Emmy awards: Ray Liotta's forthcoming nomination

Well, providing the Emmy voters can retain the memory long enough, I think we can safely say that Ray Liotta's performance as Charlie Metcalf in the ER episode "Time of Death" is going to be getting nominated for a guest starring award come the autumn. [It aired in the UK on Channel 4 last night]. It is a well established cliche of drama Emmy's that breakdowns, disability, addiction and/or a good death are pretty much always going to garner commendation. (Perhaps we deal better with these things in the abstract, in performance, than we do when confronted with the complex and messy reality). Sally Field as Abby's manic depressive mother in ER; Bradley Whitford's post-traumatic shock reaction to music in The West Wing (both winners). Veronica Cartwight as wheelchair-user abductee Cassandra Spender, and Lili Taylor as bolshie blind woman Marty Glenn (both in The X-Files and nominated in 1998). And these are just the examples easily recollected....