The Office can repeat, 24 won't.

Last year's big Emmy winners were Thursday's nominees—and not, as the field was revealed for the 59th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards. (View the complete list of nominees.)

Defending Comedy Series champ The Office was in the game again, alongside HBO's hipster Entourage, CBS' traditional Two and a Half Men and the freshmen series 30 Rock and Ugly Betty of NBC and ABC, respectively.

Fox's 24, meanwhile, will have to content itself with the admiration of Vice President Cheney, because the torture-touting adventure, which claimed the 2006 Drama Series Emmy, didn't make the finals for the 2007 race. The show was edged aside in part by the rise of Heroes.

In its first year of eligibility, the capeless NBC superhero series snagged eight nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and Supporting Drama Series Actor (for Heroes' own Hiro, Masi Oka).

Heroes will need to draw on all of its powers, and maybe borrow some from Superman, to prevail in the drama-series race. Its competition: veteran nominees Boston Legal (ABC), Grey's Anatomy (ABC) and House (Fox), as well as a certain former champ in its final season, The Sopranos.

The HBO crime-family drama, which concluded its six-season run in June, bagged 15 nominations, tops among series, including a writing nod for creator David Chase's love-it, or hate-it-so-much-we-canceled-cable cut-to-black final episode, "Made in America." 

Overall, westerns ruled, with the HBO movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and the AMC miniseries Broken Trail roping in 17 and 16 nominations, respectively.

Ugly Betty was the top comedy series nominee, with 11 nods, including acting ones for guest stars Salma Hayek (she's also the show's executive producer) and Judith Light, supporting diva Vanessa Williams and star America Ferrera.

Other top multiple nominees include Grey's Anatomy, 30 Rock and USA's glitzy Hollywood miniseries The Starter Wife, all with 10.

For those who keep track of such Grey's Anatomy things, T.R. Knight was among the show's nominees—he's up for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series; Bionic Woman-bound former castmate Isaiah Washington wasn't. (Washington didn't submit his name for consideration.)

Elsewhere on the snub front, ABC's Desperate Housewives and Lost got nominated, but didn't get as many glamour nominations as in the past (just ask Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly and every desperate housewife, save for Felicity Huffman); NBC's Friday Night Lights got renewed, but it didn't get included in the top categories (it scored nods for casting and direction); Gilmore Girls got zip, which is to say it got just one fewer nomination than all of the CW.

Among those who were nominated, Ferrera, last January's Golden Globe champ, will face off in the Comedy Series Actress category against: Wisteria Lane representative Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives); reigning Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine); Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds), also nominated for her work in the Oxygen TV movie The Robber Bride; and fellow first-time acting nominee Tina Fey (30 Rock), a past winner as a writer for Saturday Night Live.

Star of 24 Kiefer Sutherland had better luck than his series, earning a berth in the Drama Series Actor category against The Sopranos' James Gandolfini, House's Hugh Laurie, Rescue Me's Denis Leary and Boston Legal's James Spader. Sutherland is the defending champ.

Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay has a shot to become a repeat Emmy winner in the Lead Actress in a Drama Series category. Her competition: The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick; Medium's Patricia Arquette; The Riches' Minnie Driver, scoring her first ever Emmy nod; The Sopranos' Edie Falco; and Brothers & Sisters' Sally Field, a two-time Oscar winner who's vying for her first Emmy win since 2001.

Back on the comedy series front, reluctant 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin will square off in the Lead Actor category against Steve Carell (The Office), 2006 winner Tony Shalhoub (Monk), Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men) and Ricky Gervais (Extras), who earned a total of three nominations, including ones for writing and directing the HBO comedy.

In the Reality Competition field, Fox's top-rated American Idol will try, try, try again to defeat CBS' The Amazing Race, currently on a four-year winning streak, ABC's popular Dancing with the Stars and Bravo's potboilers Project Runway and Top Chef. In a not terribly surprising development, though one that likely will be met with glee at the home of at least one former View cohost, Donald Trump's The Apprentice did not make the cut.

In the non-game-playing Reality Program category, Kathy Griffin's Bravo vehicle, My Life on the D-List, will give it another go against the ABC weepie Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Rounding out the field: PBS' Antiques Roadshow; National Geographic's Dog Whisperer and the Penn and Teller Showtime series that dare not speak its name in a family forum (aka Bulls--t!).

For the first time this decade, Will & Grace didn't score any nominations, not even in the guest-actor categories. (The deep-sixed sitcom's Emmy swan song was sung last year.) Former star Debra Messing earned her annual nod anyway—up for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for USA's The Starter Wife.

Messing's competition: The Robber Bride's Parker; a first-time Emmy nominee known as Queen Latifah, up for HBO's Life Support; the formidable Gena Rowlands, up for Lifetime's What If God Were the Sun; and, extending her tour of the awards-show circuit, newly minted Oscar winner Helen Mirren, back in the Emmy game for PBS' Prime Suspect: The Final Act.

Mirren's Oscar-winning counterpart, Forest Whitaker, who claimed the Best Actor trophy last February for Last King of Scotland, will need to break out the tux yet again: He was nominated in the Guest Actor Drama Series category for his turn on NBC's ER.    

The one-and-done Studio 60 earned a respectable five nominations, including one each for guest actors John Goodman and Eli Wallach, but none for star Matthew Perry. The former Friends player still got in the Emmy game, though, thanks to his Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie nomination for the TNT true-life teacher tale, The Ron Clark Story.

Perry's competition: Huffman spouse William H. Macy, up for TNT's Nightmares & Dreamscapes; Jim Broadbent, up for HBO's Longford; Robert Duvall, up for AMC's Broken Trail; and Tom Selleck, up for CBS' Jesse Stone: Sea Change.

Elsewhere, Knight and Oka will square off in the Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category against Boston Legal's William Shatner, The Sopranos' Michael Imperioli and Lost's Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn.

The Supporting Actress in a Drama Series category is basically a showdown between Grey's Anatomy (Katherine Heigl, Chandra Wilson, Sandra Oh) and The Sopranos (Aida Turturro and Lorraine Bracco). If the stars from those two shows split the votes, then the nonaligned Rachel Griffiths, of Brothers & Sisters, might find a clear path to the podium.

Entourage hogged two spots (for Kevin Dillon and defending-champ Jeremy Piven) in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series race. The Office got one for Rainn Wilson, but none for John Krasinski's multiple facial expressions. Instead, the field was rounded out by Jon Cryer and Neil Patrick Harris of the CBS sitcoms Two and a Half Men and How I Met Your Mother, respectively. The nod for Harris was the first for the prime-time fixture formerly known as Doogie Howser.

Two and a Half Men dominated the Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series category, with the sitcom's Holland Taylor and Conchata Ferrell to face off against My Name Is Earl's Jaime Pressly, The Office's Jenna Fischer, Weeds' Elizabeth Perkins and Ugly Betty's Williams.

The Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie lineup would feel at home at the Oscars: Of Anna Paquin (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee), Samantha Morton (Longford), Toni Collette (HBO's Tsunami, the Aftermath), Judy Davis (The Starter Wife), and Greta Scacchi (Broken Trail), all but Scacchi are former Academy Award winners or nominees.

Ed Asner notched his 16th career nomination with an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie nod for the Hallmark Channel's The Christmas Card. The other contenders: Broken Trail's Thomas Haden Church; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee's August Schellenberg and Aidan Quinn; and The Starter Wife's Joe Mantegna.

Other nomination tidbits:

• Were you afraid Family Guy's touching ditty, "My Drunken Irish Dad," would be ignored come Emmy time? Worried that Scrubs' spot-on "Everything Comes Down to Poo" would get flushed away? And frankly outraged at the thought that the Justin Timberlake copenned Saturday Night Live blockbuster, "D--- in a Box," would be censored? Rest easy. The Original Music And Lyrics category took care of everything for you.
  
• Grey's Anatomy's dithering lovers Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey remain on the outs with Emmy voters--neither has ever been nominated for the series.  
  
• Was Battlestar Galactica ignored? In the name-brand categories, yes. Overall, though, the Sci Fi Channel series earned four nominations, including ones for writing and directing.
  
• Henceforth, Hannah Montana will be known as the Emmy-nominated Hannah Montana--the Disney Channel tween comedy is up for Outstanding Children's Program.
• Count Tina Fey among Emmy's multiple nominees. In addition to her acting nod, she notched one for a 30 Rock script.
  
• No scandal here: Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance are both up for Outstanding Choreography.
  
• This American Life has more than a face for radio--the Showtime version of the public-radio favorite is up for, of all things, Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming.
  
• Spike Lee has had as much luck at the Emmys as he's had at the Oscars, meaning he's never won at either award show. He'll get another shot at the Emmy for directing the HBO Hurricane Katrina documentary, When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts.
  
• Jay Leno and the Tonight Show are again on the outside looking in at: The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Late Show with David Letterman and Real Time with Bill Maher, all up for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series.

Get the complete list of nominees.