Post dump! I've been so delinquent about posting this entire calendar year that I really wanted to try to get these in under the wire, pre-nomination announcement.
Natalie Dormer - "Irene Adler", Elementary
I don't expect Elementary to make a big showing among the nominees this year, but was still disappointed to see her name only in play for Game of Thrones. Coming at the end of the season, long after Lucy Liu's Watson had disproved initial suspicions of gimmickry in the show's gender swap, Dormer's performance reinforced the extent to which Elementary is gloriously doing their own thing. For the twist to work, Dormer had to present herself as equally self-assured in Irene's banter-heavy chemistry with Sherlock, and Moriarty's egomaniacal delight in presenting herself as the criminal mastermind.
Raymond J. Barry - "Old Nick", New Girl
Merritt Wever - "Elizabeth", New Girl
Both were standouts in a season where New Girl made a big leap forward in their use of guest stars. Barry's crabby energy made it believable that Nick would entertain the idea that a future version of himself had travelled back through time. And Wever's skill with her particular combination of enthusiasm and deadpan - if there's such a thing as acerbic joie de vivre, she might be the master of it - played perfectly against Max Greenfield in working to undercut Schmidt's vainest tendencies.
Chris Coy - "LP Everett", Treme
Michiel Huisman - "Sonny", Treme
Treme has regrettably never been a big Emmy contender, but still draws upon a number of affecting performances to travel down different paths in the show's New Orleans. Coy's non-native investigative reporter spoke to an enduring belief in the potential for the press as a vehicle for change in the face of an entrenched system designed to resist any accusation of corruption or malfeasance. Huisman, like Andre Royo on The Wire before him, shone in the addiction-downfall-and-redeption storyline this year, something most Treme viewers probably couldn't imagine at the end of the show's first season.
James Wolk - "Bob Benson", Mad Men
I actually flipped back and forth between the Supporting and Guest Actor pdfs a few times because I was so shocked not to see Wolk listed. Among viewers of Mad Men, his performance was the buzziest of the season. As the season progressed, the unrelenting cheeriness of Bob's public face grew more unsettling among the increasingly cynical cast of Mad Men characters, and Wolk excelled in the season's later episodes, letting Bob's mask drop by only millimeters and showing in flickers how fast and hard his mental gears were always turning.
Tony Hale - "Buster Bluth", Arrested Development
I can't have been the only Arrested Development season 4 viewer who felt by the middle of the season like they were constantly wondering, "Where's Buster?" Hale's absence from much of the season was the clearest failure of the show's "film whoever's available" model, and even coming near the end the Buster-focused episode was one of the season's best and most narratively cohesive. The Bluths' maniacal egotism needs Buster's guilelessness to be easier to handle in the aggregate.
Nat Faxon - "Ben Fox", Ben & Kate
Lucy Punch - "BJ", Ben & Kate
Again, I don't blame them for sitting this one out, as Ben & Kate was gone by midseason, left only to the fond memories of its fans. But Faxon and Punch's manic irreverence was key to what made the show unique. I was also disappointed not to see Faxon because I always have trouble filling a full slate in the Lead Actor in a Comedy category.
Cheyenne Jackson - "Billy", Behind the Candelabra
Coming at the beginning of Behind the Candelabra, Jackson's performance quietly signals to film's arc largely through body language. Jackson as Billy refuses to be ignored - it's through his hostile looks and defensive postures that we can see Scott's downfall as Liberace's romantic cycle clicks back to the start again in the last third of the movie.
Jessica Brown Findlay - "Sybil Branson", Downton Abbey
Allen Leech - "Tom Branson", Downton Abbey
I hope Julian Fellowes varies his m.o. a little and kills off fewer characters played by departing actors in future seasons. But it's difficult to quibble with his tactics when they result in an episode as heartbreaking as the one in which Sybil dies in childbirth. In a season where the dramatic engine behind Downton Abbey's storylines often felt rote and uninspired, the unexpected tragedy was affecting, and more, felt historically honest.
Misc. Cast of Bunheads (Bailey Buntain, Emma Dumont, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Julia Goldani Telles)
The young cast of Bunheads are not only skilled, emotive dancers, but jumped in feet-first with Amy Sherman-Palladino's notoriously quick patter and formed the show's strong emotional core.
Misc. Cast of Call the Midwife (Jenny Agutter, Laura Main, Stephen McGann)
Misc. Cast of The Bletchley Circle (Anna Maxwell Martin, Rachael Stirling, Julie Graham, Sophie Rundle)
I'm not surprised that PBS seems to be throwing whatever campaign muscle they have behind Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge, but I'd have liked to see more names from Call the Midwife, and any names from The Bletchley Circle. Together, the two shows portrayed a vibrant and complex range of post-World War II womanhood. Sister Bernadette's story in falling in love with Dr. Turner and deciding to leave the order was Call the Midwife's best story arc across its second season. And Anna Maxwell Martin seems able to jump in at any point across the last 200 years of British history with portrayals of quiet yet strong women.
As an addendum, I'll say that I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of returning players from last year's post show up on the ballot this year. I like to think that the post made it to the eyes of some beleaguered intern toiling in the bowels of a talent agency somewhere tasked with collecting favorable notices of their clients.
Showing posts with label ben and kate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ben and kate. Show all posts
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
On New Fall Shows
A brief rundown on what I've seen so far:
The Mindy Project - Basically won me over immediately in featuring the show's protagonist speaking dialogue along with You've Got Mail (something I've done literally dozens of times) in the pilot's early minutes. It's got a lot of good pieces in a solid cast and a well-defined workplace, but definitely needs focus in going forward to balance it all. Looking at the sheer number of characters involved in The Office, it's not really surprising that Mindy Kaling jumped in with so many people in play. I just hope she and her writers pace themselves in giving more shape to the ensemble.
Ben & Kate - Maybe the most self-assured of the all the pilots I've seen so far, and certainly so among the comedies. The pilot does a good job of mediating between its broad comedic moments and low-key emotional beats, particularly with the eponymous pair as embodied by Nat Faxon and Dakota Johnson. The show has a good foundation, and as much as I liked The Mindy Project, this is the show that made me think that Fox's Tuesday lineup could be really solid all the way from 8-10.
The New Normal - Has no command over its tone, and it is mesmerizing. The good parts are very good, or at least have the potential to be: Andrew Rannells may be the ur-Ryan Murphy avatar, skilled at both the skating-on-the-edge-of-intentional-camp cattiness and the big emotional beats; Rannells and Justin Bartha have a warm, easy chemistry that helps the show enormously and moved the plot forward without too much overly expository "Even though our personalities are so different, I still love you!" rote pilot dialogue; Bebe Wood single-handedly saved the second episode with a killer Little Edie Beale impersonation. The rest sticks out dramatically in contrast with the good: Ellen Barkin's confrontational hostile blonde does not fit with the rest of the material the way previous confrontational hostile blondes have in prior Murphy productions; periodically the show veers off into naked emotional pleas for tolerance that play extremely preachy, that make me feel like the show has broken the fourth wall, grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me back and forth demanding to be heard. (I'm already on your side! Stop scolding me!) Like all Murphy productions (I've seen everything but Nip/Tuck), there's something compulsively watchable about this to me, and I think they've got all the pieces for something good and legitimately heartfelt. I also realize that though I was a Chuck fan, I don't have a strong sense of what Ali Adler's writing voice is, so maybe that will come out more as time goes on. (I am also really intrigued by this whole Bryan-works-on-a-TV-show thing, and wondering if it makes me a bad person to want Murphy to use it to make thinly-veiled, passive-aggressive snipes at the Glee cast, Grosse Pointe/Studio 60-style.)
Go On - A solid vehicle for Matthew Perry, and one that balances weirdness with genuine emotion well enough that it could be his Cougar Town. The show hasn't quite figured out how much of each episode should be focused on the office versus the support group, but it's laid out a good foundation for building on its characters. I don't love this, necessarily, but I'm interested to see where it will go, and the length of the show fits perfectly with the 20-minute window created by my nightly facial masks.
Guys With Kids - "Not as bad as I thought it would be" feels like damning with faint praise, but that's the truth. I don't think this show deserves some of the bad rap it's gotten from critics (a lot like last year's How to Be a Gentleman). The pilot at least seemed to deal in issues of parenthood in general rather than specifically fatherhood, and didn't feel as reductive as reviews led me to anticipate. And while I don't view laughter as a litmus test for overall quality, I did laugh several times at this pilot. Probably too bro-y for me to put it into regular rotation, but not bad.
The Mob Doctor - Well, it's all there in the title, isn't it? Two genres patched together, Frankenstein's-Monster-style. The pilot did the protagonist a disservice by circling around her motivations without really striking at the heart of them - if there's any time to indulge in a little exposition, surely it is in your pilot - which makes her decision at the end of the episode to stay in Chicago, indebted to the mob, when she's offered an out all the more mystifying (but not really intriguing.) I kept feeling like the show could do with a more frank discussion of medical ethics and the expectations placed on medical professionals, but there don't seem to be a lot of opportunities for that to come up with the morally-compromised side held apart from the doctor-who-just-cares-too-much side. Also, the pilot made it seem like Zach Gilford and Zeljko Ivanek are going to consistently be kind of stuck in the background, which will only be frustrating in the long term.
Animal Practice - Somehow simultaneously too absurd and not absurd enough. The pilot placed too much emphasis on the oddball nature of the veterinary staff, alongside a ex-lovers storyline with Justin Kirk and Joanna Garcia so by-the-numbers that I felt like I could speak the dialogue along with them through each beat. I like the idea of switching up the medical show genre with an animal hospital setting (as long as everyone's treated well), and I like Kirk and Garcia from previous work, but this show trades way too heavily in quirk.
Revolution - I started rewatching the Lost pilot to clarify a point I wanted to make about the Revolution pilot, and recalled how unbelievably good the former is, and how poorly the shows that have followed in its wake have handled the task of creating high-concept pilots with both solid character introductions and complicated mythology. In the case of Lost's first hours, the writers use the monster and the polar bear to establish the fundamental unreality of the island environment right off the bat. Revolution has an interesting premise, but introduces it in such a murky way that I couldn't help but focus on nitpicky questions instead of the sketched-in characters - what, outside of a reversal of the laws of nature, would cause batteries to fail spontaneously along with the collapse of the electrical grid? Is there still lightning? Static cling? This kind of show tends to make for very good recap reading, because recappers get so frustrated with the drawn-out mythology that they end up tapping into some very entertaining rage. But I won't be sticking with it otherwise.
The Mindy Project - Basically won me over immediately in featuring the show's protagonist speaking dialogue along with You've Got Mail (something I've done literally dozens of times) in the pilot's early minutes. It's got a lot of good pieces in a solid cast and a well-defined workplace, but definitely needs focus in going forward to balance it all. Looking at the sheer number of characters involved in The Office, it's not really surprising that Mindy Kaling jumped in with so many people in play. I just hope she and her writers pace themselves in giving more shape to the ensemble.
Ben & Kate - Maybe the most self-assured of the all the pilots I've seen so far, and certainly so among the comedies. The pilot does a good job of mediating between its broad comedic moments and low-key emotional beats, particularly with the eponymous pair as embodied by Nat Faxon and Dakota Johnson. The show has a good foundation, and as much as I liked The Mindy Project, this is the show that made me think that Fox's Tuesday lineup could be really solid all the way from 8-10.
The New Normal - Has no command over its tone, and it is mesmerizing. The good parts are very good, or at least have the potential to be: Andrew Rannells may be the ur-Ryan Murphy avatar, skilled at both the skating-on-the-edge-of-intentional-camp cattiness and the big emotional beats; Rannells and Justin Bartha have a warm, easy chemistry that helps the show enormously and moved the plot forward without too much overly expository "Even though our personalities are so different, I still love you!" rote pilot dialogue; Bebe Wood single-handedly saved the second episode with a killer Little Edie Beale impersonation. The rest sticks out dramatically in contrast with the good: Ellen Barkin's confrontational hostile blonde does not fit with the rest of the material the way previous confrontational hostile blondes have in prior Murphy productions; periodically the show veers off into naked emotional pleas for tolerance that play extremely preachy, that make me feel like the show has broken the fourth wall, grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me back and forth demanding to be heard. (I'm already on your side! Stop scolding me!) Like all Murphy productions (I've seen everything but Nip/Tuck), there's something compulsively watchable about this to me, and I think they've got all the pieces for something good and legitimately heartfelt. I also realize that though I was a Chuck fan, I don't have a strong sense of what Ali Adler's writing voice is, so maybe that will come out more as time goes on. (I am also really intrigued by this whole Bryan-works-on-a-TV-show thing, and wondering if it makes me a bad person to want Murphy to use it to make thinly-veiled, passive-aggressive snipes at the Glee cast, Grosse Pointe/Studio 60-style.)
Go On - A solid vehicle for Matthew Perry, and one that balances weirdness with genuine emotion well enough that it could be his Cougar Town. The show hasn't quite figured out how much of each episode should be focused on the office versus the support group, but it's laid out a good foundation for building on its characters. I don't love this, necessarily, but I'm interested to see where it will go, and the length of the show fits perfectly with the 20-minute window created by my nightly facial masks.
Guys With Kids - "Not as bad as I thought it would be" feels like damning with faint praise, but that's the truth. I don't think this show deserves some of the bad rap it's gotten from critics (a lot like last year's How to Be a Gentleman). The pilot at least seemed to deal in issues of parenthood in general rather than specifically fatherhood, and didn't feel as reductive as reviews led me to anticipate. And while I don't view laughter as a litmus test for overall quality, I did laugh several times at this pilot. Probably too bro-y for me to put it into regular rotation, but not bad.
The Mob Doctor - Well, it's all there in the title, isn't it? Two genres patched together, Frankenstein's-Monster-style. The pilot did the protagonist a disservice by circling around her motivations without really striking at the heart of them - if there's any time to indulge in a little exposition, surely it is in your pilot - which makes her decision at the end of the episode to stay in Chicago, indebted to the mob, when she's offered an out all the more mystifying (but not really intriguing.) I kept feeling like the show could do with a more frank discussion of medical ethics and the expectations placed on medical professionals, but there don't seem to be a lot of opportunities for that to come up with the morally-compromised side held apart from the doctor-who-just-cares-too-much side. Also, the pilot made it seem like Zach Gilford and Zeljko Ivanek are going to consistently be kind of stuck in the background, which will only be frustrating in the long term.
Animal Practice - Somehow simultaneously too absurd and not absurd enough. The pilot placed too much emphasis on the oddball nature of the veterinary staff, alongside a ex-lovers storyline with Justin Kirk and Joanna Garcia so by-the-numbers that I felt like I could speak the dialogue along with them through each beat. I like the idea of switching up the medical show genre with an animal hospital setting (as long as everyone's treated well), and I like Kirk and Garcia from previous work, but this show trades way too heavily in quirk.
Revolution - I started rewatching the Lost pilot to clarify a point I wanted to make about the Revolution pilot, and recalled how unbelievably good the former is, and how poorly the shows that have followed in its wake have handled the task of creating high-concept pilots with both solid character introductions and complicated mythology. In the case of Lost's first hours, the writers use the monster and the polar bear to establish the fundamental unreality of the island environment right off the bat. Revolution has an interesting premise, but introduces it in such a murky way that I couldn't help but focus on nitpicky questions instead of the sketched-in characters - what, outside of a reversal of the laws of nature, would cause batteries to fail spontaneously along with the collapse of the electrical grid? Is there still lightning? Static cling? This kind of show tends to make for very good recap reading, because recappers get so frustrated with the drawn-out mythology that they end up tapping into some very entertaining rage. But I won't be sticking with it otherwise.
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