If I Had an Emmy Ballot 2015: Outstanding Drama and Comedy Series

Can Orange Is the New Black survive the move from comedy to drama?

This is it, the Emmy nominations are about a half-hour away and we’ve already covered all of the main acting categories.  That brings us to the big show:  the Outstanding Series categories – Best in Show, if you will.  As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts my comedy viewing was a little light this year, so there are a couple of sure-thing nominees you won’t see here, like Veep or Transparent.  The drama side, on the other hand, is incredibly deep with almost twenty shows to choose from. 

As for the actual nominees, it will be an interesting year.  The academy expanded the Outstanding Series categories to seven nominees meaning we might get some fresh blood.  On the drama side, True Detective and Breaking Bad are both gone, but Orange Is the New Black will certainly take one of those two spots.  That leaves only two open drama slots barring a surprising turn against Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, or Mad Men.  The comedy side has a similar problem, with only Orange’s space opening up for a new show.  Transparent seems like an obvious candidate to fill that gap and I don’t see a lot of other changes, meaning only one other show can join the party..

We’ll start my selections off on the drama side with FX’s The Americans.  I wrote a decent amount about this show when I discussed Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as Emmy candidates, but it should suffice to say that The Americans is one of television’s most consistently excellent shows.  Everything about it works, from the home life of Philip and Elizabeth, to the spycraft, to individual scenes like Philip’s alter-ego exposing himself to his other wife, a mark who had no idea what she had gotten involved in.  For whatever reason, this series has flown entirely under the Emmy radar, and that’s a damn shame.

I’m finding it impossible to be too hyperbolic about the success of Game of Thrones.  Every year I wonder how it’s going to sustain itself and build on the previous season and every year they figure out.  The show’s fifth season soared largely because it finally revealed its endgame.  All of this fighting over thrones and lands is meaningless.  The real war is still ahead, with the White Walkers, whose utter devastation of the Wildlings and Jon Snow’s forces was the highlight of the season, on one side and Dany’s dragons almost certainly on the other.  Anything else at this point is just sidelight.

Justified might have been television’s most up-and-down show.  When it was firing on all cylinders, as in season two, there were few shows more energetic, action-packed, and even funny, than Justified.  But when it was stumbling, it was often times a mediocre show still anchored by a few good performances.  The show’s final season was, thankfully, an “all cylinders” kind of year, with the story of Raylan Givens wrapped up about as well as it could be.  Garrett Dillahunt and Sam Eliot brought the evil this year, with their plot to take over Harlan but, really, everybody this year got time to shine.  Not many shows get to go out at their best, but Justified was pretty darn close.

The Leftovers was not an easy show to watch.  Bad things happened to good people constantly.  Hell, the entire premise – of a show set three years after two percent of the world’s population vanished for no reason – was about bad things happening to good people.  But, ultimately, The Leftovers became a show about grief, about balancing the need to remember our loved ones with the need to move on and what happens when we favor one over the other.  It was difficult subject matter, to be sure, but powerful.

I don’t know that Mad Men’s final season was its best, but the bar was set so high for the show that even a slight dip in quality puts it well ahead of most other shows on television.  This past year was, at points, disjointed, with Don trying to find meaning and purpose in his life and the world of Sterling, Cooper, and Partners in constant flux.  But, ultimately, everybody got an ending that suited them.  And the journey was pretty great, too.

I still don’t like putting Orange Is the New Black in the drama category, but here it is.  OITNB, more than any show right now, is perfectly comfortable in its own skin  Here’s a show with one of the most diverse casts on television, not because they’re consciously trying to be diverse, but because that’s what the story demands.  One of several shows this year to take a big leap forward in its sophomore season, OITNB is one of the very best series on television – comedy or drama.

A lot has been written about the “slowness” of Sundance’s Rectify, about how it takes place over a short period of time and nothing much happens.  But the truth is, Rectify, more than just about any other show on television, is about the journey.  The show seems utterly unconcerned with Daniel’s actual guilt or innocence.  Sure there’s the constant threat of him having to go back to prison, but you have to figure that’s the case for any person suddenly released from death row.  Rectify may not be everybody, but it certainly is for me.

Others Considered: Banshee, Empire, The Flash, Fortitude, Halt and Catch Fire, The Knick, Manhattan, Masters of Sex, Vikings, The Walking Dead

On the comedy side of things, we start with Brooklyn Nine-Nine which, like Orange Is the New Black, Rectify, and another show about to appear on this list, took a huge step forward in its second season.  The characters were fleshed out and grouped together in new and interesting ways while the laughs just kept coming.  Nobody’s going to mistake Nine-Nine for high-brow comedy, but it is the one show on television that consistently makes me laugh more than any other.

The CW’s Jane the Virgin is all about heart.  It was a complete surprise that a show this crazy could maintain its quality from week to week, but it did.  The telenovela plots were often outrageous, but the show succeeded largely by grounding itself in the characters, especially in the relationship between Jane, her mother, and her grandmother.  Jane was top-notch comedy from start to finish, which is incredibly hard to do on network television these days.

I don’t know that you could find a show more different from Jane the Virgin than Louie.  Its constant tone of almost dread makes a great counterpoint for its humor, which is typically about making Louie look like an idiot.  Mostly, though Louie has a way with story.  He knows how to craft his stories, whether it takes two episodes, six episodes, or eight minutes.  The economy of storytelling is marvelous.

Parks and Recreation took a victory lap in 2015, finishing its improbable seven season run in style.  The three-year time jump reinvigorated the show, giving life to new stories that helped inform old relationships.  The war between Leslie and Ron was a little difficult to watch, but its resolution was worth it all.  And the sendoff each character received was perfect.  Sure, everybody got a happy ending, but that’s the only way that Parks and Rec could go out.

The last show to take a sophomore leap was HBO’s Silicon Valley, which went from funny and clever in its 2014 to flat-out great in 2015.  Silicon Valley draws occasional comparisons to Entourage in the way its characters are always being faced with new, outside challenges, but the biggest difference is that not everything ends up working out perfectly for the Valley characters.  There’s no guarantee of a happy ending on this show, which makes the drama that much better.

As I said when discussing the supporting actors, Togetherness is a difficult show to watch.  It’s about an imperfect marriage that may or may not be falling apart and it’s unclear whether it will work out.  It’s not that either one is eager for things to be over, they just don’t know how to keep things going.  For those who can move past the subject matter, though, it’s a very rewarding piece.

Lastly, we come to Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.  As I’ve said before, the premise is ridiculous, and the show likely would have tanked on NBC, where it was originally supposed to air.  But, somehow, everything comes together.  Kimmy’s gullibility meshes nicely with the Titus’s outsized personality and Jacqueline’s unbounded narcissism.  It’s not a perfect show, and still holds to a network sensibility, but it provides a lot of laughs and has a lot of heart.

Others Considered: Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, Girls

So those are my final picks for the best television shows of the 2014-15 season.  Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

If I Had an Emmy Ballot 2015: Outstanding Lead Actor and Lead Actress in a Comedy

Can Adam Scott and Amy Poehler earn a victory lap for Parks and Recreation?

The 2015 Emmy nominations will be announced tomorrow morning.  As I’ve done each of the last two years, I’ll take a look at the past year in performances and give my thoughts on the actors, actresses, and shows I thought were best.

Two notes before we begin.  First, I'm working from the actual Emmy performer ballot, so I won't make any changes like putting Keegan Michael-Key or Jordan Peele in lead actor categories or move Orange Is the New Black into the comedy category, where it was last year.  Second, I'm only going to nominate people and shows that I've seen a good chunk of this past year.  For the purposes of this category, that means no New Girl, The Big Bang Theory, or The Mindy Project actors, among a few others.  Previously, we looked at the categories of Supporting Actor in a Drama, Supporting Actress in a Drama, Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Supporting Actress in a Comedy, Lead Actor in a Drama, and Lead Actress in a Drama.

I have to admit, I almost punted on the Lead Actor and Lead Actress in a Comedy categories entirely when I realized how few comedies I had watched this year.  It seems crazy, because so much of my 2014 Top Ten ended up being comedies, but a few of them ended up canceled, Review took the year off, and I didn’t catch many others.  I was finally able to scrape together a half-dozen nominees for each category but I feel like each list is more notable for its absences than its actual names.  For example, in the Lead Actor category there’s no Jim Parsons, William H. Macy, no Jeffrey Tambor, and no Chris Geere, because I haven’t seen any of their shows this year.  On the women’s side, there’s no Julia Louis-Dreyfus (the easy favorite), Edie Falco, or Melissa McCarthy.  There’s simply too much good television on these days and comedy fell by the wayside for me this year.

There are still twelve nominees here, though, and I did like their performances a great deal.  Given that half of them are pairs from the same shows, I decided to do these two together.  They almost certainly won’t match up with the actual nominees, but if there is any category this year primed for some surprises, it feels like it’s Lead Actor in a Comedy.  There are a lot of big name actors still eligible (Matt LeBlanc, Jim Parsons, Don Cheadle), but none of them other than Parsons really feel like locks.  We’ll see, though, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see everybody but Ricky Gervais (no longer eligible) back along with Jeffrey Tambor.  In fact, I’d say there’s about a seventy percent chance of just that thing happening.

On the women’s side, I don’t imagine much will change.  Five of last year’s nominees are back (with Taylor Schilling being shunted to the drama side) and all are established names at this point.  If there’s a seventy percent chance of the five returning men being nominated, I put it at eighty percent that the women are nominated again, with one newcomer (likely Gina Rodriguez after Golden Globe win or Amy Schumer) joining them.

The proliferation of new comedies I haven’t seen has been relegated largely to cable, so my list is going to be rather network heavy, starting with black-ish’s Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross.  Black-ish was a surprise as the season’s best fall sitcom and a lot of it stemmed from the show’s leads, as the married couple Andre (Dre) and Rainbow (Bow) Johnson.  The comedy tended to be broad, but the stories and performances, about an upper-class African-American family trying to navigate between black and white worlds, brought a new perspective to network comedy. The give and take between Anderson and Ross was hilarious but still felt real.  They argued occasionally, sure, but still obviously love each other and their kids.  This show was at its strongest in the home (Dre’s office life was often over-the-top but not in a good way) and these two brought that strength.

One of the best and strongest couples on television the last several years has been Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope and Adam Scott’s Ben Wyatt.  This Parks and Recreation duo have been the heart of one television’s very best comedies and probably should have a pair of Emmys of their own at this point.  The final season of Parks and Rec was meant as something of a reboot, with the show fast-forwarding three years, but really it functioned as a victory lap, with the characters given an opportunity to reflect on how far they’d gone in ten years.  For Poehler and Scott it was one last chance to show off what made them one of the best couples on television.  No matter the power dynamic, whether it was Leslie running for city council or Ben running for Congress, they were always equals.  Poehler was able to swing between the butt of the joke and one sane voice while Scott spent most of his time as the straight man, which made his occasional bursts of hilarity all the more valuable.

There were some weird submission decisions with Fresh Off the Boat, with both Hudson Yang and Constance Wu submitting as lead but Randall Park submitting as supporting.  Maybe that’s the way it should be, though.  Yang was undoubtedly the lead of the show, as the Asian-American middle schooler moving to suburban Orlando.  The fish out of water, new kid on the block, and coming of age stories are all well-worn tropes, but wrapped in a new dynamic, with Yang’s Eddie trying to navigate the white world as an utterly American Asian-American, it felt, well, fresh. 

Even better than Yang was Wu, as Eddie’s mother Jessica.  Often portrayed as bewildered by Eddie’s taste in pop culture, and still keeping one foot in her traditional realm, Jessica nevertheless was fully embracing of everything white Floridian 1990s suburbia had to offer.  Wu was stern, funny, loveable, and in utter command of every scene she was in.  It was an unexpected performance coming from what could have otherwise been a spring, network fill-in.

My final three nominees for Lead Actor in a Comedy couldn’t be more different, beginning with Louis CK.  It’s often difficult to separate the real Louis from the fictional Louie, but given that Louis is actor, director, and writer, it’s easy to see that he knows how to use himself best.  His show has been one of the best comedies on television in the last few years and, given that he’s the only main character, it’s easy to put him here.

Thomas Middleditch, on the other hand, is the nebbish, neurotic lead of a company filled with talent.  Silicon Valley tends to fall into a rhythm from time to time, but the show never gets stale, largely because Middleditch is so capable of flexing from serious to absurd to reserved and back again.  His relative stability also allows his castmates to diverge into weird tangents and make the show even funnier.

Lastly, Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta is never the straight man in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  He is always the joker or the butt of the joke.  But, above all else, Samberg never fails to make me laugh.  Whether it’s with elaborate pranks or subtle wordplay he makes every episode better.

The three remaining Lead Actresses also couldn’t be much different, at least far as their characters are concerned.  Lena Dunham plays the often dour, rarely together Hannah Horvath on Girls.  Girls isn’t the funniest show in the world, but trades that lack of laughs for depth, in no small part thanks to Dunham.  She has a complete handle on her character at this point in the show’s run and is an incredibly consistent performer.

The idea of a group of women being rescued from a subterranean bunker (“They alive, dammit!”) seems like a terrible premise for a sitcom, but Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt makes it work almost entirely thanks to Ellie Kemper.  Kemper has to play an absolutely ridiculous character with no sense of the real world and an absolute gullibility, but she makes it work with her earnestness.  And if there’s any trait Kemper just nails, it’s earnestness

I really should have started with Gina Rodriguez because, in my opinion, any discussion of the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy category should begin with the Jane the Virgin star.  Sure, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is probably hilarious in Veep, but I don’t think any actor was asked to do more this year.  She had to handle a ridiculous premise, soapy love triangles, over-the-top telenovela drama, and family drama, all while remaining light, funny, and loveable.  She pulled it off with aplomb and turned Jane the Virgin into one of my very favorite comedies of the year.

So those are my nominees for Lead Actor and Lead Actress in a comedy.  Like I said, the list is a little light, but that’s more my fault than television’s.  There’s just too much to keep up with and, this year anyway, it was comedy that fell by the wayside.  Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.  Tomorrow morning we’ll look at the Outstanding Series and then find out who was nominated at 10:30am CST.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

If I Had an Emmy Ballot 2015: Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama

Can Cookie Lyon's outsized personality earn Taraji P. Henson an Emmy?

The 2015 Emmy nominations will be announced tomorrow morning.  As I’ve done each of the last two years, I’ll take a look at the past year in performances and give my thoughts on the actors, actresses, and shows I thought were best.

Two notes before we begin.  First, I'm working from the actual Emmy performer ballot, so I won't make any changes like putting Keegan Michael-Key or Jordan Peele in lead actor categories or move Orange Is the New Black into the comedy category, where it was last year.  Second, I'm only going to nominate people and shows that I've seen a good chunk of this past year.  For the purposes of this category, that means no Scandal or The Good Wife actors, among a few others.  Previously, we looked at the categories of Supporting Actor in a Drama, Supporting Actress in a Drama, Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Supporting Actress in a Comedy, and Lead Actor in a Drama.

I want to believe that this could be the most competitive category this year.  I want to believe that television’s diversity expansion will translate into this category, so that Kerry Washington won’t be the only African-American actress nominated in this category since Cicely Tyson now twenty years ago.  And it really feels like this could be the year.  Viola Davis and her role in How to Get Away with Murder seem tailor-made for Emmy wins and Taraji P. Henson was the star of television’s biggest runaway hit in years.  Change is slowly creeping over the television landscape and it would be nice to see it reflected here.

Looking at recent Emmy history, though, I don’t see much room for that change.  Every actress nominated in 2014 is eligible again.  Julianna Marguiles has received four nominations in the last five years, with two wins.  Claire Danes, Michelle Dockery, and Robin Wright have been nominated for every season in which they’ve been eligible, with Danes taking home two trophies.  And Washington and Lizzy Caplan are both young stars with very showy parts.  Barring voters suddenly catching up to the fading cultural opinion of Homeland, Downton Abbey, or House of Cards, it feels like Caplan’s spot is the only one really up for grabs, which is a shame because she’s great in Masters of Sex.  There’s a lot of potential for new faces in this category, but not much room for them.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Masters of Sex season two, but that didn’t make Lizzy Caplan’s performance any less amazing.  The “other woman” is never an easy part to play, especially when she’s the main character and meant to be sympathetic.  But Caplan brings strength and confidence to Virginia Johnson.  She makes clear that this is a woman with her own wants and desires and that she won’t let anybody control her.  Caplan was one of my favorite actresses last season and she was just as good this past year.

As I said above, Viola Davis’s role in How to Get Away with Murder is tailor-made for Emmy consideration.  Annalise Keating is strong, but vulnerable and is prone to giving soaring speeches.  But Davis brings an extra level of gravitas to what is, at heart, a soapy series.  She is capable both of being the most powerful person in the room and breaking down as she removes all of the trappings that seem so often to be required of a woman who reaches her status.  Julianna Marguiles has to be considered the favorite to win this award for the second year in a row, but Davis is a close second, assuming she submits “Let’s Get to Scooping” as her episode anyway.

Empire was a breakout hit this year, not least because of the bombastic presence of Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon.  Her outsized presence was magnetic, drawing viewers to her in every scene.  Yes, there was a fair amount of scenery chewing, but Henson’s performance always reminded us that she cared.  Yes, she helped her husband run drugs and yes, she served time for it.  But she is a family woman at heart, and wants little more than to bring her family back together (with or without Lucious, depending on the day).  It’s that emotional anchor that lets Henson shine through drama and the soap.

The greatest compliment I can give Tatiana Maslany at this point is that, when watching Orphan Black, I often forget that I’m actually watching the same actress playing all of these different roles.  That’s the power of what Maslany is doing here.  It’s not just that she plays a half-dozen different roles distinctly and excellently.  It’s that she does so effortlessly.  The second season of Orphan Black may have been a mess plot-wise, but Maslany was spectacular, as always.  It’s only a shame nobody in the Emmy academy seems to realize that.

I said it about Jon Hamm and I’ll say it about Elisabeth Moss: that we can go eight Emmy cycles without Moss winning an Emmy (or any Mad Men actor for that matter) is a travesty.  She spent seven years being fabulous and 2015 was the same.  Watching Moss take Peggy throughout her journey from secretary to copywriter to copy chief was a wonderful experience.  Sure, her ending was a bit facile and treacly, but it was also well-deserved.  Moss played the part of the woman in a man’s world so perfectly.  There are a lot of deserving actresses in this category this year, but I would not in any way be disappointed to see her walk away with the crown.

Lastly, we come to Keri Russell.  Just as with her screenmate, this is a criminally underappreciated performance on a criminally underrated show.  As usual, in The Americans’ third season, it was the home stories that intrigued me most, as Elizabeth and Philip try to balance their lives as spies with the needs of their children and the need to keep everything a secret.  That said, there were to scenes that were the clear standouts this year: One, in which Elizabeth is attacked and Philip has to extract her broken teeth.  The scene has an almost frightening eroticism to it that all comes down to the actors’ eyes.  The other has Elizabeth finally opening up to an innocent older woman who she knows she will have to kill.  Getting to see Russell finally play honesty was a change of pace that stood out in a season full of great performances.

Others considered: Caitriona Balfe (Outlander), Olivia Colman (Broadchurch), Claire Danes (Homeland), Eva Green (Penny Dreadful), Diane Kruger (The Bridge), Abigail Spencer (Rectify), Olivia Williams (Manhattan), Rose Wilson (The Affair)

Those are my choices for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series.  Having not seen any of The Good Wife, Scandal, or House of Cards this year, it may be incomplete.  But there’s a really solid group of actors here who each would be deserving of a nomination. 

Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.  Next time we’ll look at the comedy lead actors.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.

If I Had an Emmy Ballot 2015: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama

Jon Hamm leads this year's potential nominees.

The 2015 Emmy nominations will be announced on Thursday.  As I’ve done each of the last two years, I’ll take a look at the past year in performances and give my thoughts on the actors, actresses, and shows I thought were best.

Two notes before we begin.  First, I'm working from the actual Emmy performer ballot, so I won't make any changes like putting Keegan Michael-Key or Jordan Peele in lead actor categories or move Orange Is the New Black into the comedy category, where it was last year.  Second, I'm only going to nominate people and shows that I've seen a good chunk of this past year.  For the purposes of this category, that means no Sons of Anarchy or Boardwalk Empire actors, among a few others.  Previously, we looked at the categories of Supporting Actor in a Drama, Supporting Actress in a Drama, Supporting Actor in a Comedy, and Supporting Actress in a Comedy.

Lead Actor in a Drama is often the category where the big names (and Jeff Daniels) come to play.  It’s typically filled with the top-billed actors from all of the Outstanding Drama series (and Jeff Daniels).  It’s where we see names like Bryan Cranston, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Spacey, Jon Hamm, and Hugh Laurie (and Jeff Daniels).  But thanks to the retirement of Breaking Bad and the production delays in True Detective’s second season, this seems to be the most wide open field in years.  Among the men I would have nominated last year, five are not eligible this year, thanks to the moves of True Detective and Hannibal to the summer and the finale of Breaking Bad. 

The loss of Cranston, McConaughey, and Woody Harrelson also opens things up in the actual field.  There are a few past nominees who could find their way back in (namely Steve Buscemi, Hugh Bonneville, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant), but this seems like the kind of year that could bring a few surprise nominations.  Clive Owen and Michael Sheen seem like obvious options, with Justin Theroux and Aiden Young as less likely.  And then there’s always Dominic West, depending on whether the Emmy academy loves The Affair as much as the Hollywood Foreign Press did when they gave it the Golden Globe for Best Drama.

Losing so many actors from this category this year allowed me to highlight several men I’ve had to pass up before, including The Bridge’s Demian Bichir.  Unfortunately, The Bridge was canceled and won’t be getting a third season, but that doesn’t make Bichir’s performance any less remarkable.  He was saddled with the occasional weak storyline, mostly involving the serial killer who murdered his son, but even then, he brought gravitas to the role and made the best and worst material better.  He has almost no chance of earning an actual nomination, but he would certainly be deserving.

If Jon Hamm hasn’t won an Emmy yet for playing Don Draper in Mad Men, there’s almost no way he can now, which is a damn shame.  No performer has put out better, more consistent work over the last eight years than Hamm and the final season – or half season, whatever you want to call it – of Mad Men was no different.   Draper once again orchestrated a rescue for himself and his firm, this time selling out to the larger McCann Erickson, only to find himself as just a cog in the machine, the trophy mounted on McCann’s wall.  Hamm has mastered the art of disillusionment, and with Don feeling it in both his life and work now, he had all the material he needed.  If there’s any one candidate I want to see win this year, it’s Hamm.  Even if it is just a lifetime achievement award, nobody deserves it more.

I was incredibly wary of the prospect of a Breaking Bad spinoff.  That wariness only grew when I learned that it was going to be a prequel and that it would be based on the life of Saul Goodman.  I mean, I liked Bob Odenkirk in Breaking Bad, but his character was largely used for comic relief and I had no idea how they could make him the star of a new series.  So I was pleasantly surprised when, not only did Better Call Saul turn out to be good, but both he and the show were legitimately great.  By framing Saul as the journey of a decent man who allows himself to be slowly corrupted by those around him, Bob Odenkirk was given the opportunity to deliver a slightly different take on the character.  I’ll be interested to see how the academy treats Better Call Saul and whether it just fill the spots vacated by Breaking Bad.  Seeing Odenkirk make a dramatic turn after a career largely comprised of comedy was thrilling and I’m hoping that Emmy voters will reward it.

Justified was not a perfect show.  Its highs were very high but its lows could go very low.  But whether the show was great (as it was this year) or mediocre, Timothy Olyphant was always the best performer on the screen, a real compliment, given how many great actors he was usually surrounded by.  Justified went out with a bang in 2015, with perhaps its best season since its second, in no small part because of Olyphant.  It’s easy to lump him in with the other white, male antiheroes of the last several years, but Raylan Givens was something just a bit more.  Sure, Olyphant brought the wit and charm, but he also brought depth, showing us time and time again that Raylan was fundamentally a decent person.  Or, at least, the least bad man.

The Americans has probably been the most criminally underrated show of the last two years, and with it Matthew Rhys.  Rhys’s performance as a Russian spy disguised as an American citizen has been stunning, not least because of the layers upon layers he’s asked to portray.  There are performances on performances here, with Rhys’s Philip asked to put on all manner of faces, all while constantly reminding us who he is.  He’s a father, a husband, a spy, a travel agent, a hippy, a government agent, whatever he needs to be.  Rhys anchors the performance with a sorrowful resignation, as though Philip is always reluctant to do what’s asked of him.

Lastly, we come to another brilliant, if microscopically rated show, Rectify, and its star, Aiden Young.  Rectify is a slow show.  It’s often criticized (or complimented) for its lack of progression.  But that slowness means that every step forward needs to be that much more deliberate.  Every decision needs to be anchored in a believable character, and that’s what Young provides.  His Daniel Holden is still, going into the show’s third season, only a couple of weeks removed from a death row prison sentence.  We don’t know if Daniel really killed the girl he was sentenced to prison for killing, but the show is entirely unconcerned with finding that truth.  In fact, in the second season finale, Daniel “confesses,” in exchange for never having to go back to prison.  That speech alone, could earn Young a nomination – the way he never once gives in entirely to the story but is still convincing enough to make you believe that maybe, just maybe, he really did do it.  It was a fantastic year for both Rectify and Young, and hopefully they’re rewarded for it.

Others considered: Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Richard Dormer (Fortitude), Travis Fimmel (Vikings), Josh Hartnett (Penny Dreadful), Tom Mison (Sleepy Hollow), Clive Owen (The Knick), Michael Sheen (Masters of Sex), Anthony Starr (Banshee), Justin Theroux (The Leftovers), Dean Winters (Battle Creek),

Those are my Emmy choices.  They may be lacking in top-billed talent, but removing those big names from the marquee just goes to show how deep this category is.  There are easily a half dozen other names I could put up here.  Agree?  Disagree?  Let me know in the comments or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.  Next time we’ll look at the drama supporting actresses.

Tyler Williams is a professional librarian and an amateur television critic.  You can reach him at TyTalksTV AT gmail DOT com or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.