Idle TV Thoughts

My recent TV musings have shifted from "Why doesn't The New Normal have a Brad Falchuk analogue for its pseudo-Glee?" to "Why doesn't 1600 Penn have a chief of staff character?" (In my opinion, both skirt close enough to reality that those absences strain plausibility in a fashion not excused by their being half-hour comedies.)

New Years Ambitions

I feel like I write one of these every year around this time, if only to get the yearly counter in the sidebar restarted. But it's still true that I want to make the most of this space as a writing outlet, particularly as I enter a period of needing to clearly delineate between that which is and is not relevant to my current academic work. This year, I won't try to hold myself to a goal of any specific number of posts generated by December 31. I want to post promptly on whatever I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about it, since posts can linger in draft stage forever. I want to clear the old posts I have lingering from the past few years. I want to embrace what interests me, and not hold myself to juggling endless series posts or projects with a disproportionate work-to-fun ratio. I want this space to compliment the other ways I'm working on organizing my thoughts. I hope it will be a good year.

To kick it off, here's two pieces I found interesting within the past week:

- Maureen Ryan's pro/con breakdown regarding Downton Abbey in anticipation of the third season airing in the U.S. articulates several good points regarding the show's strengths and weaknesses, particularly regarding the depth of the character writing and the vagueness of the timeline. I'm looking forward to the new season, though the tenor of certain headlines in the past few weeks makes me worry that I'm going to spend the whole time waiting for something untoward to happen. (I mean, more so than usual.)

- This Smithsonian article is a few years old, but got linked in this week's Longform roundup for Slate. It's interesting to me the way that, in the time since the article was published, popular culture has interceded to imagine life back into the masked veteran in the figure of Boardwalk Empire's Richard Harrow. The work done by Terence Winter's writing staff and Jack Huston seems all the more impressive in light of the article's description of a life experience largely lost to the ages.

On New Fall Shows: Premiere Week

Partners

I like all four members of this show's ensemble from prior work, but man, was this a super-broad pilot. I think there's a version of this show that explores its relationships in a way that challenges existing TV conventions, but this isn't it. This pilot in particular conjured my least-favorite TV reaction, that of replying "Oh, no" or "Yikes" aloud to the show as the laugh track reacts to a bad joke. It's sort of a half-formed thought, but I think there's something interesting with this show and The New Normal and their critical reception, where both Max Mutchnick and Ryan Murphy had initial successes in the late nineties, when shows centered on gay characters or camp sensibilities were much rarer on the broadcast network landscape, and now they've got these shows telling stories with characters more or less specifically identified as avatars of themselves. I think there's a question there about how you tell new stories and challenge the status quo when you don't automatically get credit just for showing up and the standards for "pushing the envelope" have changed (and I think that's still a goal for both of them, and their creative partners, in the way they've talked about these shows.)

The Neighbors

Like Guys With Kids, not as bad as I was fearing from some of the critical reactions I heard. However, nothing in particular about this pilot grabbed me as I watched it. It seems like a perfectly fine execution of the "aliens among us" type of show; I'm just not convinced that that particular subgenre of comedies has sufficient depths left to be explored that it needs a new incarnation.

Last Resort

More than any other pilot I've seen this fall, this really made me want to see what the next few weeks hold in terms of story development and shaping what kind of show Last Resort is ultimately going to be. It's certainly the best drama pilot I've seen so far this season, dropping intriguing hints about the show's universe and potential conspiracies without too much heavy-handed signaling of "THIS IS A MYSTERY DON'T YOU WANT TO WATCH FOR MANY MANY SEASONS TO FOLLOW THE MANY MANY BREADCRUMBS AND LEARN ALL ABOUT ALL THE MYSTERY" as too frequently occurs in the post-Lost milieu. And Andre Braugher's episode-ending monologue was so electric, it might as well have concluded with a warning to Damian Lewis not to get too comfortable.

Vegas
Elementary
Made in Jersey

I watched all three of these in one go on Saturday evening, and decided to group them all together because all three adhere so closely to procedural format, even as pilots, that the bulk of their material was largely indistinguishable from show-to-show. This is not necessarily a criticism - CBS's ratings demonstrate that a decently-executed procedural can be very watchable. And all three of these have potential. (At the very least, I'll probably keep DVR-ing them for a little while because they make for a good knitting bloc.)

Vegas should get a lot of credit for doing its own thing with the 1960s setting, as opposed to the glossiness that doomed The Playboy Club and Pan Am to unfavorable comparisons with Mad Men from the start. The pilot does a lot of interesting tone-setting with the dust vs. glitz juxtaposition of active cowboy culture and the burgeoning scene on the Strip, and hopefully the show's writers will utilize some compelling material in drawing from true life to shape their story. At its best, Vegas could be like a twentieth-century Deadwood.

Elementary is of course taxed by the existence of Sherlock, but I don't think it necessarily suffers in comparison. Jonny Lee Miller's Holmes is nervier than Benedict Cumberbatch's, comparably arrogant but not as haughty or prickly. Ultimately, it's a take on Holmes that may be less rigorously faithful, but seems more flexible and hard-wearing in order to withstand a thirteen or twenty-two episode season. Lucy Liu as Watson is distinguished more by the American flavor of the character's dry wit, as opposed to the British tone of Martin Freeman (or even Jude Law), than by gender. Like Freeman, Liu carves a place for her character in the early goings-on in showing the doctor's growing flickers of interest as he/she is drawn in by the life of the consulting detective. I also like the Holmes-as-addict/Watson-as-sober coach framework. I'm curious to see how they use the character and his aggregate mythology, as Moffatt, Gatiss and Co. can sometimes seem overly beholden to the original source material.

Made in Jersey has a lot of potential, but I don't know whether it can do enough to distinguish itself on the same network as The Good Wife. Janet Montgomery is engaging in the lead - as my mother would say, the camera loves her. (If this show tanks, I could totally see her becoming CBS's next Simon Baker/Alex O'Loughlin.) The pilot, however, relies far too heavily on making her the smartest person in the room in every possible situation, to the extent that "passion" started to read as "histrionics." The show needs some time to flesh out its other lawyers, soften some of their edges, and show that they too are human beings. What was likely supposed to come across as folksy wisdom garnered from a blue-collar childhood on the protagonist's part made it seem like all the other lawyers sprouted fully formed in their offices instead of coming from families of their own (likely also from outside of Manhattan). I do, however, appreciate that the show set up Martina's personal and professional lives without an obvious love interest - it's rare that pilots allow a female character's career to dominate the narrative that way.

Call the Midwife

I'd heard some vague praise for this show in passing earlier this year, or maybe just a discussion of its popularity relative to Downton Abbey in the UK, but was still pleasantly surprised by how delightful I found the first episode. I like the warm, sisterhood-y vibe of the show's depiction of women dedicating themselves to women's health, a topic that doesn't frequently transfer from political discourses to popular media. (I'm hoping to see some of this in The Mindy Project, and in this season's storyline for Margaret on Boardwalk Empire.) My wish for PBS to adopt a schedule of broadcasting its British imports closer to concurrent with their original air dates across the pond doesn't appear to be coming true this season, but I won't complain about it too much if they keep distracting me with adorable babies.

666 Park Avenue

Not a bad show, but I suspected when I saw the previews that it wasn't going to be my bag, and nothing in the pilot challenged that feeling. Just like Partners, I already like all four of the actors in this show's central ensemble, but the show itself isn't in a genre that tends to appeal to me and the pilot didn't bring any of the kind of engaging weirdness that helped American Horror Story overcome my misgivings. I did appreciate, however, that they had Rachael Taylor's character go to the library to research her weird new residence, since it always bothered me on AHS that the Harmons never bothered to avail themselves of all relevant information once it was clear that their house wasn't like other houses. Sunday nights are so packed, this is an easy one to let fall by the wayside.

Idle TV Thoughts

I know there still aren't that many people who've seen Popular (at the very least, I was pleasantly surprised by Leslie Grossman's cameo in the New Normal pilot, since none of the reviews I'd read mentioned it), but I'm kind of surprised that there isn't more Internet-talk regarding the journey from the Glamazons worshipping Gwyneth to the lady herself becoming an auxiliary member of the Ryan Murphy Players. Did he just sort of will their collaboration into being as an extra-vocal fan?

In Which I Am Psychic, Part II

Julian Fellowes agrees: A Downton Abbey prequel would probably be totally rad.

So what's the fiercer hypothetical casting competition? American ingenues for Cora or British veterans for Violet?

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.

Trailer Thoughts

So portentous and actorly! I want to give it a nineteenth-century-style name. Lincoln; or, Totally Rad Actors in Slightly Suspect Wigs.

I was going to give this one a few days, after dealing with other posts that have been in the pipeline forever, but this one thought is nagging at me and I just wanted to get it down. I know it's a case of art imitating life from two different points, but it's really weirding me out how much Tommy Lee Jones' wig and pallor make him look like Stoneman from Birth of a Nation. And I feel like Spielberg being Spielberg, that can't possibly be unintentional, right? Like maybe there's this whole side project of challenging Thaddeus Stevens' cinematic legacy? Mind you, this is based on about five seconds of trailer. But now I'm curious to see whether that's borne out at all in the movie.

Mood Music LXXI

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Lead Actress in a Drama

Claire Danes - "Carrie Mathison", Homeland
Michelle Dockery - "Lady Mary Crawley", Downton Abbey
Julianna Margulies - "Alicia Florrick", The Good Wife
Elisabeth Moss - "Peggy Olson", Mad Men
Madeleine Stowe - "Victoria Grayson", Revenge
Kerry Washington - "Olivia Pope", Scandal

I've liked Danes for a long time*, but I don't think I realized that she had a character like Carrie in her. Her nervy energy made Carrie immediately distinctive and showed very early on in the season that the terrorist mystery wasn't Homeland's only draw. Mary Crawley might be my current favorite television character - I'm fascinated by her continual inability to act in favor of her own self interest, and I like how Dockery lets Mary's frustration with herself simmer just under her restrained surface. Margulies helped give more shape to the world of The Good Wife as Alicia took a step back to evaluate her relationships with her friends, family and coworkers. Moss' performance in the fifth season of Mad Men was a great slow burn, showing not only Peggy's growing discontent but her attempts to sweep it under the rug to keep up appearances and to try to save her relationship with Don. I keep using the phrase "classic soap" when I talk about Revenge, but that's just because it felt somehow refreshing to see that actors like Stowe could still embody that mode of melodramatic serial storytelling and produce a real diva turn. Washington made Scandal's claims of Olivia's power and capability feel like they weren't hyperbolic, and the show's puzzle pieces of people and relationships fell into place around her strong center.

*This is a digression, but as I first observed some time ago, repeat viewings of the 1994 version of Little Women at a young, impressionable age undoubtedly have an impact here. I sort of alluded to it in the unsubmitted post, but recent viewings have really made me appreciate Danes' work as Beth March and how much it avoids stereotypical sentimentality.

Honorable Mentions: Glenn Close, Damages; Emily Deschanel, Bones; Mireille Enos, The Killing; Katie LeClerc, Switched at Birth; Vanessa Marano, Switched at Birth; Jessica Pare, Mad Men; Ellen Pompeo, Grey's Anatomy; Katey Sagal, Sons of Anarchy; Anna Torv, Fringe; Emily VanCamp, Revenge

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Kathy Bates, Harry's Law; Mariska Hargitay, Law and Order: SVU; Marg Helgenberger, CSI; Taraji P. Henson, Person of Interest; Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey; Debra Messing, Smash

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Lead Actress in a Comedy

Laura Dern - "Amy Jellicoe", Enlightened
Zooey Deschanel - "Jess Day", New Girl
Lena Dunham - "Hannah Horvath", Girls
Amy Poehler - "Leslie Knope", Parks and Recreation
Ashley Rickards - "Jenna Hamilton", Awkward.
Krysten Ritter - "Chloe", Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23

Honorable Mentions: Christina Applegate, Up All Night; Leslie Bibb, GCB; Rachel Bilson, Hart of Dixie; Courteney Cox, Cougar Town; Tina Fey, 30 Rock; Jane Levy, Suburgatory; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep; Lea Michele, Glee; Lennon Parham, Best Friends Forever; Amanda Peet, Bent; Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope; Jessica St. Clair, Best Friends Forever; Dreama Walker, Don't Trust the B---- in Apt. 23

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Beth Behrs, 2 Broke Girls; Kat Dennings, 2 Broke Girls; Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie; Patricia Heaton, The Middle; Laura Linney, The Big C; Melissa McCarthy, Mike and Molly; Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Lead Actor in a Drama

Steve Buscemi - "Nucky Thompson", Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston - "Walter White", Breaking Bad
Jon Hamm - "Don Draper", Mad Men
Dustin Hoffman - "Ace Bernstein", Luck
Damian Lewis - "Nicholas Brody", Homeland
Timothy Olyphant - "Raylan Givens", Justified

Honorable Mentions: Hugh Bonneville, Downton Abbey; Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy; Dan Stevens, Downton Abbey; David Strathairn, Alphas

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Patrick J. Adams, Suits; Ted Danson, CSI; Michael Emerson, Person of Interest; Kelsey Grammer, Boss; Michael C. Hall, Dexter; Jeremy Irons, The Borgias; Hugh Laurie, House; Denis Leary, Rescue Me; William H. Macy, Shameless; Ray Romano, Men of a Certain Age; Kiefer Sutherland, Touch

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Lead Actor in a Comedy

Alec Baldwin - "Jack Donaghy", 30 Rock
Louis C.K. - "Louie", Louie
Zachary Levi - "Chuck Bartowski", Chuck
Joel McHale - "Jeff Winger", Community
Adam Scott - "Ben Wyatt", Parks and Recreation
David Walton - "Pete", Bent

I don't love 30 Rock as much as I used to, but Jack's attempts to cope in the face of Avery's kidnapping still showcased Baldwin's strengths. Louis C.K.'s performance freely communicates the scope of his ambitions as a writer/director - at his best, it feels like his imagination has no limits. Levi is sort of a sentimental favorite for Chuck's final season, but his performance was really key to the show wrapping up its five-season arc in demonstrating Chuck's growth and maturity. McHale remains Community's chief straight man, but also lets us see Jeff giving himself over more and more to his friends' whims. Scott wore many different hats this season on Parks and Rec - romantic lead, unemployed sadsack, capable campaign manager - and proved to be a valuable part of the show's ensemble in all of them. It's a shame that NBC didn't want to give Bent a chance to grow an audience. It didn't get the opportunity to work all its kinks out, but always showed Walton off at his most charismatic.

Honorable Mentions: Will Arnett, Up All Night; Garret Dillahunt, Raising Hope; Rob Lowe, Parks and Recreation

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Tim Allen, Last Man Standing; Don Cheadle, House of Lies; Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men; Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm; Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory; Ed Helms, The Office; Ashton Kutcher, Two and a Half Men; Danny McBride, Eastbound and Down; Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory; Elijah Wood, Wilfred

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Supporting Actor in a Drama

Jack Huston - "Richard Harrow", Boardwalk Empire
Vincent Kartheiser - "Pete Campbell", Mad Men
Gabriel Mann - "Nolan Ross", Revenge
Neal McDonough - "Robert Quarles", Justified
Nick Nolte - "Walter Smith", Luck
Mandy Patinkin - "Saul Berenson", Homeland

Huston's performance is mesmerizingly quiet in a show full of big personalities. He made the act of simply flipping through a scrapbook seem like the saddest thing I'd ever seen, and makes Richard's mask feel like a part of him instead of a prop. Kartheiser has long been one of my favorite members of the Mad Men ensemble - this season, he made Pete's discontent so deeply felt that it could've been an extra character. I'm not the sort of viewer who particularly needs to like a character to enjoy watching them, but I really liked Nolan a lot. Mann is a supporting player in the best sense, letting Nolan function as a friend and sidekick to Emily, as a distinctive, droll character but not one who overshadows. McDonough gave a great single-season villain performance (a new-ish archetype in light of the rise of cable drama?), particularly in devolving over the course of the season from highly controlled to no control at all. I never really felt like I understood horse love until I watched Luck, and the warmth at the core of Nolte's performance was a big part of that. I hope whatever hype carried him to his Oscar nomination this year brings some attention to his work on Luck. I think Patinkin was fundamental to Homeland's success in its first season, a still point for the action to move around. He shows Saul as someone who deeply wants to trust Carrie, but remains wary so as to avoid being drawn into a folie a deux with her. 

Honorable Mentions: Dylan Baker, Damages; Raymond Barry, Justified; Sean Berdy, Switched at Birth; Christian Borle, Smash; Jim Carter, Downton Abbey; Brendan Coyle, Downton Abbey; Henry Czerny, Revenge; Jack Davenport, Smash; Guillermo Diaz, Scandal; Seth Gabel, Fringe; Walton Goggins, Justified; John Goodman, Damages; David Harewood, Homeland; Jared Harris, Mad Men; Joshua Jackson, Fringe; Joel Kinnaman, The Killing; Kevin McKidd, Grey's Anatomy; Joseph Morgan, The Vampire Diaries; Michael Mosley, Pan Am; John Noble, Fringe; Jeff Perry, Scandal; Nick Searcy, Justified; Brent Sexton, The Killing; John Slattery, Mad Men

Particular props to the ensembles of: Boardwalk Empire (Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Shea Whigham, Michael Kenneth Williams); Breaking Bad (Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Dean Norris, Bob Odenkirk, Aaron Paul); Game of Thrones (Alfie Allen, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Richard Madden); The Good Wife (Josh Charles, Alan Cumming, Matt Czuchry, Chris Noth); Luck (Ritchie Coster, Kevin Dunn, Dennis Farina, Jason Gedrick, Ian Hart, Richard Kind, Tom Payne, Gary Stevens); Sons of Anarchy (Dayton Callie, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking, Ron Perlman, Theo Rossi)

This category is my bete noire every year. (Yes, I know. Someday, when I have enough patience, I'll go hunt down the appropriate symbols for all this errant French.)

I Wouldn't Be Surprised to See: Andre Braugher, Men of a Certain Age; Robert Sean Leonard, House

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Supporting Actress in a Drama

Jamie Anne Allman - "Terry Marek", The Killing
Anna Gunn - "Skyler White", Breaking Bad
Lena Headey - "Cersei Lannister", Game of Thrones
Christina Hendricks - "Joan Holloway Harris", Mad Men
Gretchen Mol - "Gillian Darmody", Boardwalk Empire
Maggie Siff - "Dr. Tara Knowles", Sons of Anarchy

I think Allman's performance rescued The Killing a bit, maintaining a continuity of character and performance that worked even when the overly twisty journey to the story's denouement strayed too far afield. Both Gunn and Siff played roles valuable to a practical appraisal of how shows like Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy depict their outlaw protagonists, exposing the way that "I'm doing all this for you" quickly becomes just another rationalization for bad behavior. It might be cheating a bit to judge based on possible future events, but I loved the way Headey's performance laid groundwork for Game of Thrones to follow Cersei's future path down the rabbit hole. There weren't many better single-episode performances this year than Hendricks in "The Other Woman," but the whole season she did great work as Joan dealt with new motherhood, the dissolution of her marriage and the intangible nature of her power in the office. Mol's role - the terrible, clinging mother, the Lady Macbeth figure - has become somewhat of a cliche in antihero-driven television, but she maintains a balance between the sadness in Gillian's past and the horror of her more recent actions to shape a truly distinctive character.

Honorable Mentions: Morena Baccarin, Homeland; Christine Baranski, The Good Wife; Betsy Brandt, Breaking Bad; Rose Byrne, Damages; Joelle Carter, Justified; Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones; Kerry Condon, Luck; Paz De La Huerta, Boardwalk Empire; Michelle Fairley, Game of Thrones; Megan Hilty, Smash; Anjelica Huston, Smash; Kelly McDonald, Boardwalk Empire; Sandra Oh, Grey's Anatomy; Aleksa Palladino, Boardwalk Empire; Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife; Morgan Saylor, Homeland; Caterina Scorsone, Private Practice; Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men; Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey; Darby Stanchfield, Scandal; Sophie Turner, Game of Thrones; Karine Vanasse, Pan Am

I Wouldn't Be Surprised to See: Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter; Michelle Forbes, The Killing; Mary McDonnell, The Closer

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Supporting Actress in a Comedy

Anna Chlumsky - "Amy", Veep
Eliza Coupe - "Jane", Happy Endings
Cheryl Hines - "Dallas Royce", Suburgatory
Zosia Mamet - "Shoshanna Shapiro", Girls
Aubrey Plaza - "April Ludgate", Parks and Recreation
Casey Wilson - "Penny", Happy Endings

Chlumsky ably navigates between "high-strung" and "manic," a distinction that helps keep Veep from being too broad. I'm sure every Happy Endings fan has different favorites among the show's ensemble, and as someone who's kind of both a control freak and a total mess, mine are Jane and Penny. Coupe sells Jane's image of a world on which she can impose order without making her too draconian and Wilson sells Penny as an romantic and an optimist without making her seem naive. Hines' performance rests right in Suburgatory's sweet spot, with a perfect balance of the kind of superficiality the show sends up (with varying degrees of success) and the heart that shows that it's not all just silliness. Mamet, too, was distinctively, delightfully silly, but also undercut Shoshanna's superficiality by showing the fear driving her insecurity about falling behind her peers in gaining life experience. Plaza shows April growing into a more considerate adult without making it feel like a loss of her distinctive personality.

Honorable Mentions: Vanessa Bayer, Saturday Night Live; Sufe Bradshaw, Veep; Elisha Cuthbert, Happy Endings; Jemima Kirke, Girls; Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock; Diane Ladd, Enlightened; Busy Phillips, Cougar Town; Retta, Parks and Recreation; Naya Rivera, Glee; Maya Rudolph, Up All Night; Miriam Shor, GCB; Hannah Simone, New Girl; Allison Williams, Girls

Particular props to the ensembles of: Community (Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs); Suburgatory (Carly Chaikin, Ana Gasteyer, Allie Grant)

I Wouldn't Be Surprised to See: Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory; Julie Bowen, Modern Family; Kathryn Joosten, Desperate Housewives; Cloris Leachman, Raising Hope; Jane Lynch, Glee; Melissa Rauch, The Big Bang Theory; Eden Sher, The Middle; Catherine Tate, The Office; Sofia Vergara, Modern Family; Betty White, Hot in Cleveland; Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live