Katherine Heigl, who inexplicably won a best supporting actress Emmy last year, has decided that she doesn’t want to be nominated this year.

Not because she isn’t worthy, of course, because this is a woman who is obviously now so full of herself that little bits of her ego drop on the sidewalk as she walks, but rather because she doesn’t think she was “given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination”, so the Academy should let other actresses have a shot. In other words, her show sucks, so please don’t honor it.

Since this is coming on the heels of her public dissing of Knocked Up, the movie that made her enough of a star to win the Emmy last year, she is going to be excoriated for these remarks, especially since nobody forced her at gunpoint to work on Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up, or 27 Dresses.

But I come not to bury Ms. Heigl, but rather to praise her, for she speaks the truth. And the truth is this: Grey’s Anatomy does suck, and she shouldn’t be nominated for an Emmy.

Of course, that was true last year, and I doubt that Ms. Heigl is going to be returning her Emmy (or any of the money) any time soon. This seems more like a “please, for the love of gods, let me out of my contract so I can go be a proper movie star already!” move than anything else.

I think that the Grey’s Anatomy people should do it, so she can go make a whole series of crappy comedies and then eventually slink back to TV — perhaps as the mother in the 2014 remake of The O.C.

I’m also now torn as to whether I think that the Emmy people should go ahead and nominate as Best Supporting Actress in a Drama her purely out of spite, or instead nominate these actual good actresses on these actual good shows:

• Katee Sackhoff - Battlestar Galactica or Bionic Woman: In the first half of the latest season, Sackhoff’s performance as Starbuck, now the maybe-the-12th-Cylon returned from the dead (and/or Earth) added yet another dimension to the character. And as the first, possibly evil but definitely tragic Bionic Woman, she was quite literally the only watchable thing on that show.
• Christina Hendricks - Mad Men: At first, it seemed like Joan Holloway, the utterly zaftig secretarial queen bee, was going to just be a one-note character, around to give the sexual and sartorial advice to the other secretaries. But as the series evolved and we learned more about Joan, the full extent of her tragedy — smart, modern woman in a situation where nobody cares — starts coming out. And its all in Hendricks’ nuanced performance.
• Kristen Chenoweth - Pushing Daisies: Nothing nuanced about La Chenoweth, she’s all about being over the top, and, as Olive, the lovelorn Pie Hole waitress, steals every scene.
• Gina Bellman - Jekyll: What would you do if you found out that your husband was Dr. Jekyll? In Claire Jackman’s case, you’d figure out how to make sure that Mr. Hyde loved you enough to protect you rather than kill you.
• Yunjin Kim - Lost: One of the most fascinating character arcs in this entire show has been Sun’s transformation from daddy’s little girl to daddy’s boss, and you can see every single aspect of it in Yunjin Kim’s eyes.
• Tricia Helfer - Battlestar Galactica: Not only is it nearly impossible to give so much depth and soul to a sexy killer robot who was instrumental in wiping out humanity, how about giving differing types of depth and variations on soul to multiple versions of that robot.

I’m sure I’m missing some — all of those slumming movie stars in their vehicles on F/X; Chloë Sevigny on Big Love, Christine Rose in Heroes, or if Sonja Sohn and Amy Ryan had been given more in Season 5 of The Wire –in fact, I know I’m missing some.

The point is that there are loads of better actresses in loads of better roles on loads of better shows than Katherine Heigl as Dr. Izzy Stradlin on Grey’s Anatomy, and if this is what it takes for her not to be nominated, I’m all for it.

• Heigl says no thanks, Emmy, it’s undeserved

Technorati Tags: Katherine Heigl, Gray’s Anatomy, ABC, Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica, Tricia Helfer, Mad Men, Christina Hendricks, Gina Bellman, Lost, Yunjin Kim

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