Mood Music XXXIII

I've been focusing my attentions on knitting, crocheting and thesis-editing of late, which leaves less time for the frequency of posting I was able to maintain in June, though I'd like to post more at least in the weeks before classes start for me again. It rained yesterday, which made today a welcome respite from the unceasing oppressive heat that's dominated this summer. I've been driven a little mad by cabin fever (or whatever its AC-surrounded summer equivalent is) so I was happy this afternoon to go run some errands with the window rolled down and the Who blasting. Taking the road in my new car, it was the first time I felt really happy about driving since the accident I was in at the beginning of June.

Week in TV: July 18-24

True Blood

TB is one of those shows that's difficult to assess mid-season - they keep so many balls in the air at once that it feels premature to comment on any one specific storyline until they conclude. However, two delightful things of note about this episode: Jessica working at Merlotte's and Jason becoming a faux-police officer.

Degrassi: The Heat is On

Simultaneously a solid kick-off to the new summer format and great unofficial sign-off for the remaining members of the show's original cast. Spinner and Emma's sudden Niagara Falls wedding shouldn't have worked nearly as well as it did, but Shane Kippel and Miriam McDonald sold it with an easy chemistry and I think both characters had been sufficiently established over the past decade as a bit impulsive and as serial monogamists in love with love. Also, a new Great Moment in Music Supervision: the choice of Ke$ha's "Your Love is My Drug" as the soundtrack to Fiona's drunken meltdown, like the tacky cherry on the drama sundae of her creepy relationship with her brother.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

So far, the show seems to be benefitting from the switch to a more serialized format. It makes the ensemble feel more cohesive. After a few years of awkward transition from the original cast, they've finally started to recapture the ethos of Degrassi at its best.

Covert Affairs

So Anne Dudek's character has to turn out evil, right? Like Francie on Alias? They can't just waste such an awesome actress on only being the protagonist's sibling who nags her about balancing her priorities, right? RIGHT?

So You Think You Can Dance

I think when this season concludes, dancer injuries will make it impossible to objectively assess the success or failure of the All-Star format. It remains to be seen in the coming weeks a) whether everyone can stay healthy and b) whether anyone can derail the Kent Boyd Express. It probably says a lot about this season that I'm more interested to see what they do for the remaining "Meet the All-Stars" segments, since no two dancers yet to be profiled have a routine in common. It seems unlikely that they'd bring back Ivan, Sabra, Melissa and Legacy to dance with their former partners, but a fan can dream, right?

Top Chef

It's a little heavy-handed and obviously works best with the whole DC setting, but it's kind of surprising that more reality shows don't use the Cold War as a thematic construct for competitions. Isn't creating paranoia out of thin air what reality contestants are all about?

Friday Night Lights

For never having been a regular cast member, Brad Leland is really an MVP for FNL. Though Buddy sometimes comes across as a buffoon, you could feel the emotion underscoring his conversation with the coach about taking his Panthers ring off. Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria and Jurnee Smollett have admirably served the show's new settings, but it's those moments that acknowledge FNL's path over the past few years where it really shines.

Ongoing:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

- Finished the final season of Buffy and the penultimate season of Angel. I liked Buffy's focus on the Slayer mythology, though its feminism was a bit self-conscious where in the past it felt more effortless. I had some misgivings about the show returning to Sunnydale High, but ultimately it served as an apt setting for the final battle. Angel's fourth season was appealingly dark compared with its predecessor, but I could've done with less cult-y mind control in the run-up to the finale. You know intellectually that the show's not going to end with "And then everyone in the world was in thrall to the villain! The End!" Stories like that just turn into a waiting game.

- Series finales always make me cry. It's probably one of the lamer things about me. Dollhouse being the first Whedon property I watched meant that it was impossible to read any Internet discussion of the show without getting spoiled on practically every major character death for every other show. In this case, though, knowing what to expect didn't really make too much of a difference.

- It seems like Buffy's network switch from the WB to UPN limited the potential for crossovers between the two shows, but I feel like there should be more communication between the two groups of evil-fighters. ("We're totally dealing with an apocalypse here!" "OMG, us too!") This came out glaringly in Faith's exclusion from the Buffy narrative until relatively late in the game. (I'm glad, at least, that Faith points out at the beginning of "Dirty Girls" that being in prison made her less "secure" and more "a sitting duck.") An evil power is trying to wipe out the entire line of Slayers and Watchers - wouldn't the semi-retired Slayer and her ex-Watcher, now with 75% more badassedness, be first on the list to alert about that?

- We seem to be getting to the point where Whedon starts doing a little repertory-building, casting Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres as villains in multi-episode late-season arcs on Buffy and Angel respectively, which must've happened fairly shortly after the cancellation of Firefly.

- I'll probably stick a toe in apiece on the Season Eight comics and the existing academic scholarship on Buffy. (There's a whole online journal! Called Slayage! How could I possibly resist?)

Rewatching:

Freaks and Geeks - "Tricks and Treats"

I flipped to IFC's re-aired episode of Freaks and Geeks after True Blood ended on Sunday. It's a bit odd - they're airing the episodes as they are on the DVDs, so even though it's on TV the act breaks don't lead to commercials. "Tricks and Treats" is probably sort of in the middle of the pack for me if I ranked the episodes of F&G, but I think that even when I'm seventy years old, I will still find Martin Starr in drag as the Bionic Woman hilarious.

Mad Men

Started with "The Fog" and went up through the season finale.

- It's interesting to watch Mad Men again after a season of seeing Alison Brie on Community. Obviously, the styling helps, but Brie also pitches her voice lower and carries herself differently on Mad Men. I love Trudy - she's so clearly determined to make the best of her marriage with Pete, no matter how much of a doofus (or sexual-assaulter-of-neighbors'-au-pairs) he is. He's going to live up to his potential if it kills her.

- Some characters grow on me upon rewatching - I'm genuinely interested to learn more about Henry Francis and Lane's cranky wife - but Suzanne is simply not one of them. The whole "Look at me!/Don't look at me!/How dare you look at me with your lustful thoughts!/Take me, I'm yours!" deal got really tiresome really fast.

- So, Kristoffer Polaha's on Life Unexpected, Anne Dudek's on Covert Affairs, and Betty is presumably moving to Casa Francis, which I assume is somewhere around Albany. Have we seen the end of Francine and Carlton?

- Two all-time favorite moments: Roger's mother calling Jane "Margaret" in "The Color Blue" and Joan breaking the vase over Greg's head in "The Gypsy and the Hobo"

- The "The Gypsy and the Hobo" - "The Grown-ups" - "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." triptych may be my favorite sequence of episodes of the show's entire run. It's much easier to see the plots and characters moving towards the major developments of these episodes when you watch the season back all in one go, but they still feel exciting and revelatory. Perhaps most important, they make you feel like the show's writers have much more to share with its viewers. Starting tonight!

Week in TV: July 11-17

True Blood

The show keeps so many stories going at once that it's difficult to comment on them while they're still getting to whatever crazy place they're going. It'll be interesting to see whether True Blood's fanbase will splinter as the show adds more elements from the book series it's based on. As a fan of the books, I'm glad to see the casting decisions they've made, but the landscape does seem to be getting a bit crowded.

Warehouse 13

Much of Syfy's original offerings tend to be a little too goofy in tone for me, but I was compelled to watch due to the presence of guest stars Jewel Staite and Sean Maher, formerly of Firefly. Maybe it's just because I have a big softy shipper heart, but I wish more shows would utilize actors with previously established chemistry. This episode certainly proves that they can have a beneficial impact on less-than-sparkling material - it wasn't bad, it just felt sort of rote. Still - Sean Maher: Remains Dreamy.

Covert Affairs

I don't know whether being an Alias fan made me more inclined to like or dislike this show, but I didn't think it was too bad. The action sequences were well-executed, and the exposition wasn't too clumsy as far as pilots go. It's always nice to see a show use an actor well, and they seem to have really capitalized on Christopher Gorham's innate likeability in a role that could be grating otherwise. USA has sort of perfected the Serviceable One-hour Procedural That's Good but Not So Good It'll Change Your Life, and I could see adding this to the slate for the summer just because I like having new things to watch.

So You Think You Can Dance

Hopefully the major injury stretch of this season has concluded and the show will finish strong. It's good to see them move away from the heteronormativity the judges have exalted in seasons past and introduce more same-sex pairings for their routines. I'm intrigued to see how the all-star format plays out as the contestant pool dwindles in the coming weeks.

Top Chef

Nice to see the show head into Virginia for this week's Elimination Challenge - it's a complicated state, but it's beautiful, too. It made me want to find a farmer's market and try to cook something inventive.

Ongoing:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

Getting to the tail end of what has become Whedonbinge 2010, completing Buffy Season 6 and Angel Season 3. Both seasons had somewhat underwhelming villains - Buffy got more compelling when the writers placed misogyny at the root of Warren's particular beef with their heroine, but it took too long to get there, and I don't think there was ever a time watching Angel when I found Holtz anything but tiresome. And as far as Angel goes, I also never really felt invested in the whole Connor storyline. This may be a casualty of watching the show years after the fact, when you don't have the week-to-week pacing of a normal airing schedule, so the baby feels even less important than the characters you've spent dozens more episodes caring about. Also, while I think Julie Benz was really good as Darla, David Boreanaz never quite sparked with her in the same way he did with nearly every other actress he's played against. Before this turns into a paper, I'll add that while I wish both shows could have lasted longer, I'm kind of glad that neither Firefly nor Dollhouse got to the point where Whedon & Co. thought it would be a good idea to add an annoying teenager to the show. I can understand why fans back in the day had issues with Connor - if I didn't already like Vincent Kartheiser from Mad Men, I'd probably be even less inclined to accept Angel's turn in events.

Deadwood

Wrapped up the second season, which ended with an unbelievably well-executed run of episodes. I was following the show, but wasn't really sure whether I liked it or not until I got to the finale and realized how much I enjoyed spending time with the characters. Deadwood is becoming one of those shows that makes me love all the actors and want to dive into each one's filmography as if I don't have other things I'm supposed to be doing with my time.

Rewatching:

Mad Men

Because I'm a nerd, I like to do a bit of a rewatch before a new season of a show I enjoy starts up again. I decided to start with the Season Two finale, "Meditations in an Emergency," and move on from there. For a minute, I thought about starting with "The Mountain King" because Anna is one of my favorite tertiary characters in the Mad Men universe, but then doesn't it just make sense to go back to "The Jet Set" and then before you know it you've rationalized your way back to the pilot. And I promised my DVDs to an interested party, so I just stuck with the finale. I got up through Season Three's fourth episode - "The Arrangements" - by Saturday.

- It's interesting to see how differently episodes play when there isn't a week-long buffer between them. I remember the season feeling like it was moving slowly up until "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" but both "My Old Kentucky Home" and "The Arrangements" were much better than I remembered. Of course, it's easy to recognize how important the characters introduced in "Kentucky" are when you know how the season ultimately plays out, but it's also a good, low-key showcase for Elisabeth Moss and Michael Gladis. Rewatching "The Arrangements" made me really interested to see what they end up doing with Sally this coming season - it often felt like they didn't quite know what to do with Gene, but I love the quiet scene where he tells Sally that her relationship with Betty doesn't always have to be dictated by Betty's craziness.

- I'm a fan of Bye Bye Birdie going back years and years and I really love the way it was used in the early section of Season Three. (I may actually have shrieked aloud when the opening chords played at the beginning of "Love Among the Ruins" when I originally saw it last summer.) The film actually adds an interesting layer to what's already a complex but brief scene in "The Arrangements" when Sal explains, and ultimately acts out, the Birdie-based commercial to his wife. I didn't notice before, but the negligee that Kitty wears in a futile attempt to seduce her husband is nearly identical to one that Janet Leigh wears in Birdie. In fact, it's one of the few moments directly acknowledging adult sexuality in a super-chaste film - Dick Van Dyke's character finally casts off the shackles of his former status as a mama's boy and embraces his fiancee, expressing a desire to get married as quickly as possible so they can shag already. Essentially the opposite of what happens in the Romanos' tragic bedroom - I'm still blown away by Sarah Drew in that scene. I don't know how intentional it was (I'm disinclined to believe that Janie Bryant does anything by accident - I highly recommend the Mad Style posts on Tom & Lorenzo for a more in-depth analysis than I could ever hope to attempt) but my over-analytical academic mind loves it. You can see around 2:10 in the trailer below (I swear, it looks greener in the actual movie) and compare with the clip and decide whether I'm crazy or not.

- The dream ballots didn't need any more augmenting, but yet another guest actor deserving of acclaim is Aaron Stanford, who's so hilarious as the deluded, super-rich Jai Alai enthusiast mired in daddy issues who SC takes on as a client in "The Arrangements."

Thoughts on...the Emmy Nominations

So now we get into the actual nominations. (If you do go to that page, I recommend looking at the statistical breakdowns they have there - they give an interesting sense of how this year's nominees fit into bigger trends in the awards over time.)

Pleasantly Surprising:

This could pretty easily turn into a laundry list of every single actor I'm glad to see nominated (you saw how involved that whole Dream Ballot deal was), so I'll try to keep this as minimal as possible.

- Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights: Chandler and Britton always seemed like they'd number among the legions of great performers who've never been recognized by the television academy for little-watched roles, so it was wonderful to see them both nominated. (I wonder if NBC electing to re-air this year's season of FNL later in the summer than last year - and therefore during the voting period - contributed to their being acknowledged.

- Mary Kay Place, Big Love: For some reason, Place slipped my mind when I was putting together my ballots, but I'm definitely glad to see that she finally got recognized for her work, even for a lackluster season of Big Love. Adaleen is one of Big Love's greatest characters - Place makes you believe that, given the opportunity, she could run the world but also makes you understand how the patriarchal culture that structures her worldview prevents her from doing so.

- January Jones, Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men: Mad Men is moving into the early years of feminism's second wave, and is accordingly giving its female characters some meaty discontent in their story arcs. I'm particularly glad to see Hendricks finally nominated - she's consistently made Joan a vital part of Mad Men's ensemble by demonstrating both her capability and her vulnerability.

- Chris Colfer and Mike O'Malley, Glee: Though it's not necessarily surprising that Glee had as big a nomination haul as it did, it was never a sure thing that actors like Colfer and O'Malley would be recognized. They shone on the show because they were given narratively consistent, emotionally rich material to work with, and hopefully their recognition will prompt the show's writers to do more with the parents of their main characters.

Unpleasantly Surprising/Unsurprising, but with a Negative Take:

- While I'm glad that actors like Colfer and O'Malley got nominations for their performances, I'm also hopeful that the number of nominations given to Glee won't be viewed as an indicator that the show shouldn't strive to be better in its second season. I have a lot of thoughts about this that I'll probably write about later in a separate post, but I'll just say that double-digit nominations should not indicate that the show doesn't have a lot of room for improvement.

- There were a lot of new (or improved) comedy ensembles this year, and I would have liked to see the love spread out a bit more. I was somewhat shocked to see that there wasn't more vote-splitting among the cast of Modern Family - not that I don't like the show, because I do very much, but I'd rather see some love for Community, Parks and Recreation, Cougar Town and United States of Tara. The same goes for The Office and 30 Rock - they've had great seasons in the past, but they were plainly eclipsed by the newer offerings this past season. I didn't expect any category to be completely overhauled, but it would have been nice to see some more new blood.

- No love for any members of the True Blood ensemble? In my opinion, what makes the show worthy of consideration in the Best Drama Series category is the cast. They're extraordinarily committed, bringing grounded performances to material that could easily be played broadly or with a wink towards intentional campiness. Maybe next year one or two supporting players will break through.

- I didn't really expect the Internet campaigns pushing Zach Gilford for a nomination to work, but they got enough press there for a bit that it seemed at least marginally plausible. However, his performance in "The Son" episode of FNL remains strong enough to endure in the imaginations of television lovers even without academy recognition.

- Some year, it will be the year when academy voters clear the cobwebs out of their heads and bring significant changes to the Reality Competition category, acknowledging new shows, concepts and hosts. Some year, but not this year.

Assorted Other Thoughts that are Essentially Neutral:

While the Emmy's are not necessarily known for being up-to-the-minute, they do reflect the zeitgeist a bit, and it's interesting to speculate about what they might indicate about the coming decade in television. Formerly dominant networks have seen somewhat of a wane in their reputations, particularly ABC and HBO. While HBO still garners dozens of nominations, many come from miniseries and documentaries and its original series are not getting the same degree of recognition as the predecessors that established the network's credentials; True Blood, while popular, is not occupying the same strata as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under or Deadwood, and the academy seems to have embraced the increasing critical disdain for Entourage. It'll be interesting to see whether prominent projects in the pipeline - Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, Luck, Tilda, Miraculous Year - re-elevate HBO's position, or whether they'll continue losing ground to up-and-comers like AMC. Similarly, ABC's popular one-hour dramas and dramedies seem to have plateaued - Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy and Brothers and Sisters didn't get nominations where they seemed like sure things in the past few years and both Lost and Ugly Betty ended. As ABC's big ratings-gatherers begin to reach the point when their stars renegotiate their contracts, the network will likely need to do some soul-searching about their original programming portfolio, particularly as cable continues to gather steam.

Trailer Thoughts

That Scala/Kolacny Brothers cover of "Creep" is so haunting, it was bound to show up in a trailer one of these days, and it's used to pretty great effect here. I'm really intrigued by this movie - Fincher is one of those weird holes in my film viewing (I'm pretty sure that they'll take my Millenial card away if I don't see Fight Club before I turn 25.) I'd like to think that I have enough perspective to acknowledge the appeal of generational navel-gazing; I was a freshman in college in 2004, which means this fall will mark six(!) years of being a Facebook member. I think the rapid pace of change on the Internet and the relative novelty of social networking there means that it makes sense to dramatize the story while it still feels important, whether history bears out that reading or not. (In the interest of candor, I'll also say that I'm pretty sure I'm obligated to find an above-average degree of schadenfreude in a story about Harvard students being assholes to each other.)

Admittedly, I'm most curious about Aaron Sorkin's screenplay. He has a lot of strengths, but being Down with The Kids These Days is not really known to be one of them, and in the past he's seemed to take somewhat of a dim view of the culture spawned by the Internet (notoriously getting into it with commenters on Television Without Pity back in the day). It'll be interesting to see whether the stylistic touches that make his writing so distinctive translate to a story involving real people instead of characters of his own creation.

Mood...Clip?

I know a lot of people don't like her work, or find her overly quippy or whatever, but I really like Diablo Cody. I can only hope that if I ever wrote anything that got even a little bit of attention that I could be as sanguine as she is about negative press.

Thoughts on the Emmy nominations are forthcoming - I've just had to organize my thoughts a bit. I'm also contemplating starting a sort of weekly TV thoughts post. It's really my most-consumed medium, and I'd like to do some commentary that's more in real-time, as opposed to the more retrospective tack that I normally take.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2010: Best Comedy

Chuck

Community

Glee

Modern Family

Parks and Recreation

United States of Tara

Somehow, it feels like a show that was rescued in part by people eating sandwiches shouldn't be this good. Chuck's writers seem to keep daring themselves to ratchet up the show's stakes, and then keep hitting their mark. Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak have never let something as negligible as potentially impending cancellation stop them from going totally balls-out on their show, and the audience benefits every step of the way. I also feel obliged to commend the show for deciding to stop pussyfooting around their Unresolved Sexual Tension and moving on - it should serve as an example to shows with similar dynamics at play.

While Modern Family and Parks & Rec also have great ensembles, I think Community has the clearest sense of how each cast member functions as a part of the whole and thus does the best job of mixing and matching pairings in different storylines. They also showed an admirable degree of flexibility in acknowledging that Joel McHale and Gillian Jacobs' chemistry wasn't exactly setting the screen on fire and turning that around to use it to their advantage. While Community often goes above and beyond in the name of pop culture homage, it somehow never feels too absurd to be real.

In future seasons, I won't let Glee skate on its relative novelty, but it presented something so dramatically different from everything else on TV that I couldn't leave it off of the list. It was frequently uneven, but the moments where everything clicked - when narrative threads were followed from episode to episode, when the episode's theme wasn't too strained, when a performance spoke to a deeper emotional truth - were transcendent.

Conversely, Modern Family succeeds primarily because it's so familiar - the family-focused sitcom is nothing new, but ModFam manages to introduce freshness into the form while retaining a bit of old-school sentimentality. The show's writers have a firm command of how relatives approach one another and interact with varying degrees of love and frustration in both nuclear and extended families. It is how they exploit those relationships that makes Modern Family unique among the comedies of the 09-10 season.

Parks and Recreation truly distinguished itself from The Office and gained a sense of focus in its second season, introducing us to more of Pawnee's citizens and government employees and developing and deepening the show's universe. Changing Leslie from a more Michael Scott-esque clueless character to more of an idealist fighting from within a cynical bureaucracy both clarified the show's path and enabled the rest of the cast to up their game and give more definition to their characters, all to great effect.

United States of Tara has been good from its onset, but its second season saw its writers doing what truly great writing staffs do - taking a buzzy concept and mining it for all its emotional potential. They could have rested on Toni Collette's amazing lead performance and let Tara's identities remain gimmicky, but instead ditched the explicit costuming of the first season and focused on the underlying interpersonal relationships. John Corbett, Rosemarie DeWitt and Keir Gilchrist all delivered great supporting performances that took Tara deeper and made a good show great.

Honorable Mentions: 10 Things I Hate About You, Cougar Town, Nurse Jackie, Party Down

Dream Emmy Ballot 2010: Best Drama

Damages

Friday Night Lights

Grey's Anatomy

Lost

Mad Men

True Blood

Damages because of its beautifully labyrinthine plotting. Because of the way it wove all three seasons together in one dense package. Because it was willing to sacrifice Tom Shayes. Because after the gloriously mercenary Tobins, Law & Order's version of "ripped from the headlines" will always feel a little toothless from now on.

Friday Night Lights because it strives to do things that are new and different where other high school shows will stay complacent. Because it neither abandons its older characters nor neglects the new. Because its universe is fully lived-in, down through the landscape. Because "The Son" will stand as one of television's great meditations on grief.

Grey's Anatomy because it had its best, most consistently good season since Season Two. Because it established an ensemble that, if necessary, can now survive the departure of original cast members. Because its finale was one of the most riveting, emotionally harrowing two hours of the 09-10 season.

Lost because it never stopped being frustrating and mysterious in the most wonderful way. Because it took a few steps back to shower love on its characters, all the way up to "The End." Because I'm so looking forward to watching it again.

Mad Men because of the way its slow-burn plotting showcased its characters at their best and (more frequently) their worst. Because its writers aren't afraid to see anyone at rock bottom. Because of "The Gypsy and the Hobo" and "The Grown-Ups" and "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." Because, at the end of the day, it's the show that will give you a man getting maimed by a riding lawnmower.

True Blood because of the way it glories in all the possibilities of its genre. Because it exemplifies the potential for episodic television as an adaptive medium. Because it has the most fearless, committed ensemble cast on television. Because it never stops aiming for new, different and increasingly twisted ways to blow the audience's mind.

Honorable Mentions: Caprica, Dollhouse, Parenthood, Treme

Dream Emmy Ballot 2010: Lead Actress in a Drama

Connie Britton, "Tami Taylor," Friday Night Lights

Glenn Close, "Patty Hewes," Damages

Lauren Graham, "Sarah Braverman," Parenthood

January Jones, "Betty Draper," Mad Men

Anna Paquin, "Sookie Stackhouse," True Blood

Jeanne Tripplehorn, "Barb Henrickson," Big Love

Britton is always excellent, but this year she was given great material with both the school-redistricting storyline and Tami's ongoing preparation for Julie's departure for college. Close continued to make Patty Hewes one of cable's most dynamic, fearsome characters. Graham fully stepped up to the dual task of replacing Maura Tierney and shedding her established persona from Gilmore Girls, and in turn delivered a heartfelt, vulnerable performance that helped to save Parenthood from network-drama mediocrity. I don't think either Jones or Paquin get enough credit for their roles within their respective ensembles. Whether Jones is Big-A Acting or not, her performance is an essential part of Mad Men's representation of femininity and gendered expectations. The show wouldn't be what it is without those moments where Betty's suburban ennui suddenly feels like barely contained rage. Paquin's Sookie represents a still point among True Blood's over-the-top craziness, but makes you believe somehow that fighting for a sense of normalcy in a world gone mad is a totally viable course of action. In looking over the nomination ballots, I was surprised at what a positive impression I retained of the performances in Big Love's fourth season, even though I remain dismayed at the plotting. No one can radiate quiet doubt quite like Tripplehorn, and she makes me root for Barb over and over again, even though she keeps sticking by that idiot.

Honorable Mentions: Emily Deschanel, Bones; Melissa Leo, Treme

Rendered moot since originally written last month, but for the record I wouldn't [have been] surprised to see: Sally Field, Brothers and Sisters; Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer; Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife; Mariska Hargitay, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Holly Hunter, Saving Grace; Katey Sagal, Sons of Anarchy

Dream Emmy Ballot 2010: Lead Actor in a Drama

Because I'm nothing if not an over-committed completist.

Kyle Chandler, "Eric Taylor," Friday Night Lights

Matthew Fox, "Dr. Jack Shephard," Lost

Jon Hamm, "Don Draper," Mad Men

Peter Krause, "Adam Braverman," Parenthood

Stephen Moyer, "Bill Compton," True Blood

Clarke Peters, "Albert Lambreaux," Treme

Chandler is a big factor in why FNL stays as good as it is - he made the school transfer storyline work, which in turn made the show's narrative leap feel effortless. I've always been a bigger Jack fan than it seemed was the critical consensus, but Fox really stepped it up in Lost's final episodes. In times when it could have felt like the show was spinning its wheels (or even when the show clearly was spinning its wheels), Fox made the show feel instead like it was being propelled forward in communicating Jack's sense of purpose and drive. It feels rote to keep praising Hamm for his work, but his performance somehow keeps finding new shades and tones. You can believe that Don Draper is the quintessential ad man, because Hamm is so good at showing the different personal facades he creates for all the different people in his life. Krause is a big reason why Parenthood doesn't veer off into being maudlin anywhere near as often as it could, particularly in the Asperger's storyline. It's easy for tragic vampire brooding to become seriously overwrought, but Moyer manages to sell Bill's conflicted feelings about his existence while hinting at hidden depths and potentially unsavory agendas. Peters' performance gave Treme a necessary gravitas, representing the grim determination that resides within those who refused to abandon New Orleans even when it was clearly the much more difficult option.

Honorable Mentions: Eric Stoltz, Caprica; Wendell Pierce, Steve Zahn, Treme

Rendered moot since originally written last month, but for the record I wouldn't [have been] surprised to see: Kiefer Sutherland, 24; Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad; Michael C. Hall, Dexter; Hugh Laurie, House; Simon Baker, The Mentalist