IT’S WIDE OPEN

NOW THAT “The Sopranos” is history, will the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at long last award, or even acknowledge, the show so many critics and fans have long considered the best on television? For five seasons, David Simon’s “The Wire” has burned up the screen with its portrayal of the Baltimore mean streets in all their perilous beauty. Yet it has been nominated for only one Emmy – in 2005 for writing for a drama (it lost to “House”).

Sure, the audience was never huge but the Emmys aren’t supposed to be about popularity, they’re supposed to be about excellence. So, before everyone loses their heads in the excitement over a “Sopranos”-free best drama category (Will “Mad Men” break the traditional cable lock?), let’s not forget that this was the final season of “The Wire,” so if not now, when? At the very least, Felicia Pearson, who played Snoop, should get an acting nod. Who could forget her tipping the hardware salesman who helped her choose a nail gun or her transcendent acceptance of death? Performances like those are why the Emmy was invented.

But “The Wire” is not the only show that seems lost in the academy’s own Bermuda Triangle. “Big Love” was left out of last year’s nominations because of timing issues, so it would seem even more crucial to not repeat the mistakes of 2006, when the casting directors (along with the director and the main title designers) were nominated, but none of the cast or the writers.

How is such a thing possible? “Big Love” deserves at least nominations in dramatic series, writing, actor and with Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin, it should own Outstanding Actress in a Dramatic Series and I don’t want to hear any nonsense about them “canceling each other out.”

And as long as we’re mixing it up in the drama category, let’s not forget the return of “Battlestar Galactica.” Though it has won in the past for special visual effects and received nominations for writing, directing, costume and sound editing, it’s time science fiction was brought in from the cold and considered the quality drama that it is. Cops, doctors and lawyers are all well and good, but you try getting through a scene wondering if you’re a Cylon bent on mass destruction. That’s called acting, my friend, acting. The kind that should win awards.

 mary.mcnamara@latimes.com