My Emmy Ballot: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama

Bryan Cranston will have to fight off Matthew McConaughey for his fourth Emmy.

Now we come to the big guns.  Not to disparage the other categories, but the drama lead actors probably have the strongest performances of any individual group.  They may not have the depth of the drama supporting actors or the performance diversity of the comedy lead actresses, but here you will often find the hands-down best performances of the year.  2014 felt like it was going to be the coronation for Bryan Cranston and Breaking Bad, but then, this winter, True Detective happened, throwing everybody for a loop.  Now, it feels as though this once shoe-in category is up for grabs.

A couple of caveats before we start.  First, I’m working from the actual Emmy Performer Ballot, so I can’t move somebody from lead to supporting (Woody Harrelson), nor can I call True Detective a miniseries or Orange Is the New Black a drama, nor can I nominate somebody who didn’t submit themselves (like Alan Cumming in The Good Wife).  Also, I’m only including actors from shows I watch regularly, so if your favorites from House of Cards, Parenthood, The Good Wife, or Scandal aren’t here, that’s why.

My 2013 Choices:

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)

Hugh Dancy (Hannibal)

Michael Emerson (Person of Interest)

Jon Hamm (Mad Men)

Damian Lewis (Homeland)

Timothy Olyphant (Justified)

Actual 2013 Nominees:

Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey)

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)

Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom) - *

Jon Hamm (Mad Men)

Damian Lewis (Homeland)

Kevin Spacey (House of Cards)

* I refuse to acknowledge that Jeff freaking Daniels won this award last year over that collection of actors.  And that’s coming from somebody who actually enjoys The Newsroom.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen with this category.  History says we can expect to see Cranston and McConaughey here without too much doubt, but the other four spots all appear to be up for grabs.  I can think of a dozen men I’d nominate before Jeff Daniels, but he was last year’s surprise winner; you can’t rule him out.  Homeland was pretty bad last year while Downton Abbey and House of Cards appear to have fallen out of the cultural zeitgeist, but as I said before, you’ll never lose money betting on the Emmys to continue recognizing fading shows for two years too long.  Jon Hamm seems like he should be guaranteed a chance to lose his sixth straight Emmy contest, but it’s entirely possible that the academy has just soured on Mad Men to the point where he doesn’t even get nominated.  That’s what happened at the Golden Globes, where Michael Sheen, Live Schreiber, and James Spader all earned nominations over Hamm.

As for the potential winner: Who knows?  Anything is possible after last year.  Michael Sheen could earn a surprise win for Masters of Sex.  Woody Harrelson could steal the award from his screen partner McConaughey.  Steve Buscemi and Timothy Olyphant are both former nominees who could find their ways back into the field.  And, obviously, anybody mentioned above could walk away with the trophy.  I still think it comes down to Cranston and McConaughey, but I thought it was Cranston’s to lose last year.  Anything can happen.

I generally do these lists alphabetically, but it’s always nice to be able to start with my favorite, and here that is Bryan Cranston.  Breaking Bad will go down in history as one of the all-time great dramas and Walter White as one of television’s great anti-heroes.  I don’t know that the second half of Bad’s final season was its creative peak (I’d probably argue for season three or four), but Cranston was certainly at his peak, portraying a Walter desperately trying to keep his world from spinning out of control.  In particularly, the trio of closing episodes, “Ozymandias,” “Granite State,” and “Felina” were probably his best work in the entire series.  Cranston already has three statues and has a good chance of walking away with a fourth.

Hannibal made The Leap in its second season, transitioning from an intriguing, beautifully-made television show to a true work of art.  And nowhere is this more obvious than in the performances of Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen.  The two waged a season-long game of one-upmanship, constantly bringing deeper and more nuanced performances to the table.  That I would actually believe for even a second that Will Graham could fall under Hannibal Lecter’s spell is a testament to the strength of Dancy’s work.  He was required to play a huge range of emotions this year, from desperate, to vengeful, to resigned, to determined, and even a bit of villainy.  Mikkelsen, meanwhile, maintained his aloof and alien presence.  Stepping up from supporting actor, what consistently surprised me about Mikkelsen’s performance is that you can always see why people fall for his illusion.  He’s a strange figure, but he is alluring in a way, drawing people in and disarming them with his intelligence and his food.  It’s difficult to play a character that both repels and attracts the way Lecter does, but Mikkelsen does so fantastically.

It seems increasingly likely that Jon Hamm will end up playing Don Draper for eight years and have only a single Golden Globe and a couple of critics awards to show for it.  It seems unbelievable that the man who has been such a dramatic force on television for nearly a decade will not have won more awards.  Granted, he’s been going up against Bryan Cranston for much of that time but still, you would think that just once he could have broken through.  The first half of season seven was, perhaps, not the best showcase of Hamm’s talent, as Don was forced to tiptoe around pretty much everybody in his life in order to keep everything from falling apart, but you never once feel like Don is acting out of character because Hamm sells it all so well.  He won’t win the Emmy this year, and may not even be nominated, and there’s something a little sad about that.

Finally, the duo of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey came out of the box swinging in True Detective.  McConaughey is the favorite here and it’s easy to see why.  He has the showy part, with the existential angst and the minutes-long monologues.  That’s not to say his performance is all the result of Nic Pizzolatto’s writing.  McConaughey had to turn the same person into, essentially, two different characters, as the Rust Cohle of 2012 and the Cohle of 1995 are fundamentally different people.  It really was a marvel to watch him bounce back and forth between the two men in each episode.  Harrelson may not have had the showy part, but he was still just as effective in the more straight-man role.  Because of the nature of the role, Harrelson is required to react to McConaughey much more often than he’s allowed to be active, so it would have been easy for him to submit himself as a supporting actor in order to stay away from McConaughey.  I’m glad to see him submit as lead, however, because it really was a lead performance and it would be great to see him recognized alongside his co-star.  Could the pair submitting as leads steal votes from each other?  Possibly, but I doubt it.  McConaughey was strong and his role so big that he should be able to stand out on his own.

Others meriting consideration:  Demian Bichir, Steve Buscemi, Jim Caviezel, Travis Fimmel, Jonny Lee Miller, Tom Mison, Timothy Olyphant, Matthew Rhys, Michael Sheen

Previously: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy

So those are my Emmy choices.  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.

My Emmy Ballot: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama

Anna Gunn left it all on the field in the final season of "Breaking Bad"

Supporting Actress in a Drama is not a category that has been particularly deep for me in recent years simply because a lot of the best performances are coming from shows I don’t watch – namely, The Good Wife and Parenthood.  But this year I feel like the nominations pool is stacked.  Not only did a pair of dramas make The Leap in their sophomore seasons (The Americans and Hannibal), but two Game of Thrones actresses finally submitted themselves after sitting out last year, and two other dramas with great supporting female performances made their debuts (Masters of Sex and True Detective).  While not quite as deep as the Supporting Actor pool, there are a lot of great actresses worthy of consideration here.

A couple of caveats before we start.  First, I’m working from the actual Emmy Performer Ballot, so I can’t move somebody from lead to supporting (Woody Harrelson), nor can I call True Detective a miniseries or Orange Is the New Black a drama, nor can I nominate somebody who didn’t submit themselves (like Alan Cumming in The Good Wife).  Also, I’m only including actors from shows I watch regularly, so if your favorites from House of Cards, Parenthood, The Good Wife, or Scandal aren’t here, that’s why.

My 2013 Choices:

Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter)

Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones)

Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad)

January Jones (Mad Men)

Kelly MacDonald (Boardwalk Empire)

Olivia Munn (The Newsroom)

Actual 2013 Nominees:

Morena Baccarin (Homeland)

Christine Baranski (The Good Wife)

Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones)

Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) – 2013 Emmy Winner

Christina Hendricks (Mad Men)

Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey)

Not to spoil anything, but there will be only one actress carrying over from my 2013 nominees to this year.  It’s hard to blame the actresses, though.  For starters, four of my 2014 nominees weren’t eligible last year and would likely have taken a few spots if they were.  Secondly, several of them kind of got hosed by their shows.  Dexter took a nosedive in its final season, completely ruining all of the good things they’d done with Jennifer Carpenter’s character in season seven.  January Jones was in all of three episodes of Mad Men’s truncated season.  And Kelly MacDonald was similarly slighted by Boardwalk.  With less to do and a number of strong challengers entering the ring, there just isn’t the room for good actresses on bad shows or good actresses in nothing parts.

As for the actresses who were nominated last year, it’s difficult to see Baccarin coming back because a) she was barely in this past season and b) it was kind of terrible.  I feel like Maggie Smith has kind of run her course as the Dowager Countess and it will be interesting to see if Mad Men still has any voter affection or if people are just done with it.  Anna Gunn will return for certain and there’s no reason why Clark and Baranski wouldn’t as well.  This feels like the most wide open race, however, because with the exception of Anna Gunn, I could see a number of actresses filling the other three spots.

Hannibal was one of several dramas to take huge leaps in their second seasons this spring and a big beneficiary of that leap was Caroline Dhavernas.  She didn’t always get the best storylines (the whole Hannibal/Will/Alana pseudo-love triangle was iffy at best), but she was a strong presence throughout the season.  It’s never easy playing the dupe and the last one to know, but Dhavernas never made Alana stupid.  She was hoodwinked, yes, like everybody was by Lecter, but she was still a powerful woman capable of carrying herself among powerful men.

Speaking of powerful women, one of my favorite shows this fall was one in which the men mostly played second fiddle: Masters of Sex.  And while she wasn’t always the most powerful, Caitlin Fitzgerald’s Libby Masters was perhaps the most complex.  Playing the wife of a male lead in a drama like this can be a difficult task, as Anna Gunn, Edie Falco, and a host of other women can attest.  It’s easy for some viewers to see her as the shrill wife who is trying to prevent her hero (or anti-hero) husband from accomplishing his goals.  But Fitzgerald brings such life to Libby that it’s difficult not to root for her even when she’s not acting like the perfect wife.

Last year’s winner Anna Gunn is the front-runner to win again this year and it’s easy to see why.  In Breaking Bad’s final episodes, Skyler is finally forced to reckon with the devastation that Walter’s operation has caused and in which she, at times, was a reluctant participant.  It’s a difficult piece to watch as everything collapses and Skyler desperately tries to hold her family together, and Gunn plays it perfectly.  The character of Skyler received a great deal of criticism from certain segments of the Bad fanbase (mainly young, male viewers who just wanted to see Walter kick ass), but Gunn remained stalwart through it all.  I would be stunned to see anybody else take home the trophy this year.

It is true that True Detective didn’t care nearly as much about its female characters as it did about its male leads Rust Cohle and Marty Hart and if Michelle Monaghan had submitted herself as a lead, I don’t think she would have done enough to earn a nomination.  But as a supporting actress, she certainly left her mark on the show.  I could argue for a nomination for her solely based on the scene in which Maggie seduces Rust but throughout the series’ short run, she was phenomenal.  There’s something of a trend with the last three actresses I’ve discussed (and really one more on this list), in which they could easily be seen as the overbearing wives of their stories’ heroes.  But because these actresses are so good at what they do, they manage to bring depth and heart to what could otherwise be thankless roles.

Maisie Williams would have earned a nomination from me last year for her work as Arya Stark on Game of Thrones had she submitted herself in the first place.  Unfortunately she didn’t, but she’s in the running this year and might have an even better case for season four than she did for the third.  The symbiotic yet antagonistic relationship between Arya and The Hound as they continued to search for both her family and somebody to pay him often brought levity to an otherwise dark show.  But even beyond the humor, the relationship those two developed was one of the deepest, most thoughtful and considered on the entire show, and it was sad to see it end.  Even if we won’t have Arya and The Hound together anymore, we’ll always have Arya’s laugh at the utter absurdity of her life.

I had Natalie Dormer in this final spot for the longest time,* but ultimately realized that I was giving it to her more out of wanting to have recognized her work in the third season of Game of Thrones than for what she did this season.  So after a long deliberation I decided to go with Katheryn Winnick instead.  I nominated Winnick in the Lead Actress category last year, but she stepped down to Supporting Actress for 2014, which makes sense given her decreased screen time.  But even as her character essentially became the Betty Draper of Vikings, Winnick continued to show why Lagertha could never be a kept woman.  Constantly surrounded by men who underestimate her capabilities, Winnick imbues Lagertha with a quiet strength that always keeps her a part of the action, even when her character is sidelined from the main story for much of the season.

*Figuratively speaking, anyway.  Literally speaking, this list is alphabetical, not ordered by personal preference. 

Others meriting consideration: Betsy Brandt, Emilia Clarke, Christina Hendricks, Annet Mahendru, Ivana Milicevic, Olivia Munn, Emily Bett Rickards, Holly Taylor

Previously: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama

So those are my Emmy choices.  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.

My Emmy Ballot: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama

Peter Dinklage is a strong candidate to take home his second Emmy for "Game of Thrones"

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama is perennially the deepest category at the Emmys.  It’s often possible for me to make a list of my second six choices and have even that be a perfectly acceptable group of nominees.  This year, I easily could have made three lists: My actual selections for nominations, six more actors entirely deserving of recognition who have never been nominated before, and six more actors deserving of recognition who have been nominated in the last three years.  It’s actually a bit disheartening how deep this category is year after year because it shows how many great supporting roles there are for men in television dramas compared to the relatively smaller number of similar roles for women.  But for these purposes, we can only work with what we have, so the following represents my attempts to whittle a list of dozens of amazing actors down to six.

A couple of caveats before we start.  First, I’m working from the actual Emmy Performer Ballot, so I can’t move somebody from lead to supporting (Woody Harrelson), nor can I call True Detective a miniseries or Orange Is the New Black a drama, nor can I nominate somebody who didn’t submit themselves (like Alan Cumming in The Good Wife).  Also, I’m only including actors from shows I watch regularly, so if your favorites from House of Cards, Parenthood, The Good Wife, or Scandal aren’t here, that’s why.

My 2013 Choices:

Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones)

Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones)

Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal)

Mandy Patinkin (Homeland)

Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad)

Actual 2013 Emmy Nominees:

Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad)

Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire) – 2013 Emmy Winner

Jim Carter (Downton Abbey)

Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones)

Mandy Patinkin (Homeland)

Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad)

This will be an awfully difficult category for anybody to break into this year.  Jonathan Banks and Bobby Cannavale won’t be eligible, but just as Banks took the Breaking Bad spot vacated by Giancarlo Esposito, so too will Dean Norris likely take Banks’s spot.  I feel like this should be the end of the road for Carter and Patinkin who, even while still delivering fine performances, have seen their shows lose significant footing both culturally and critically in the past couple of years.  When it comes to the Emmys, however, you’re always better off betting on somebody to overstay their welcome than to depart too early. 

If there is only one available spot, then, there is a strong race to fill it.  Will one of the handful of recent nominees (Brendan Coyle, Josh Charles, Walton Goggins, and John Slattery) return?  Will it be Boardwalk Empire’s Jeffrey Wright or Michael Kenneth Williams just filling in the slot held by Cannavale last year?  Will it be Charles Dance, finally submitting himself for Game of Thrones?  Or can The Americans finally break through and earn a nomination for Noah Emmerich?  It’s impossible to know and it could end up being somebody else entirely.

My list, too, has a lot of great returning actors.  Banks leaves and Mads Mikkelsen moved up to Lead Actor this year, which opens up a pair of slots, but the other four men all gave performances ranging  from very good to amazing.  I wouldn’t be disappointed to have any of them back, but there were a bunch of other great performances this year as well.  So let’s see how it shakes out.

Game of Thrones is my favorite show on television right now.  I don’t know that it’s the best, but it’s definitely my favorite.  It’s the one show that I most look forward to each week and it’s the one series that leaves my wanting more every week.  It should be no surprise, then, that as with last year, two Thrones actors grace this list:  Peter Dinklage and Charles Dance.  Dinklage has been the emotional anchor for the show for the past two seasons and this year was no different, as Tyrion Lannister spent much of the season on trial or awaiting trial for murder.  You could even make an argument that his passionate speech in his own defense was the high point of the series to date.  Todd Vanderwerff of the AV Club has criticized Game of Thrones for becoming a show remembered for little but its big moments.  In a sense that’s true.  But even if the show is just a series of amazing moments, Dinklage is very often at the center of them.  Dance could have found himself in this space last year had he submitted himself.  Either way, though, it’s nice that he did so this year, because Tywin had his most prominent role yet and Dance was more than up to the task.  It’s a difficult job: playing the noble villain.  But Dance gives Tywin so much humanity that you appreciate his efforts to protect his family and his legacy even as he plots against the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms.

This was not a particularly good season of Justified.  In fact, the show seems more and more to be following the Sons of Anarchy path with a stellar sophomore season followed by an inexorable decline afterward.  Thankfully, Justified hasn’t fallen nearly as far as Sons did and one of the big reasons for that is the stellar performances by the cast, including Walton Goggins’s Boyd Crowder.  Justified has struggled in the past to figure out what to do with Crowder, especially when he’s not allowed to be a straight antagonist to Raylan, but this season gave him some of his most fruitful work as Boyd tried to rebuild his drug network while balancing alliances with the Crowes, the Detroit mob, and the Mexican cartels.  Goggins has now spent a dozen years playing two great drama supporting characters (Crowder and The Shield’s Shane Vendrell) and has all of one Emmy nomination to show for it. That just doesn’t seem right, though it does point to the perennial strength of this category.

Breaking Bad has had a pair of men crack this category in each of the past two years and I don’t see any reason why 2014 would be different as Aaron Paul should nab his fifth nomination while Dean Norris should get his first.  Paul has been absolutely amazing through all five (or six depending on how you count it) seasons of Breaking Bad and in the final eight episodes of the season he was at the top of his game.  The only thing potentially holding him back is that Jesse is sidelined for much of the season (especially the series’s final few, climactic episodes), but if he can score a nomination, “Rabid Dog” would be as good a submission episode as anybody in this category has.  As for Norris, while I wasn’t a fan of AMC’s decision to split the final season in two (especially since it resulted in the far less wise decision to split Mad Men in two as well), if it means that he can finally get some awards recognition from this series, it will have been worth it.  Norris had his finest moments of the entire series in these final eight episodes as Hank faces off with Walt not once, not twice, but three times and tries to play the father figure in order to flip Jesse against Walt.  Hank is finally an immensely strong presence, finished playing the dupe, and Norris sells it phenomenally. 

I have a problem with Boardwalk Empire.  It’s my problem, I’m pretty sure, but Boardwalk is a series that I need to binge.  I know I’ve written recently about my crusade against binging some shows, but for me Boardwalk is a show that gets much better when I only have to wait a day or two in between episodes.  I did not, however, have to binge watch this past season to realize how amazing Jeffrey Wright was.  His villainous character was a bit of a mustache twirler, but Wright managed to successfully straddle the fine line between menace and cartoon.  I’ve been a fan of Wright’s for a while and it would be nice to see him stay in television, especially if he keeps giving performances like this. 

Others meriting consideration:  Jere Burns, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Noah Emmerich, Jordan Gavaris, Vincent Kartheiser, Allen Leech, Matthew Lillard, Donal Logue, Bob Odenkirk, Mandy Patinkin, John Slattery, Michael Kenneth Williams, Thomas M. Wright

Previously: Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy

So those are my Emmy choices.  As you can see by the “others” list, this was an incredibly deep category even without guys like Josh Charles who are on shows that I haven’t seen.  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.