignoring SciFi. BSG just had great characters, great perforamances, and great stories that just happened to be in that milieu. They constantly ignored the performances by Anthony Michael Hall in “The Dead Zone” but loved the neurosis of “Monk” (I just didn’t get it…). Interestingly, the final season of The Dead Zone was had amazing performances by AMH, perhaps his strongest since the episode when JJ’s fatherhood is revealed…but I am just a sucker for emotion and heart in storytelling, and a huge fan of AMH, a highly underrated actor of late. Give him an Emmy for guest actor on “Community”. Hilarious.
One of the AMC shows will win for Best Drama.
Sutherland might eek out an Actor nom along with Greg Itzin.
what about FNL — when will they get the recognition they deserve?!
Don’t hold your breath
A clarification: I think Nellie meant to say only one other series in the 21st century has been nominated for a best series Emmy during its last season. Several others had been nominated over the years for their last seasons and in fact have won, from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” to name just a couple, not to mention the winners that ran only one year, such as “Truth or Consequences” (best game show, 1951) and “The Bob Newhart Show” (the 1961-62 variety show version).
I doubt they’ll win and Law and Order won’t be nominated.
John Noble on Fringe has been outstanding as Walter Bishop. That episode where he travels to the alternate universe to get an alternate version of his son was absolutely beautifully portrayed by John Noble
I think so too, its going to be a real battle between John Noble and Terry O’Quinn me thinks. Both of them were so good this year.
John Noble is extraordinary in Fringe. His work this season (and last) has been the best of any actor in any show on TV. His ability to turn between Walter the somewhat unbalanced scientist, to Father trying to repair his relationship with his son, to drug loving former hippie – it’s astounding and an absolute joy to watch. He brings empathy and humanity to a role that could so easily have been a cartoon or lambasted. His mastery of the acting craft coupled with the brilliant and witty writing makes this the best show on TV. If you haven’t been watching Fringe, you’re missing out on a rare treat.
Star Trek: TNG, definitely a genre show, garnered a Best Series Emmy nod in its seventh and final year. The original Trek was also nominated for Best Dramatic Series in 1967 and 1968, not the final year, but true genre programming as well.
Law And Order?
Paint by numbers television.
Unwatchable shit. Always has been.
LOST Season 6 absolutely does not deserve an Emmy nomination. And this is coming from someone who adored LOST for the first few seasons. If there is any justice in the world, Treme will win Best Series and every other award it is nominated for.
I agree that LOST doesn’t deserve jack. At some points it was unwatchable. I agree that Treme is fantastic television, but Breaking Bad has been and continues to be the gold standard for brilliant television. No one’s even close to this show.
One thing I know for certain, more LOST fans enjoyed the finale than Battlestar Galactica fans enjoyed their finale. The Sopranos finale was not that great in my opinion.
This is absolutely true. I’m no fan of Lost, so I can’t comment on that series, but Battlestar Galactica got so weighed down by plot elements introduced and then never resolved that its finale was totally unsatisfying and even taken on its own, it wasn’t very exciting as a few hours of television.
that my friend is bullshit
their is more venom being spewed over lost than there ever was over BSG
BSG is the superior show in every sense
and this is coming from someone who loved every single episode of Lost except for the finale
“their is more venom being spewed over lost than there ever was over BSG”
That is because LOST had several times more viewers than BSG.
I judge a show on how brilliant it is, not by the number of people who watch the show. Popular show’s will always be on the major networks, and most of their stuff is shallow, boring dribble. Stephen King says Breaking Bad is the greatest scripted show on television. I concur.
I never really watched BSG so I don’t know anything about it, except its heavy sci-fi(which LOST is not) and all my friends who watched it hated the finale, they wouldn’t stop bitching about how some “God” ending was lame, I don’t know what that means, but eh.
But how can you love every episode of Lost and hate the finale? So you liked Stranger From a Strange Land and Expose, but not The End? That’s a big ‘what the fuck’ right there.
And kudos to Doc Jensen over on ew.com for this amazing, amazing work on all things “Lost”. Give him a hand, folks. He’s up there with the very best.
Indeed, Love Doc Jensen’s analysis, very smart dude. His understanding of the show goes way beyond anything I could know.
Show that should get nominated that won’t: Friday Night Lights, Men of a Certain Age, Parks and Rec., Party Down. Come on people, step up.
Come on Folks, for absolute consistency in excellence for an entire 12 episode season, anyone who loves televison knows it’s Dexter’s year to take home the Emmy gold. Ditto for Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow–the acting grandslam of the year. None of the others (mad Men, Treme, Lost)–all respectable in varying degrees–came close.
I’m a fan of many of the previously nominated series, but in my mind, Dexter is as good as it gets. Great acting, writing, suspense, comedy, drama– it has it all! I’m hooked
I haven’t watched Lost since season 2 but it shouldn’t win just because it was its last season – especially since it had been already awarded in the category before.
I think Damages should win – unfortunately the 3rd season was probably its last (I still hope for a miracle-4th) AND it was fantastic AND it has never won before.
Glenn Close is completely in a league of her own in her category even if they give it to Margulies (3 times in a row might seem like a stretch for them, although it would be COMPLETELY deserved) AND Rose Byrne should finally win something for this, her character isn’t as flashy as Patty Hewes, but her performance is still wonderful.
A) I thought ‘The Wire’ got nominated for it’s final season. I’m almost positive it did.
B) I’d LOVE to see them give some kuddos in the Best Drama category, for the MUCH deserved “Friday Night Lights”. How they’ve managed to ignore it the first three seasons is almost a crime.
BSG is the best piece of work i’ve seen in 47 years, Lost lost me, 24 never more, L@O all the more, and the Sopranos wacked me.
-PC
Agreed. That final scene of the final episode was perfect.
Sorry, that comment was intended for The Shield, below.
BSG was probably the best sci-fi I’ve seen. The best TV program…well I’d have to go with Sopranos or The Wire. Best network TV would probably be Lost.
What is sad is that there is little to replace these series. Nothing in sci-fi (Caprica doesn’t), HBO has been weak, and network TV has some interesting pilots and a few series I like. But nothing on the air now is Lost caliber and new series have a potential for letting viewers down.
So let’s hope something next year: Game of Thrones, the Speilberg-dinosaurs program, etc. can fill those empty shoes. The artistic stuff like Mad Men and Breaking Bad is covered and then some. But we need some quality entertainment programs to start filling up the void soon.
The best final season and series finale of the last five years was The Shield.
yes.
Ignoring the astoundingly dope final season of The Shield renders the Emmys utterly irrelevant and value-free.
sk and hugsnotdrugs:
I am glad some people agree with me. Having been a fan of The Shield since its second season, over the years I’ve found very few people who’ve appreciated the show or even seen it.
Bravo!! And sadly, the show was ignored after its first season, although it was truly spectacular.
How can Lost or 24 get an Emmy for best drama? They already bagged one each, didn’t they? Lost on its first season, 24 on its 5th…
Now let’s see, why should Lost win again… it ended with a mystical cop-out: Sideways world, we were made to believe up until the last 5 minutes of the show, was real. We were made to believe that the two timelines would eventually merge. By detonating the nuclear bomb it created an alternate timeline where the castaways never crashed on the island, never met each other, never had the island adventures, yet there was a tingling sensation that brought them back, just in time as the Island world came to a cataclysmic end, and the two versions of the castaways reintegrated (like the Dark Crystal, where the Mystics and the bad guys were split and reunited)- Hey, maybe the splitting of timelines also split the castaways into separate souls that eventually came together… OH, What’s the point… ????
Good old 24,AKA “The Jack Bauer Power Hour,” once the LOTR of TV, has ended similarly before, with Jack on the run, and a sitting POTUS deciding not to continue with the presidency…
I don’t think Lost nor 24 will get the award. An era has come to an end.
…ok, the producers of Lost kept talking about how The X-Files ran for too long, and lost sight of its own mythology. They implied LOST would not suffer that fate, but… is this finale what they had in mind? Really???
Personally, I think Fringe is the best series on TV. Unlike Lost it actually has a thought out story arc with answers to every question that gets raised. The season 2 finale was well and truly above that of Lost or any other series that I’ve watched. In fact, I’d say the Fringe season 2 two-part finale is the only show on my mind deserving of an Emmy.
Season 4 of “Dexter” was far and away it’s best yet. Maybe now that it has broken all of the ratings records at Showtime it will finally be recognized.
I would like to see Lost get the Emmy. I enjoyed the ending, not because of the plot resolutions but because the sideways stuff made sense after a couple of days reflection. It was a good season, possibly the strongest since season 2, and it represents a type of television that the networks tried to copy and largely fail. It had its flaws, but overall was a bit of excellent entertainment.
Most important, we will probably not see its like again for a few years. I like the AMC stuff, just as I liked the HBO stuff during it’s heyday. But Lost represented the best network TV had to offer, with its creative limitations (no cursing, no nudity, limits on unconventional characters because of advertising dependence) and its larger budget than what most programs are allowed. This, its final year, means that Lost deserves the award.
I’m a sci-fi guy and really loved the “Lost” finale. But there’s no doubt that “Mad Men” had another great season and will win the Emmy once again. That’s just the way these things work…
They’re talking about an Emmy for this last season of “LOST”? Are you kidding me? It wasn’t that good. In fact, the last time “LOST” was consistently good was its first season. It would have to compete against the cable series like “DEXTER”, “MAD MEN”, “BREAKING BAD”, etc. If “LOST” does win a Best Series Emmy, it would not deserve it.
I disagree. I have watched all 4 seasons of Dexter, but to me, it seems he faces similar conflicts. The acting is not very good, and it is getting old now. The reason it is so popular in my opinion is America’s fascination with serial killers, but it is clearly not something most people can relate to. Lost on the other hand, is an allegory of life. Most people here will not pick up on the subtle but strong thematic and metaphysical questions raised by Lost, but I am sure the TV academy will. Michael C. Emerson’s acting is phenomenal as usual, followed by strong performances by Terry O Quinn and Matthew Fox. Fringe won’t win an Emmy because it is sci-fi dominated. To me, that show is average at best. Never seen Mad men or breaking bad, but from friends I can gather that they are decent shows. Still Lost went out with, albeit being controversial, emotional bang. Nothing like Lost had ever been done before, but this finale did something I feel is very daring and needs to be acknowledged. It did not give in to viewers demands, but instead elucidated what it wanted to. It didn’t become a generic CSI episode, but instead laid out all the pieces. All the subtle thematic qualities, ie life is meaningless without death, science is not the authoritative figure over faith, power is not valued at the sacrifice of love, etc are all prominent. Not to mention the daring questions that I am sure Mad Men and Breaking Bad don’t dare ask such as is there a God, is he omnipotent, is he good, is he perfect? What is the meaning of life, do we have a purpose? Do we have free-will or are we just puppets being controlled by our destiny? All of these questions were posed by Lost, and it was a smart move not to answer them, because they DO NOT HAVE THE ANSWERS to these questions. VIEWERS answer these questions because Lost placed them in their mind. People who disliked the finale really only scratched the surface of what is Lost. People who liked the finale often miss out on some of the bigger pictures. Lost truly is a unique show, and it will be a shame if it isn’t recognized at the Emmys. I do know that if not here, later in time, it will be seen as the show that dared to ask questions that are at the forefront of human existence, gave us compelling mysteries, completely changed the medium of television, illustrated beautiful thematic focus intertwined with deep characters, ended on its own terms and not the viewers, and for me, demonstrated that some media can get a tear out of me here and there (no small feat seeing as I never cry, I mean almost puked at 24s horrendous end).
True Blood deserves to be nominated.