Carin Baer/FOXToday's Golden Globes TV nominations were not all about happy Glee songs and happy Glee dances. Not with the likes of Dexter and True Blood around.
By and large, Globe voters rewarded the messed-up (Mad Men's Jon Hamm), the damaged (House's Hugh Laurie), the bloodied (True Blood's Anna Paquin) and the bloodier (Dexter's Michael C. Hall)—as it should be, since happy folks are happy, awards-season love or no.
Top nominee Glee helped lighten up things, with acting nods for Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Jane Lynch. The show's also up for top comedy series.
Here's a more detailed look at the TV field:
• Hamm, Hall and Laurie will not lose drama-series actor again to In Treatment's Gabriel Byrne—Byrne wasn't nominated, and neither was his HBO series. The Mentalist's Simon Baker and Big Love's Bill Paxton will try to spoil the party instead.
• Paquin's the defending champ in the drama-series actress category. Save for The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick, her competition is all-new (at least when compared to last year): Damages' Glenn Close; Mad Men's January Jones, recovering nicely from Saturday Night Live; and, as an apparent sop to people who still watch broadcast TV, The Good Wife's Julianna Margulies.
• Speaking of cable's domination, which we weren't exactly, but now we are, House was the only drama-series nominee to not require a cable or satellite subscription.
• Paquin, for those keeping count, is also up in the TV-movie/miniseries category for the Holocaust-era biopic The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.
• All Glee's Michele will have to do to win her category is break Tina Fey's 100-year-long awards-show winning streak. For what it's worth, Michele is the only comedy/musical actress nominee to be noted for her musical ability, unless, that is, we missed Fey, Toni Collette, Courteney Cox and Edie Falco hitting the high notes on 30 Rock, United States of Tara, Cougar Town and Nurse Jackie, respectively.
• Cox's nomination is her first. She was never, ever nominated, not once, for Friends.
• Morrison is a Globes virgin, too. To become a Globes winner, he'll have to upend reigning comedy/musical actor winner Alec Baldwin (30 Rock), make sure The Office's Steve Carell doesn't get any big ideas, and prove to Californification's David Duchovny and Hung's Thomas Jane that a guy who plays a guy who gets faked out by his fake-pregnant wife is just as much a guy as a guy who plays a guy who gets to have TV sex all season.
• Lynch is up in the TV's catch-all supporting actress category, which doesn't have a repeat winner, much less a repeat nominee, in the bunch. Her competiton: Hung's Jane Adams; Damages' Rose Byrne, Into the Storm's Janet McTeer; and Big Love's Chloë Sevingy.
• Globe voters still love Jeremy Piven, half-life number or no. He's in the supporting actor game again, where he won't have to face last year's winner (Tom Wilkinson, up for the TV miniseries John Adams), but will have to face the hot John Lithgow (Dexter) and the hotter Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother). Lost's Michael Emerson and Damages' William Hurt don't qualify as slouches, either.
• Drew Barrymore's Whip It was a no-show on the film side, but her HBO movie Grey Gardens pulled in three nods, including ones for her and costar Jessica Lange in the TV-movie/miniseries actress category.
(Originally published Dec. 15, 2009, at 7:24 a.m. PT)
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