When I heard the Academy of Television Arts and Science was adding a new category to this year's Emmy contest -- Best Reality Show Host -- my mind raced.

Oh, the possibilities!

If we are ready to embrace such a gratuitous ploy to give Ryan Seacrest an Emmy for his work on American Idol (who else would it be?), maybe we are ready to recognize some other unsung players of the small screen.

The real Emmy nominations will be announced Thursday morning. Here I indulge a few of my own Emmy-category fantasies and dub those most deserving to win them. I do this because, well, it's my fantasy and I can do whatever I want.

1. Best Free Therapy

This one was actually a tough call: On the one hand, Tell Me You Love Me's septuagenarian sexpot, Jane Alexander, offered the most practical, tough-love relationship counsel I've ever seen on TV. (Sample: If you haven't had sex in a year, the last thing you should do is try and have sex.) But I'd say I got the best overall free therapy out of Gabriel Byrne's Dr. Paul Weston on HBO's brilliant series In Treatment. That man's steely Irish gaze and lovable dysfunction elicited some of the best acting I've ever seen on television. And his patients were way messed up, so I naturally felt better about myself after watching.

2. Best Recurring Appearance by a Transgender Actress

Sure, the writer's strike cut short Dirty Sexy Money's brief run as the best dramedy starring a Baldwin, but while it was on, um, was it just me, or was Candis Cayne like the hottest tranny to ever to grace a network show? Her understated portrayal of Senator Patrick Darling's mistress was solid -- so solid, in fact, that it didn't occur to me that this actress was actually born a man. Furthering ABC's reinvention as Gay-BC (see below), Ms. Cayne was, in my book, the top tranny of 2008.

3. Best Use of a Hair Piece

The only thing less convincing than Ted Danson as a bad guy would be, say, John Ratzenberger as a love interest. But somehow Danson -- as that corporate rat Arthur Frobisher in F/X's slyly addictive thriller, Damages -- pulled off one of the most complex bad guys of the last decade. And really, it was all about the hair. Donning the same shade of silver locks as Dick Van Dyke on Diagnosis Murder, Danson at once seemed old-man genial and totally creepy. Sure, his acting was tight, but I gotta give props to the hair piece, which provided ample distraction both from his ample bald spot and the fact that a quality guy like Danson spent six seasons on crap show like Becker.

4. Best Show About Gay People Passing Itself Off as a Mediocre Family Drama

Much has been made about the bevy of gay characters in primetime these times, with ABC's Sunday-night dose of the drama Brother & Sisters at the center of the conversation. But people, I don't know if America really gets how just HOW gay this show was last season. Between Uncle Saul's golden-years epiphany about his sexuality to Kevin and Scottie's wedding in the season finale (oh, the flowers, the flowers!) to plenty of man-on-man liplocking, I am proud to be alive in a cultural era where a show this gay airs just one hour after the brainless shlock-fest of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Here's hoping season three lets Uncle Saul make up for all those years of lost bootie calls.

5. Best Supporting Piece of Eyewear

If you saw Nip/Tuck last season then you know this once camp-tastic show officially jumped the shark once the docs moved to L.A. But the season was worth sitting through if only to behold the craziness that was Sharon Gless as the bespectacled wackadoo Colleen Rose. Donning enormous glasses from the Charles Nelson Riley collection of 1972, Gless's look was equal parts eccentric Upper-Easter, old-school fashionista, and Venice-Beach street person, and it was all thanks to that crazy eyewear. I hope when she wins for Best Guest Star in a Drama (just guessing here), Gless takes some time to thanks the genius wardrobe person who picked out those sweet lenses.

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