After last year's Tony Awards ceremony found several big names adding trophies to their collections (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Denzel Washington, Scarlet Johansson), this year's Tonys were less about movie star clout but still managed to award recognizable TV names with statues. Most notably, The Book  of Mormon, a religious satire musical created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park), walked away with nine awards, including Best Musical. John Benjamin Hickey (The Big C) won his second Tony for his role in The Normal Heart, a play that focuses on the early 80s AIDS crisis in New York. John Laroquette (Night Court) walked away with a Tony for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, while Norbert Leo Butz (The Deep End) was awarded best performance by an actor in a leading role in a musical.

Other TV-related nominees included Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie, The Sopranos), Bobby Cannavale (Will & Grace), Judith Light (Who's the Boss?), Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous), Josh Gad (Woke Up Dead), and Yul Vazquez (Starz's upcoming Magic City), among others. Listed below are the winners of the acting and play/musical awards from tonight. If you want to check out the winners of the technical awards (i.e. choreography, orchestrations, lighting, etc.) or to see full lists of nominees for each category, you can heard over to Theater Mania.com.

How did you enjoy the Tony Awards? Do you enjoy having more recognizable faces or do you think they ruin the show? Who would you like to see give theater a go in the near future? Was Neil Patrick Harris a good host?

2011 Tony Award Winners:

• Best Play: War Horse
• Best Musical: The Book of Mormon
• Best Revival of a Play: The Normal Heart
• Best Revival of a Musical: Anything Goes
• Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: Mark Rylance, Jerusalem
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play: Frances McDormand, Good People
• Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play: John Benjamin Hickey, The Normal Heart
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Ellen Barkin, The Normal Heart
• Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Norbert Leo Butz, Catch Me If You Can
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: Sutton Foster, Anything Goes
• Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical: John Laroquette, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
• Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical: Nikki M. James, The Book of Mormon

2011 Tony Award Winners

We’ve spent nearly three seasons following around masterful escape artist, drug addict, and wonderful nurse Jackie Peyton, a buzzsaw with a pixie cut with double lives and double-double lives. How she manages to keep everything straight and think on her toes as well as she does, I’ll never know, but what I do know is that the walls are finally starting to close in on our favorite junkie. After a couple of false starts toward getting Jackie clean, her stunt with Kelly and the unaccounted for medicine may come back to bite her in the butt, as this week found suspicion gathering with next week featuring Jackie being suspended.

It’ll be interesting to see how the show handles this development. Season three has been slow-ish in terms of plot development, though progress has been made, and to see Jackie actually have to face serious concrete consequences for her often heinous actions would be worth the near misses. I don’t know if the show will go fully go down the path of having Jackie repent for her ways, mostly because the entire show is hinged on having her be this monster, but I think we may get to see even more chinks in the increasingly rusty armor that Jackie has been lugging around. She's wearing down right now, both physically and mentally, and we see that with her actions (walking down a road filled with traffic, leaving her emergency stash for Kevin to find, etc.).

While some will rightfully decry Jackie Peyton as being a whole lot of things, she's not been as irredeemable as she has been in the past. She recognizes her problem and she's taking steps to correct it, though going cold turkey after constantly popping anything you can get your hands off isn't exactly looking like a successful way to beat drug addiction. I would watch Edie Falco read the dictionary for 30 minutes a week, so letting her delve into the psychology of someone so damaged and desperate should make the final few episodes of this season a sight to behold.

Do you think Jackie will face any consequences this season? How do you think the season will end? Are you excited that it got renewed for a fourth season?

Nurse Jackie: Will Jackie Finally Face Consequences?

We’re now at a point in Nurse Jackie that feels like the calm before the storm. Jackie seems to have blunted whatever impact there was to be had during the season two finale when O’Hara and Kevin confronted her about her drug abuse. Though there was a slight threat of both of Jackie’s worlds being rocked by that kind of betrayal, she seems to have gotten her best friend talking to her again and her husband is over the moon at the prospect of her going to AA/NA meetings.

To put it simply, Jackie Peyton is the master manipulator to end all master manipulators and the first six episodes of season three have been sort of a long-form reset button for our favorite pill popping nurse. But how long can it last? Will Jackie break this season?

Considering how messy the first two finales were, something big will be going down in the next six episodes of the Showtime dark comedy (yes, it's a comedy; it's been quite funny this season). Season one had the did-she-or-didn’t-she overdose cliffhanger to go with season two’s botched intervention, so there’s bound to be something major in the pipeline. I don’t mind the show undoing some of what happened last season if the season three finale is as effective as I think it can be (and if they stay with what happens there through more than a couple of episodes next season, should the show be renewed), but I do want to see some serious mucking up of Jackie’s life.

If it were up to me, I’d want to see Jackie putting meetings/treatment on her already overstuffed platter or I’d want to see Jackie completely bottom out thanks to the mysterious man she’s encountered twice this season already. Should Jackie go to meetings and try to get treatment, it’d give her one more secret to hide from her co-workers, plus it’d be interesting to watch her “do battle” with various counselors and fellow patients. She seems to think she can get sober by herself and to have her deal with people trying to tell her what to do would really put her on the defensive. Having Jackie truly bottom out, on the other hand, could set the series up for so many good plotlines in the future. Not only would the fall itself be remarkable to watch, but seeing Jackie have to hide it from everyone and pick up the pieces afterward would give Edie Falco the weighty material that she seems to thrive on.

There seems to be fear of change with some Showtime shows, so they tend to keep their anti-heroes on a continual loop of abuse-intended recovery-abuse for the duration of the show. I’d point out that Weeds burned down the original incarnation of their show in season three and we’re heading into season seven this summer, so all is not lost by changing the dynamic of the show. I love Nurse Jackie and I think it has some absolutely brilliant performances, but I hope the rest of season three reaches even farther and puts our anti-heroine in uncomfortable situations that she can’t instantly wriggle herself free from.

Have you been enjoying Nurse Jackie this season? What do you hope happens the rest of season three? What role do you think Kelly will play?

Nurse Jackie: Will Jackie Break?

Jackie Peyton seemingly had avoided the collateral damage that could have resulted from last season’s forced intervention by Kevin and Dr. O’Hara. Though she had a fight with her husband over responsibility and her best friend is too exasperated to speak with her, she still has her job, her kids, and her relationship with co-worker Eddie, so all is not lost in the world of Nurse Jackie.

Which is why the presence of Kev’s sister Tunie, previously unseen and unmentioned, is so intriguing. Jackie may be a master manipulator who knows how to read people and turn an argument around on someone with a legitimate reason to be mad at her, but she’s got her control over people in her everyday life down to a science; Tunie isn’t under Jackie’s spell and now that she’s been set up on a date with Eddie, Jackie’s world is about to become a little more rocky. Tunie’s an unknown variable that could break season three wide open (in the best way), but what will be the fallout of her actions?

The one I’m most looking forward to is that she could occupy Eddie long enough to really rattle Jackie and send her back to the “therapist” she met that specializes in bringing addicts to rock bottom. I could see Jackie being so distraught at the thought of losing something she thought she had so much control over that she wants her physicality to match her current emotional state and she decides to hit rock bottom. Amping up Jackie’s drug issues wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world; it’d put both of Jackie’s lives (as nurse/Eddie’s lover and mom/Kevin’s wife) seriously on edge and will hopefully set her up to have to pay the piper after two+ years of avoiding paying for her actions.

Plus, what if Tunie’s thing with Eddie makes Jackie visibly jealous and Kev starts noticing? He knows about Jackie’s drug use, but he’s still clueless as ever about their affair and having him find out would be an awesome watch.

On the other hand, Tunie’s presence could have a different effect on the show’s chemistry. If she and Eddie don’t hit it off, it could make Eddie and Jackie grow closer in the process, distancing Jackie from Kevin even more. At least right now, I don’t think Tunie is a plant from Kevin to keep an eye on Jackie (even post-intervention, he doesn’t seem that suspicious of her), but if, say, she happens to walk in and see a romantic “moment” between Eddie and Jackie, I could see her telling Kev and then skipping town. Tunie may seem like plot device, but if she’s utilized correctly, she can take the show to places it hasn’t been before.

Man, do I love a lady who can work the word “buttknuckle” into a conversation with the ease that Tooney did in her debut episode. I think any way the show can work in another obstacle for Jackie should be utilized, mostly because I like seeing Edie Falco’s mind working to figure out how to get herself out of a jam scot free, so I’m very much down for seeing Tooney (inadvertently) stir things up.

Nurse Jackie airs tonight on Showtime at 10:00.

Nurse Jackie: What's Up with Tunie?

I feel like I probably know the answer to the primary question of this post. We all know that the Golden Globe Awards are a crock, especially when in reference to television. I originally wanted to write a post discussing whether or not it was worthwhile to even predict the outcome of the Golden Globe Awards’ television side, but then realized that would basically be a 250-word column featuring me saying “not really” in various ways. Critics and scholars complain a lot about the Emmys, but at least they follow a certain kind of logic and structure and outside of the HFPA’s love for sexy women, the Globes don’t work inside any sort of framework.

The Globes happen in the middle of the official television season (as opposed to the Emmy’s clearer position at the beginning of a new season with a reflection on the past one) and for the most part, the Globes do a bit of zeitgeist chasing. Glee was a big winner last year, as was Dexter in its most-talked about season right as Michael C. Hall’s cancer issues came about. I’m not saying the HFPA just picked Hall because he had cancer and it thus made a good story to run the next morning, but I really wouldn’t put it past them. Hall definitely deserves some praise for his work on Dexter, but I think you understand what I’m saying. When the Golden Globes nominated Piper Perabo for her work on Covert Affairs I think they did all the work for me in terms of explaining their logic and process, but if I were to distill it into bullet points it would probably be something like this:

• Attractive women = good choices
• Popular things, sexy things = good choices
• Things on cable, especially pay cable = good choices

That’s basically it. Those are the three criteria I am using to determine my “picks” for Sunday’s Golden Globes. I am not expecting to be correct with most of these and in fact if I end up being mostly correct, there’s probably something wrong with the HFPA. That means they’ve gotten complacent or listened to reason or something, which is unfortunate.

Yesterday, I handled the supporting categories. Today, the four lead categories.

Golden Globes Predictions: Lead Categories

If today's Screen Actors' Guild Awards announcement is any indication, the Betty White resurgence of the last couple of years is still as alive and as vibrant as she is, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

On the heels of her 2010 SAG Lifetime Achievement award, White's performance on the TVLand sitcom Hot in Cleveland has helped garner herself a SAG nomination in, not one but, TWO categories: Outstanding Female Performance in a Comedy series and, in somewhat of a surprise, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series for the entire Hot in Cleveland cast.

These nominations are set to make for a very interesting race, particularly in the suddenly "eyes-on" Comedy Actress category as the still-Golden Girl attempts to break Tina Fey's (30Rock) three year winning streak, as well as face off against recent Emmy winners Jane Lynch (Glee) and Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) in the same category. White herself is also coming off of an Emmy win for Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

Interesting race, indeed. It almost makes me feel a little sorry for the also nominated Sophia Vergara (Modern Family) at this point.

Will Fey be able to sustain her reign as Comedy Queen, or will White's seemingly endless magic carpet ride take her sweeping across the SAG stage twice again, especially considering she's largely a supporting character on her show?

Personally, I'm hoping for the latter, because then perhaps we'll get another classic speech like this:

Betty White Still a 'Hot' Commodity

The nominations for the 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards were announced this morning by Josh Duhamel, Katie Holmes and Blair Underwood.  The awards, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, honor television and movies at the same ceremony, and are based on those shows and movies that are released during the calendar year.  So, this (and the Screen Actors Guild awards, whose nominations will be announced this Thursday) is the last opportunity for any shows that ended their series runs this past May to be recognized.  That's right Lost fans, this is the last chance any major award has the opportunity to shine some love on our favorite show.  The Globes will be awarded on Sunday, January 16th at 8pm ET/5pm PT on NBC, and the show will be hosted by Ricky Gervais.

But let's get to the nitty gritty.  The TV nominees are:

Best Drama Series:
Boardwalk Empire
Dexter
The Good Wife
Mad Men
The Walking Dead

Best Performance by an Actor in a Drama Series:
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Hugh Laurie, House

Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series:
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
Piper Perabo, Covert Affairs
Katey Sagal, Sons of Anarchy
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer

Best Comedy Series:
30 Rock
The Big Bang Theory
The Big C
Glee
Modern Family
Nurse Jackie

Best Performance by an Actress in a Comedy Series:
Toni Collette, The United States of Tara
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Laura Linney, The Big C
Lea Michele, Glee

Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy Series:
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Steve Carell, The Office
Thomas Jane, Hung
Matthew Morrison, Glee
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Scott Caan, Hawaii Five-0
Chris Colfer, Glee
Chris Noth, The Good Wife
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family
David Strathairn, Temple Grandin

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Hope Davis, The Special Relationship
Jane Lynch, Glee
Kelly MacDonald, Boardwalk Empire
Julia Stiles, Dexter
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Carlos
The Pacific
Pillars of the Earth
Temple Grandin
You Don't Know Jack

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television:
Hayley Atwell, Pillars of the Earth
Claire Danes, Temple Grandin
Judi Dench, Return to Cranford
Romola Garai, Emma
Jennifer Love Hewitt, The Client List

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television:
Idris Elba, Luther
Ian McShane, Pillars of the Earth
Al Pacino, You Don't Know Jack
Dennis Quaid, The Special Relationship
Edgar Ramirez, Carlos

The first thing that jumps out at me is the complete lack of Lost in the nominations.  Nothing for Best Drama, Matthew Fox, Terry O'Quinn or Michael Emerson.  To be honest, I'm pretty shocked by that.  Then again, the HFPA is notorious for having some of the strangest nominations for any set of awards.  For example, they love to nominate a young, American TV actress with a nice bosom who by all accounts isn't a serious acting contender (see: Paquin, Anna).  This year, they outdid themselves, because they nominated two!!  Piper Perabo and Jennifer Love Hewitt?  Really?!?!  I'm sure they're great people and their performances are fine, but you'll certainly never hear their names mentioned in Emmy nomination conversations.

There are a couple other interesting nominations.  First, where is Breaking Bad for Best Drama Series?  Clearly, its spot was taken by The Walking Dead. I guess the HFPA likes zombies.  Next, I'm a little surprised by Scott Caan's nomination.  Now, I am one of the many, many H50 viewers who thinks Caan is the best part of the show, but with all of the supporting actors in dramas, comedies, miniseries and made-for-TV-movies to choose from, I'm not so certain he's a Top Five pick (where's Ty Burrell?  Danny Pudi?  Michael Pitt?).  Last, the HFPA knows that Luther is an ongoing concern, right?  Or did I miss some news on the series somewhere?  If so, I apologize to the HFPA.

Anyway, what do you think of the nominations?  Are you shocked by any of them?  Which of your favorites was robbed?  Please leave your comments below.  Remember, the Golden Globes will air on NBC on Sunday, January 16th.  If you're interested in the movie nominations as well (man, it was a rough year for comedies if Burlesque was nominated!), you can find the whole list here.

68th Golden Globe Nominations Announced

Remember the promotional poster for Nurse Jackie's first season? You should -- it was plastered over almost every advertisement bar on the internet. It featured Jacke star Edie Falco brandishing a syringe like a middle finger, with the tagline "Life is full of little pricks." That phrase obviously has a double meaning.

The same goes for the season two promotional photo. This time, though, the syringes (along with pills, pill bottles, and thermometers) outline Jackie's head in a halo. The tagline is "Holy shift." Get it?

Nurse Jackie will return to Showtime on March 22 to begin its second season. Here's the poster for your reading pleasure:

New 'Nurse Jackie' Season 2 Poster

There is a fine line between bitter and seasoned. As a veteran ER nurse, Jackie Peyton both toes and blurs that line.

Nurse Jackie, the new Monday night series on Showtime, provides a rather refreshing perspective and premise among the others populating the relatively drab summer television landscape.  The show successfully illuminates the somber reality of hospital relationships and life in the emergency room, miles beyond the brightly lit ER or the jovial environment of Scrubs. The tone is dark, but not sinister; there is enough levity to balance the bleak.

Edie Falco is nothing short of mesmerizing as Jackie. Most of us are quite familiar with her strong screen presence from six seasons on The Sopranos, but I am thrilled to be able to now watch a show centered directly around her week after week.  There are very few actresses of her caliber who could fill these sturdy white shoes, let alone those who would go near a role as raw and risky as Jackie. To be frank, I already see Emmy potential for Falco (her biggest competition may come from fellow Showtime lead Toni Collette for The United States of Tara).

By the way, Sopranos fans will enjoy the fact that Father Phil has reunited with Carmela (actor Paul Schulze plays the hospital pharmacist on Nurse Jackie)!  Other familiar faces on Nurse Jackie include Peter Facinelli (to the delight of squealing Twilight fanatics everywhere), Merritt Weaver (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) and Anna Deveare Smith (The West Wing).

After only one episode, I am hooked and will be setting my TiVO for the season. I appreciate the character development and surprising turns that boldly unfold in the pilot, and look forward to an unpredictable and enjoyable summer with Nurse Jackie.

[Jo is a pop culture writer who loves television and covers Lost extensively. She will also be tuning in to The Cleaner, Entourage, Hung, True Blood and Weeds during the next few months while impatiently awaiting the return of Mad Men.]

Addicted to the Afflicted: Nurse Jackie Review