Emmy Nomination Hell! 10 Plots and Subplots to Watch After Today's Big Announcements

The world awoke this morning to the chirping of little birds resembling Kristin Chenoweth and Neil Patrick Harris, perched at a podium in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, announcing nominations for the 60th Emmy Awards. While most rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, we sat bolt upright as usual and sprinted to the window, our furious note-taking chronicling a few snubs, surprises and plenty of the conventional wisdom we've come to expect from the annual ritual.

The Academy has the full, looong slate of nominees, naturally, but we've narrowed our interests down to 10 easy storylines for our own Emmy dramedy — conveniently outlined after the jump!

'Grey's Anatomy' Has Exciting Arc Planned For Katherine Heigl In Which She Drops Dead

The ongoing mutual loathfest between notoriously stroppy film and TV star Katherine Heigl and the producers of Grey's Anatomy reaches a hateration crescendo with rumors that her character will have the plot equivalent of a soft hospital pillow (or maybe an actual one) pressed onto her face by showrunner Shonda Rhimes until all of her limbs stop flailing, at which point her lifeless corpse will be free to pursue whatever big screen pursuits it so pleases. From EOnline.com:

Latest buzz hissing from the set of the ABC hit is that creator Shonda Rhimes may be entertaining the idea of killing off Heigl's Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens because of the now infamous remarks Heigl made about the upcoming Emmys.

'Grey's' Insider: 'I Don't Want To Say Katherine Heigl's An Ungrateful Bitch, But--Oops! I Guess I Just Said It!

It's been two days now since our relatively peaceful, reacharound-loving community has been rocked by "I Do Not Feel I Was Given the Material This Season to Warrant a Nomination"-Gate. For those late to the party: Gold Derby blog had noticed polarizing actress-figure Katherine Heigl's name missing from a list of contenders; approached for comment, she explained that she had knowingly compromised Emmy-nominating protocol—and by extension, the very fundamentals upon which this great country is based!—by gallingly withdrawing herself from Best Actress consideration. And for what? For what she deemed to be substandard character arcs for her character on Grey's Anatomy. (In Heigl's defense, in Season 2 she was curled up in a hospital bed with her expired fiance; this season, she had a brief dalliance with her gay best friend followed by a torrid affair with a homicidal caribou.) Still, according to one series insider who spoke to EW.com, the thanklessness is beyond belief:

“The show bent over backwards to accommodate her film schedule, and then she criticizes the show for lack of material?"

Confusing 'Lost' Takes Back Seat To The Easier-To-Follow Horny Doctors Of 'Grey's'

In a stunning victory for lovers of linear medical serials peopled by a variety of horny doctors prone to solipsistic monologue-delivery over aficionados of tropical sci-fi adventures with a penchant for adding confounding new plot elements without explaining the significance of the approximately two dozen such elements introduced prior, ABC has announced a Thursday night programming shift. The network will be returning Grey's Anatomy to the prime, Thursday-at-9 spot on their post-strike schedule, bumping Lost to the less-desirable 10 p.m. slot:

[T]he medical drama will come back to the tentpole 9 p.m. period for five original episodes beginning April 24.

Eric Dane Goes Public With Courageous Fight Against McLip Malignancy

In a Suspicious Celebrity Growth Exclusive, Grey's Anatomy star Eric Dane shares with OK! magazine the harrowing experience of having learned that a melanoma had developed on his lip. Noticing a patch of what he thought was just chapped skin on his mouth, the actor credits the writers strike with allowing him the time to call a doctor and have check it checked out. (Yay, writers strike!) Little could he have known then of the topical ointment horrors to follow:

The One Where The 'Grey's Anatomy' Doctor And Her Brother Make Out A Little

· You've got to make it to the 2:00 mark on the above video for the payoff, but if you do, you'll be rewarded with the sight of Grey's Anatomy star Chyler Leigh making out with her brother in some terrible movie. Enjoy, sickies! [via R&M]
· Coming to Fox in week 12 of the strike: Backyard Baby Deathmatch.
· Of course, we hardly need to make that joke when we've got Look At What A Terrible Liar You Are, Dummy debuting pretty soon.
· This just made our hearts explode a little bit.

T.R. Knight Makes World Safe For Loving Gays

Isaiah Washington More Popular Than Hillary And Barack Combined, Thank You Very Much

Isaiah Washington, now a member of Bionic Woman's big happy family, is never too busy to shatter the deafening, one-day silence that followed his ouster from Grey's Anatomy at the hands of a shadowy cabal of moustache-twirling gay foes. Speaking to Extra, the actor delivered a curiously roundabout answer to a question about whether or not potential Bionic viewers might be turned off by his year of very bad press:

Extra: Did you ever worry about any negative feeling that might affect the ratings of this show? [...]

Washington: I was just recently at the Congressional Black Caucus, this past weekend. And there was a gentleman there who was a member of those 43 members by the name of Sen. Barack Obama. And there was also two young women there—or, women there—one named Nancy Pelosi, and another named Hillary Rodham Clinton.

T.R. Knight Wishes He Had Someone To Share His Victory Over Isaiah Washington With

Reluctant martyr for all bullied gay TV doctors T.R. Knight returned to The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, eight months after sitting in the very same seat to jumpstart his Evil Gay Mastermind plot to undo his McThreateningy co-star, Isaiah Washington. In that time, T.R. appears to have relaxed a great deal, having had some time to acclimate to his new out status and fully savor the bottomless pit of emptiness that accompanies entering the L.A. gay dating pool.

T.R. Knight Refuses To Provide Local Paper With Good Slow News Week Copy

While gabby Grey's Anatomy gay-conspiracy victim Isaiah Washington finds himself running out of media outlets willing to let him break his silence yet again about the shadowy machinations that led to his dismissal from the hit show (really, once you've chatted with Star Jones in football metaphors, there's nowhere left to go), reporters are begging Grey's slur-survivor T.R. Knight to say something, anything, about the F-Bomb That Continues To Rock The World of Primetime Television Nearly A Year After The Fact. But not even a bottomless basket of garlic knots and untold glasses of honor-bar chianti at one of Venice's finest family-style Italian eateries could entice the actor to abandon the high road he's so committed to traveling, as the LAT discovered recently:

Over the last 11 months, especially since Washington's gabfest began, Heigl said, she has often wished her friend would speak up about so much more. But Knight is adamant that he has said all he will ever need to say, even as Washington was appearing on Court TV's "Star Jones" show as Knight finished his ravioli at the C&O Trattoria.

Isaiah Washington Reveals How NBC's Ben Silverman Swept Him Off His Feet

Shonda Rhimes Still Feeling Good About Firing Isaiah Washington

Isaiah Washington Curious To Know How McDreamy Likes Him Now, Punk

Isaiah Washington Demonstrates Signs Fake-Gayhab Might Have Worked Too Well

Isaiah Washington: What The F-Bomb Means To Me

On last night's edition of Larry King Live, CNN's in-house confessor to the disgraced Hollywood stars played host to the latest stop of embattled former TV surgeon Isaiah Washington's Breaking the Silence: I'm Mad As Hell And Not Going to Take It Anymore Tour, on which the controversially non-renewed Grey's Anatomy actor, freed of an apparent ABC/Disney gag order by his dismissal from the show, is taking to the media again and again to inform the public about the myriad conspiratorial forces (racism, gay puppetmasters, etc etc) that led to his being cast out of horny-doctor Eden.