The Special FX Award goes to...
Michael Chiklis, Denis Leary, and Julian McMahonFOR The Shield (Chiklis), Rescue Me (Leary), and Nip/Tuck (McMahon)
WHY? The absence of The Sopranos' James Gandolfini and The West Wing's Martin Sheen from the Best Actor in a TV Drama category suggests the end of an era, the passing of a torch. And that torch has been passed to FX. Who'd have guessed two or three years ago that this once-lowly basic cable channel would become the place to turn for serious drama? Yet three of the five nominated actors come from FX shows. All three dramas ask serious questions about what it means to be a man, given the ambiguous examples set by their morally compromised protagonists — Chiklis' loose-cannon cop, Leary's survivor's-guilt-ridden fireman, and McMahon's caddish plastic surgeon. (The other two nominees, Deadwood's Ian McShane and Boston Legal's James Spader, offer similarly perverse twists on TV's male role models.) A word of caution, though — this year on The Shield, Chiklis will answer to a new top cop: Glenn Close. She could be FX's toughest hombre yet.
(Golden Globe nominations: Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series — Drama)
