The Primetime Emmy Awards is not exactly the most awaited on showbiz awards who’s who but this year it’s making noise for who isn’t in the running. Desperate Housewives and Lost, which won top Emmys last year, were snobbed this year. Come on now: it’s something to talk about. Go order pizza.

For the 2006 Emmy Awards, voting rules were modified in the hopes of ‘including’ fringier shows and winning their fans over. The result is a roster of strange nominations that are well-intended at best, and stinkier than WSOP poker cheating at worst.

Drama Emmys

Grey’s Anatomy and 24 are hot, having garnered 2006’s most number of Emmy noms (12 and 11, respectively) for a TV series. Both are in the race for Outstanding Drama, although it appears dead patients are favored over dead presidents. Bodog TV betting props list Grey’s Anatomy as the odds-on favorite, with a 1/1 shot to win; followed by House at 2/1.

Glaringly absent is Lost, 2005’s Outstanding Drama yet without a single nom this year. 24 is a longshot at 7/2 and The Sopranos at 8/1 while four-time winner The West Wing is the longest shot at 12/5. Sopranos fans are in disbelief that this is its only major nom whereas it had always reaped nods; and that stars James Gandolfini and Edie Falco aren’t nominated either.

Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause is the 2/1 favorite for Outstanding Lead Actor while 24’s Kiefer Sutherland is a 2/3 favorite, earning his fifth straight Emmy nod. It doesn’t hurt that 24: The Movie has got fans re-excited about the show. Because of the revamped rules, Denis Leary got nominated for the little known Rescue Me, with 5/4 odds.

Everyone’s wondering why Hugh Laurie is absent when Laurie is House, which is in the running. In contrast, Martin Sheen is a 10/1 longshot, in a season of The West Wing when he barely appeared. Bodog props have Sheen trailed by Christopher Meloni of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as the longest shot with 18/1 odds.

A third president to cause a WSOP poker cheating outcry is Oscar winner Geena Davis as Commander in Chief, with so-so 7/3 odds for Outstanding Lead Actress. TV fans are not only disagreeing that Davis did better than Falco but pointing to Mary McDonnell as the better female prez on Battlestar Galactica.

Bodog betting props list The West Wing’s Allison Janney as TV’s drama queen, the 3/1 favorite tailed closely by The Closer’s Kyra Sedgwick at 3/2. Law & Order’s Mariska Hargitay figures at 13/7 odds while Six Feet Under’s Frances Conroy is not a very longshot at 17/3.

Why the Emmy Revamp?

Not unlike the ‘Revampirella’ I lamely coined up there, TV fans dubbed the revamping as ‘The Lauren Graham Rule’, after the award-deserving star of the critically acclaimed but never nominated Gilmore Girls (ahem, a personal favorite). The Emmy trashed the rule book to aid the inclusion of smaller productions, many of them cult favorites with a loyal following—viewers they hoped to attract to the awards show.

Laughably, Gilmore Girls is still not nominated this year, nor Lauren Graham and the rest of the cast. Now Graham, who had competed in Celebrity Poker Showdown, might liken that to WSOP poker cheating. The 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be held on August 27, to be hosted by Conan O’ Brien.

[Will Gray's Anatomy win an Emmy? Will Kiefer Sutherland and Geena Davis? Take it all out on Bodog Online Sportsbook, where internet betting propositions are as soap-addictive as online sports betting odds and lines.]

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