Golden Globes snub great ahead
No 'Sons of Anarchy'? No 'Mad Men'? No 'Modern Family'? No 'Boardwalk Empire'?
And no 'The Walking Dead'?!
Golden Globes voters often nominate hip and ahead-of-the-curve television shows - but this year, they ignored a whole freeway of them.
Zero nominations for 'Sons of Anarchy' - not even for its stars Charlie Hunnam or Katey Sagal, who won a best actress Globie in 2011 - is absurd.
Actress nominees Lena Dunham ('Girls') and Gina Rodriguez ('Jane the Virgin') are perfectly good. But they didn't do the work Sagal did this year - or that Tatiana Maslany did again in 'Orphan Black.'
Similarly, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominators snubbed 'Mad Men' as best drama, presumably because voters just take it for granted.
Yet they gave a best-drama slot to another show, 'House of Cards,' that has already faded more than 'Mad Men' ever will.
And how could Globe voters skip Jon Hamm from 'Mad Men' as best actor and honor Kevin Spacey from 'House of Cards'? Hamm simply did better work.
'Boardwalk Empire' also deserved a best-drama nomination, more than 'Cards,' 'The Affair' or 'The Good Wife' - though, speaking of affairs, the Globes do seem to have one with the Julianna Margulies series.
And speaking of 'Boardwalk,' Steve Buscemi and Kelly Macdonald deserved acting nominations for their last go-round.
That said, there's nothing wrong with Globes voters rewarding a promising show or acting performance early in its TV life.
Nominating Clive Owen as best actor from 'The Knick' was a cool move. So was picking 'Silicon Valley' among the best comedies, or giving acting nominations to Alison Tolman for 'Fargo' and Uzo Aduba for 'Orange Is the New Black.'
Viola Davis deserves an award for work she's done over many years and all signs indicate she'll get it now for 'How to Get Away With Murder,' even though the show is overrated.
On the other hand, the Globes voters may have been hasty in delivering a trifecta to 'The Affair' - best drama, best actor and actress for Dominic West and Ruth Wilson.
Promising as 'The Affair' began, it has dragged. Wonderful as Wilson and West are, they're not well served by this show.
If the Globes voters really wanted to do something radical and groundbreaking in the awards game, they would have skipped 'The Affair' or 'House of Cards' as best drama and nominated 'The Walking Dead.'
If the Globes and the Emmys can keep rewarding 'Game of Thrones,' with good reason, there's no excuse for treating 'Walking Dead' as some sort of fanboy outlier. It gets more younger viewers than any other scripted drama on all of television for a simple and good reason: It's a solid, engaging show.
The Globes, as usual, hit some of the right notes for television in 2014. But when we look back in five or 10 years at what shows will have endured from the past year, many of them won't be the ones that are getting the most Golden Globes attention.
It may be a good strategic move to keep looking for the next big thing. It enables Globes voters to position themselves as more trendy than the Emmys.
But ignoring a still-superior show like 'Modern Family' also makes Globes voters look like the distracted socialite in the 1930s movie, the one who turns to the rest of the group and announces, 'Dahling, I'm bored.'
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
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