Dream Emmy Ballot 2013: Supporting Actor in a Drama

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau - "Jamie Lannister", Game of Thrones
Noah Emmerich - "Stan Beeman", The Americans
Jack Huston - "Richard Harrow", Boardwalk Empire
Vincent Kartheiser - "Pete Campbell", Mad Men
Mads Mikkelson - "Hannibal Lecter", Hannibal
Corey Stoll - "Peter Russo", House of Cards

Anyone who's read A Storm of Swords suspected a standout year was coming for Jamie Lannister, but Coster-Waldau made one of those glorious adaptive leaps and delivered tenfold, seeming capable of accessing emotional spaces even Martin didn't know about. Emmerich's performance made The Americans a vitally three-part show instead of a duet. Stan was one of the most fascinatingly gray characters of this year in television - not an idealist but neither fully hardened by his experiences, dedicated to his job but undermined by his heart. Emmerich found a place right in the middle all its own. I feel like I gush about Huston and Kartheiser every year - they're my favorites in two stacked ensembles. What hasn't already been said? Huston, with his now-trademark low affect, drew the audience in to Richard's relationship with Julia and his quest to keep Tommy's parents alive in his memory, but never without the undercurrent of doom suggesting it could all fall apart as so many things have for him. Kartheiser spent the season at a low boil - Pete's impotent rage, barely contained behind a mask of civility, felt like it could suddenly blow up and take the whole agency, if not the entire Time-Life building, with it. Mikkelson proved another adaptive standout - it's not just that he formulated something entirely separate from the legacy of Anthony Hopkins, but the pairing of faux amiability and creeping chilliness that convinces you that no one would take too close a look at Dr. Lecter until it was already too late. In a show that could frequently feel too cold, too glossy, and too calculated, Corey Stoll's performance felt like a real, beating heart. Russo's earnestness alongside his inability to keep from defeating himself placed a real note of tragedy amid the endless strategizing of House of Cards.

Honorable Mentions: Jonathan Banks, Breaking Bad; Bobby Cannavale, Boardwalk Empire; Jim Carter, Downton Abbey; Josh Charles, The Good Wife; Kim Coates, Sons of Anarchy; Charlie Cox, Boardwalk Empire; Alan Cumming, The Good Wife; Matt Czuchry, The Good Wife; Guillermo Diaz, Scandal; Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones; Jay R. Ferguson, Mad Men; Jordan Gavaris, Orphan Black; Walton Goggins, Justified; Tony Goldwyn, Scandal; Stephen Graham, Boardwalk Empire; Rick Hoffman, Suits; Rob James-Collier, Downton Abbey; Michael Kelly, House of Cards; Dean Norris, Breaking Bad; Mandy Patinkin, Homeland; Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad; Jeff Perry, Scandal; Kevin Rahm, Mad Men; Nick Searcy, Justified; John Slattery, Mad Men; Eamonn Walker, Chicago Fire

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Michael Cudlitz, Southland; Larry Hagman, Dallas; Freddie Highmore, Bates Motel; Gabriel Mann, Revenge; David Morrissey, The Walking Dead; Ryan Philippe, Damages; Norman Reedus, The Walking Dead; Michael Rooker, The Walking Dead

TV Trailer Thoughts

I feel like I should issue some kind of advance warning to everyone I know, as I suspect come September I am going to be talking about Jeffrey Wright all the time to anyone who will listen.

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.

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: 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: Guest Actor in a Drama

Charlie Cox - "Owen Sleater", Boardwalk Empire
Rockmond Dunbar - "Deputy Sheriff Eli Roosevelt", Sons of Anarchy
Ben Feldman - "Michael Ginsburg", Mad Men
Ray McKinnon - "Lincoln Potter", Sons of Anarchy
Matthew Perry - "Mike Kresteva", The Good Wife
Mykelti Williamson - "Ellstin Limehouse", Justified

Cox's performance brought a levity to Boardwalk Empire that subtly lifted the show in its second season. Owen takes his work seriously, but doesn't let that make him an overly serious person, a welcome alternative to some of BE's preexisting gangsters. Dunbar and McKinnon brought a valuable presence to Sons of Anarchy in the form of law enforcement officials uninterested in offering SAMCRO any breaks, something that's been missing since David Hale died at the beginning of the third season. Dunbar shone in displaying Roosevelt's empathic desire to pull Juice back from the edge after pushing him there, and McKinnon made Potter's quirks distinctive but not overbearing. Feldman's performance was a surprise standout of Mad Men's fifth season, bringing a zeal to his character that made his drive and ambition distinctive when set against all those who've been ground down by life with Sterling, Cooper and associates. Perry's trademark dry delivery translated well to The Good Wife, in this case in defining a character with a logical skepticism regarding the Florricks that is rarely shown in the show's universe. I wrote a bit about Williamson's performance back in the winter, but I'll add that his work added a valuable element to Justified in a non-Boyd character who is neither a real ally nor an enemy to Raylan, one in this case who is tied to a deeply entrenched sense of duty to his community.

Honorable Mentions: Dylan Baker, The Good Wife; Mechad Brooks, Law and Order: SVU; Jere Burns, Justified; Michael Cerveris, Fringe; Jeremy Davies, Justified; Michael Gambon, Luck; Iain Glen, Downton Abbey; T.R. Knight, Law and Order: SVU; Mark Margolis, Breaking Bad; Chris Messina, Damages; Robert Morse, Mad Men; Sebastian Stan, Once Upon a Time; James Tupper, Revenge

I Wouldn't Be Surprised to See: Ed Asner, Hawaii Five-O; Andre Braugher, Law and Order: SVU; James Caan, Hawaii Five-O; Colin Hanks, Dexter; Edward James Olmos, Dexter

Trailer Thoughts

Season 3 Invitation to the Set

Boardwalk Empire and Treme together on the same night seems a bit tonally wonky, but probably in an awesome way? I'm certainly looking forward to it.

Week in TV: October 30-November 5

Boardwalk Empire, 2.6: "The Age of Reason"

- There have been a lot of quiet scenes of serious, bone-deep loneliness this season - Richard's scrapbook, the stilted conversations of the Van Aldens - but nothing compares to the heartbreaking sequence of Lucy realizing what was happening and then gathering herself together to give birth alone. It seemed like the show relied a lot on Paz de la Huerta's established persona to build Lucy's character in the first season, but I think she's really done a great job with the more subdued material of this storyline.

- It's a small role, but I really like the performance Anatol Yusef is giving as Meyer Lansky. To the extent that BE ever functions as a sort of a biopic, it's what I think of as the ideal biopic performance - aware of the mythos without being overly reliant on it. There are just brief flashes here and there where you can say, "Oh, yeah, I can totally see this guy being a major player in revolutionizing American organized crime," but I never feel beaten over the head with it.

Sons of Anarchy, 4.9: "Kiss"

I know it's not really a flashback kind of a show, but I'd really love to see SOA take a look back at the early years of the Gemma-Unser relationship. (I'm sort of envisioning a West Wing "Two Cathedrals"-style setup.) What kinds of interactions did the cop and the wild daughter of Charming have back in the day that earned her such enduring devotion from him?

Revenge, 1.7: "Charade"

- I don't envy the people working on the upcoming Dallas reboot for TNT - Revenge has been bringing the primetime soap back with a vengeance (heh, no wordplay intended) and even if New Dallas is amazing, it seems likely that Revenge will totally steal their thunder. The introduction of Stripper Emily and the Nolan-Tyler blackmail hookup collectively showed that the show has transcended the pseudo-procedural revenge-of-the-week setup in only a few episodes.

- I know it's still a bit of a ways off, but what happens when the summer is over? The Graysons aren't year-round Hamptons residents, right? I'd like to think that the show will just continue on to other locales where the wealthy vacation - a season in Aspen or Palm Springs or wherever - but who knows?

American Horror Story, 1.5: "Halloween, Part 2"

- Finally, finally, a ghost tells one of the Harmons directly that they need to do some research. (In this case, one of Tate's apparent victims incredulous at Violet's ignorance of the situation.) The most frustrating thing about this show to me so far has been the Harmons' bizarre lack of curiosity regarding the house and its sordid history. If I was considering moving into a house and the realtor told me the previous tenants had died in a murder-suicide, I would Google That Business. Immediately. The further incidents of a) a stranger claiming to have burned his family to death in said house, b) a home invasion based around recreating events of a famous dual murder in said house and c) the Murder Tour of Los Angeles bus pointedly making a stop IN FRONT OF SAID HOUSE would prompt me to, again, Google That Business. Maybe take a trip to the library and spend some quality time with the Los Angeles Times on microfiche. It's difficult to feel bad about any of the terrible things happening to the protagonists when they seem so determined to face it all with as little helpful information as possible.

- Okay, so it's a major part of the story that the family doesn't have enough money to move, right? Then how do they have enough to afford that tricked-out security system with the prompt, personalized service?

- Interesting to see that Tim Minear wrote this episode - something about the tone reminded me a bit of his Angel episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been." Indeed, he wrote some of the most interesting flashback-based episodes under the Mutant Enemy banner - "Darla" for Angel, "Out of Gas" for Firefly and "Omega" for Dollhouse - which suggest that he's got a skill set well-suited to this show's particular universe and mode of storytelling. It wasn't the most suspenseful of the episodes that have aired thus far, but it was the first that made me curious to learn more about any of the characters (as opposed to previous episodes, which made me curious to see what sort of random insanity would get thrown up on screen the following week).

Miscellaneous Links:

- Shout-out to this week's A.V. Club Inventory on unexpectedly scary episodes of generally non-scary shows for including the episode that most readily came to mind for me: the Scream-based episode of Boy Meets World. (#10 on the list) "And Then There Was Shawn" is one of my all-time most memorable television-watching experiences, because it scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I was over at a friend's house when I saw it, and it marks the only time I can remember having to call home to be brought back from a sleepover during the night. I was wracked with paranoia for months afterward - I constantly checked behind doors to make sure no slashers were lurking and every time I got left alone at home I would just sit tensely in my room, jumping at every little creak, convinced that I was mere moments away from being murdered. Honestly, even though I've gotten older (and at this point, actually watched the real Scream without incident) and accumulated more experience with genre fiction, I'm still wigging a little bit just thinking about it.

Week in TV: October 23-29

Boardwalk Empire, 2.5: "Gimcrack and Bunkum"

- In a media landscape that's often lacking in diversity, I feel like BE deserves props for making the cabal of Atlantic City elders backing the Commodore feel like the oldest, whitest group of old white men anywhere on television. Truly an accomplishment among stiff competition.

- Great interview with Jack Huston from The Daily Beast; the work he's been doing this season is mesmerizing, and really showcases BE at its best.

Revenge, 1.6: "Intrigue"

There are many things to enjoy about this show, but I'm currently really digging Ashton Holmes, Tyler's weird creepiness, and the fact that they've kept his motives fairly oblique; does he want to bang Daniel, replace him in the Grayson family, or murder him and wear his skin? (Maybe all three, not necessarily in that order?) Love it. I was kind of convinced that the shooting that opened the pilot is actually connected to the mentioned-infrequently-but-just-frequently-enough-to-clearly-be-relevant waitress relationship gone bad rather than Emily's revenge plot, but I'm willing to give a percentage of that theorizing over to "Tyler finally snaps." Good stuff.

American Horror Story, 1.4: "Halloween, Part 1"

I think this week really highlighted a central flaw in the show, particularly if the plot heads where it appears to be heading: the most interesting people in any given episode tend to be the former residents/current ghosts. If the seemingly inevitable horrific murder (murder-suicide?) of the Harmons comes to pass, they aren't currently compelling enough for their potential future haunting to seem like an interesting prospect. At the end of the episode, I wasn't concerned about the ostensible protagonists. I was thinking, "Damn, I hope we get some sort of cross-era ghost interaction so there are at least a few scenes of Zachary Quinto and Lily Rabe going crazy on each other, over-the-top Tennessee Williams-style."

Once Upon a Time, "Pilot"

Grimm, "Pilot"

Two takes on fairy tales, neither of which grabbed me right out of the gate. I preferred Grimm's darker take on the material, just because it seemed to owe more to the gorier original stories as opposed to the more clearly Disney-influenced versions in Once Upon a Time (and, honestly, when you're introducing a show like this in 2011, I think you need at least a dash of that kind of self-awareness and to contend with your source material in as nuanced a manner as possible), but I don't think I'm up for what looks to be a more procedural structure in the less whimsical show. I'm more curious to see where Once Upon a Time goes for a while, particularly whether the flashback structure holds up, and whether a long-term strategy for sustaining compelling storytelling emerges. The stated goal of Emma ultimately defeating the Queen and breaking the curse seems like a decent endpoint, but only if there's as little wheel-spinning as possible in the journey to get there.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actress in a Drama

Khandi Alexander - "LaDonna Batiste-Williams", Treme

Emilia Clarke - "Daenaerys Targaryen", Game of Thrones

Christina Hendricks - "Joan Harris", Mad Men

Kelly MacDonald - "Margaret Schroeder", Boardwalk Empire

Margo Martindale - "Mags Bennett", Justified

Sandra Oh - "Christina Yang", Grey's Anatomy

Part of what made Alexander's performance this year so great is the strength she established in the first season of Treme - you could see that woman struggling to reemerge in the wake of the assault she experienced, which then made it feel like a triumph when she finally let her anger flow free in the finale. Clarke and MacDonald both made their characters' journeys away from innocence vital arcs in their respective shows. Hendricks continued to find new depths in Joan as she gained more power in the office but saw her means of handling business become increasingly obsolete. Martindale gave an unbelievably great performance across the season, masking simmering menace with grandmotherly warmth, capped off by a wonderfully Shakespearean exit. Oh got the best material coming out of the trauma of the previous season's finale, and capably handled Christina's emotional distance from the driven surgeon who she used to be.

Honorable Mention: Laura Allen, Terriers; Christine Baranski, The Good Wife; Michelle Fairley, Game of Thrones; Michelle Forbes, The Killing; Mamie Gummer, Off the Map; Lauren Hodges, Rubicon; Natalie Martinez, Detroit 1-8-7; Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife; Sara Ramirez, Grey's Anatomy; Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men; Maggie Siff, Sons of Anarchy; Jurnee Smollett, Friday Night Lights; KaDee Strickland, Private Practice; Aimee Teegarden, Friday Night Lights

Particular props to the ensembles of: True Blood (Kristin Bauer van Straten, Rutina Wesley, Deborah Ann Woll); Big Love (Ginnifer Goodwin, Chloe Sevigny, Grace Zabriskie)

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Lisa Edelstein, House; Amy Ryan, In Treatment; Debra Winger, In Treatment

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actor in a Drama

Michael Cristofer - "Truxton Spangler", Rubicon

Jeremy Davies - "Dickie Bennett", Justified

Jack Huston - "Richard Harrow", Boardwalk Empire

Lennie James - "Morgan", The Walking Dead

David Morse - "Jerry Raines", Lights Out

Eamonn Walker - "Ed Romeo", Lights Out

Cristofer, besides delivering one of the year's best monologues in the Tie Speech, made for an alternately magnetic and fearsome conspiracy-mongerer. Davies regularly made my skin crawl with his depiction of a man-child unafraid to resort to violence when his ambitions outpaced his intelligence. The mask made Huston stand out initially, but his haunted, hollowed-out performance was striking even within Boardwalk Empire's attention-getting ensemble. In a season with a lot of great drama pilots (with varying degrees of shows then delivering on the promise of those pilots), James gave a fairly perfect pilot-only performance, capably handling the task of introducing viewers to the new zombie-dominated world. Though Lights Out was short-lived, I feel like Morse and Walker's performances will stick with me for a long time. Morse embodied the tragedy the show saw in the threat of pugilistic dementia, and Walker continues to stun me with his ability to grant great humanity, spirituality, and depth to characters who in other hands would come across as "magical Negro" stereotypes.

Honorable Mention: Greg Antonacci, Boardwalk Empire; Raymond J. Barry, Justified; Nicholas Brendon, Private Practice; Reg E. Cathey, Lights Out; Bruce Dern, Big Love; Noah Emmerich, The Walking Dead; Jay R. Ferguson, Mad Men; Scott Foley, Grey's Anatomy; Michael J. Fox, The Good Wife; James Frain, True Blood; Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights; Tim Guinee, The Good Wife; Brad William Henke, Justified; Hal Holbrook, Sons of Anarchy; Bill Irwin, Lights Out; Joe Manganiello, True Blood; Robert Morse, Mad Men; Mark Moses, Mad Men; Denis O'Hare, The Good Wife; Dallas Roberts, The Good Wife; Christopher Stanley, Mad Men; Joseph Lyle Tayor, Justified; Titus Welliver, Sons of Anarchy

Can you tell this was a tough one to narrow down? Mark Moses almost made it - I love Duck Phillips' ongoing downward spiral so much.

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Beau Bridges, Brothers and Sisters; Richard Dreyfuss, Parenthood; Michael Emerson, Parenthood; Paul McCrane, Harry's Law; Jonny Lee Miller, Dexter; Scott Porter, The Good Wife

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actress in a Drama

Maria Bello - "Vivian Arliss", Law and Order: Special Victims Unit

Cara Buono - "Dr. Faye Miller", Mad Men

Kaitlyn Dever - "Loretta McReady", Justified

Karina Logue - "Stephanie Dolworth", Terriers

Gretchen Mol - "Gillian Darmody", Boardwalk Empire

Alfre Woodard - "Ruby Jean Reynolds", True Blood

SVU's various guest appearances can often feel showy and awards-baity, but Bello's performance as an abrasive sort of alternate-reality Olivia was a subtle standout. Some shows with predominantly male ensembles can fumble introducing new female characters (it's something I've always felt Friday Night Lights hasn't done well), but Buono's dynamic performance asserted Dr. Faye as a force to be reckoned with, both as a professional woman in Mad Men's evolving world and as a woman who loves Don but is firmly uninterested in letting him off the hook for his crap. Time will tell whether she will ultimately become an established adult actress, but Kaitlyn Dever's work on Justified this season reminded me a lot of Mia Wasikowska on In Treatment a few years ago. I kept thinking during her appearances that the people casting The Hunger Games might've missed out on an ideal candidate for their leading lady. It's difficult to encapsulate what was so great about Logue's performance as Steph - the delightful rapport with her brother, the hyper-literal interactions with other characters - but I'll say this: she was introduced hiding in her brother's ceiling, stealing food and disappearing like a cat burglar, and that never once felt contrived. Mol handled Gillian with a combination of savvy and world-weariness that made her Boardwalk Empire's most self-assured woman by a mile. Woodard's character was sort of a funhouse-mirror version of what Frances Conroy did in United States of Tara, the mentally ill parent who grants previously unrealized depths to established characters in just minutes of screentime.

Honorable Mention: Kristina Apgar, Detroit 1-8-7; Elizabeth Ashley, Treme; Patricia Bethune, Mad Men; Ellen Burstyn, Big Love; Loretta Devine, Grey's Anatomy; Louise Fletcher, Private Practice; Ana Gasteyer, The Good Wife; Linda Gehringer, Justified; Marcia Gay Harden, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Randee Heller, Mad Men; Julia Ormond, Law and Order: Criminal Intent; Adrianne Palicki, Friday Night Lights; Jessica Pare, Mad Men; Melissa Rauch, True Blood; Anika Noni Rose, The Good Wife; Laura San Giacomo, In Plain Sight; Rachael Taylor, Grey's Anatomy; Ally Walker, Sons of Anarchy; Jo Beth Williams, Private Practice; Evan Rachel Wood, True Blood

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Jane Badler, V; Candice Bergen, House; Joan Cusack, Shameless; Christine Lahti, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Marlee Matlin, CSI; Mary McDonnell, The Closer; Sarah Silverman, The Good Wife; Jean Smart, Hawaii 5-O; Julia Stiles, Dexter

Trailer Thoughts

If you'd asked me at 8:45 last night, "Liz, are you excited about the upcoming season of Boardwalk Empire?", my response would've probably been measured. The first season wasn't perfect, but the actors gave great performances and the finale made me feel like I was looking forward to seeing what the writers would do in a second season, particularly with the alliance between Jimmy, the Commodore and Eli.

Imagine my shock, then, at seeing this preview before the True Blood premiere and finding myself erupting into paroxysms of delight. I'm serious - by the time Jack Huston showed up in that mask, I was jumping up and down and clapping my hands with glee. Maybe I really love all those reprobates. Maybe everything else just seems ten times better in a post-The Killing world.

Week(s) in TV: Catching Up

I'm supposed to be working on a paper, but I figured that this was not entirely useless as a stalling tactic as it gets me writing something, which is better than writing nothing even if it's not germane to the task at hand. I keep starting weekly posts and then having them sort of fade into the ether as I get farther and farther into each successive week without posting, so this is sort of a multi-week commentary compendium including the various cable shows that have concluded their seasons in the past few weeks.

Boardwalk Empire

- When I do the Dream Emmy Ballot in the summer, the supporting drama categories are always the ones where I end up with about twenty performances that I love, and BE added some great actors there. Michael Kenneth Williams never seemed to get enough to do, besides that unbelievably excellent scene with Chalky and the guy from the Klan, but still used every second he appeared on screen to radiate a kind of simmering menace that made Chalky seem like the greatest badass of all time. Similarly, Jack Huston made a lot out of relatively little screen time, particularly in selling Richard's war wounds as more than a gimmicky period flourish.

- Try as I might, I just cannot bring myself to care about Angela and her problems. The whole "drifting along ineffectually, letting oneself be swayed by whomever happens to be physically closest" thing is likely very true to the way a fair number of people go through life, but it's terribly boring to watch. And unlike, say, Mad Men, where I think the writers made a decent case for Betty's continued presence by emphasizing the degree to which Don places importance on his children, the same can't really be said here for Angela in relation to Jimmy. The writers made me care more about Pearl in two episodes than they did about Angela through the whole entire season.

- I honestly wasn't sure for much of this season whether I would be excited for the next when it wrapped, but the finale sold me - I'm genuinely interested to see where the alliance between Jimmy, Eli and the Commodore goes. It seems like BE has all the tools necessary to pull out a superlative second season, and I'm looking forward to seeing whether they stick the landing.

The Walking Dead

Conversely, I don't know if I'm just that into The Walking Dead. It wasn't bad, but the first six episodes didn't feature the kind of character development or plot advancement that makes a show feel like vital viewing. (This post from io9 delves really well into the differences between the show and the comic - which I started reading over the summer, then tapered off - and how those differences tended to make the show a bit shallower.) Depending on how many shows I'm watching next fall, I may pick it back up again when the second season starts, but at present I'm not burning to see more.

Gossip Girl

Last week's episode concluded what is easily the best-executed narrative arc the show's ever done. (Considering the entire Schwartz/Savage oeuvre, it may be the best-executed narrative arc on GG or The O.C.) Eleven episodes must be some kind of record for them as far as sustaining a storyline, and the writers managed to make Juliet's motivation logical (as logical as Gossip Girl ever gets, anyway) and to resolve the story with a decent payoff. The only disappointment is that Juliet and Serena ended on good terms - Katie Cassidy could've made a stellar recurring villain for the show.

Glee

While watching both "Special Education" and "A Very Glee Christmas," I was struck by how little I cared about the seeming dissolution of the relationships between Rachel and Finn and Will and Emma. For all of the show's emphasis on the pairings of characters, there isn't a huge degree of chemistry among any of them. Some work well plot-wise, but there's no real, say, Matt Saracen/Julie Taylor or Chuck Bass/Blair Waldorf in this group. That said, I will observe that Artie and Brittany seem to be shaping up to be a great example of the Dream Relationship - that being when one finds someone who takes in the various things about them that are maybe a little nutty, crazy, flaky, whatever, and finds those things charming.

Sons of Anarchy

- I'll be interested to see how this season plays back on DVD. I watched both prior seasons within the span of about two weeks, so this season was going to feel like slow going no matter what happened, and I suspect that the trip to Ireland will play better within a shorter span of time and that the way it eventually circled around to bring John Teller's history in will fit better with the show's mythology as it's been laid out so far. Regardless, it's difficult to quibble with the story's denouement in the finale. If you're going to dispatch with a pair of villains who've outlived their narrative usefulness, best to do so with extreme badassery as the culmination of an epic triple-cross. The potential for a degree of narrative resetting with Jax, Clay and company coming out of jail (presumably) at the beginning of next season seems really promising - why is next fall so far away?

- I so hope that this season's finale, like the prior two, appears on the DVDs with a cast commentary. Kurt Sutter gathers together a giant group of cast members, then they proceed to basically ignore whatever gravity the plot would seem to dictate and replace it with a lot of catcalling, insults of each other's stage fighting and motorcycle riding abilities and general raucousness. I really, really want to rewatch the moment when Chibs slices Jimmy up with a cast commentary soundtrack.

- I found him kind of one-note in his early appearances, but I have to say that Chucky is growing on me. Once they minimized the masturbation jokes and focused on his potential as an odd-but-game friend of the club he became a great figurehead for the community built around SAMCRO.

Terriers

Between the time when I initially planned to write about this and now, Terriers was officially cancelled by FX. As was frequently true throughout the season, I find myself at a loss for words to encapsulate what was so good about Terriers. There were the perfect marriages of character and actor with Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James. The ensemble of smart female characters like Katie, Maggie and Steph, truly unlike any other on TV. The marvelous frayed-edges and lived-in-ness of the universe of Ocean Beach. The push and pull between laid back amiability and tangible danger that somehow never seemed to tip the balance too far any one way. I wasn't surprised that the show got cancelled - all I could really do was shrug and sign up for an Amazon update when the DVDs are available - but man, will I miss it.

I suppose the other side of the coin as far as The Walking Dead is that in the past six months alone we've had both Rubicon and Terriers come and go, and while I feel like I'll miss the characters and their universes and chase down other work by the actors from the latter two, right now I feel like I could quite contentedly never watch TWD again.

Week in TV: October 24-30

Boardwalk Empire

- The theme song is slowly growing on me. It's still not the kind of song you can imagine playing in the background as someone makes their way from the audience to the podium at an awards show, but it's got its own sort of swagger.

- Somehow, this episode managed to reference not one, but two different things that have come up in my reading this semester that make my skin crawl: the phrase "feeble-minded" and the contraceptive concept of douching with Lysol. Ew.

Glee

- I don't think I've previously discussed A.V. Club writer Todd VanDerWerff's breakdown of Glee's three showrunner-writers and what each brings to the episodes they write, but it's gotten a strong example this season in the way Will's been written in the episodes by Ryan Murphy. Where he normally seems like an enthusiastic, if occasionally hapless teacher, in Murphy's two episodes so far this season he's come across as a psycho with no boundaries, who then wonders why acting like a psycho with no boundaries isn't immediately winning Emma over to his side. Murphy can usually make his particular brand of heightened reality work within Glee's universe, but when a character's doing something so cringe-inducingly awful that you want to avert your eyes from the television, that's when you should maybe re-evaluate that character's path.

- Over the summer, I had designs on writing a post about what I though Glee could learn from other high-school shows, which obviously never quite materialized. (If this season is structured like the first, with the multi-month winter hiatus, it still might make an appearance.) The repeated mentions of the club going to Nationals brought up one of those points - where the first season's first thirteen episodes were loosely structured around the trip to Sectionals, there's been no real mention of them so far. The show I'd refer to here as an example is Friday Night Lights - each season of FNL, especially the first and third, where the team actually makes it to the State Championship game, utilizes the game-by-game structure of the football season as a narrative frame. Given that they didn't make it past Regionals last year, all this talk about New York is increasingly seeming like a) totally wishful thinking that is b) completely divorced from reality and c) not in a wacky, fun way.

Sons of Anarchy

One of the things I love and hate about cable dramas is that you never quite know where the writers set their boundaries. When you're not beholden to the same kinds of Standards and Practices as the networks, where do you draw the line on what's too much, especially when your show takes place in a relatively insane, violent universe? I'm thinking specifically about Jax's new Belfast flirtation with the girl he doesn't know is his half-sister, which seems to bring up these two voices in my head as I watch. One says, uneasily, "Even on a show as crazy as this one, incest is totally a line that they wouldn't cross," and the other says, "OR WOULD THEY?!?" And then both yell at the TV for persons in the know to intervene.

Private Practice

This television season seems to be featuring a disproportionate number of actors jumping around the dial - Zosia Mamet, Kevin Alejandro, Paula Malcomson, etc. - but none have been quite so disorienting as the Wednesday/Thursday juxtaposition of the Gustafson-heavy Terriers episode and Rockmond Dunbar then appearing on PP as a guy on the downlow. I mean, it partly indicated to me how quickly I've embraced Terriers (so good), but it also made for a weirder-than-it-was-supposed-to-be hour of television on Thursday.

Also Watched: Sherlock, Luther, 90210, Gossip Girl, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, The Good Wife, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Hellcats, Terriers, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Community, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Degrassi

Week in TV: October 10-16

Boardwalk Empire

Best episode yet, and a great episode for fleshing out previously underserved characters in Margaret, Gillian and Chalky. In some reviews I've read, people have found the scenes highlighting Margaret and Chalky somewhat heavy-handed, but then I don't know what period television they're watching where such moments are "expected" or "obvious." Maybe it's just years spent in history classes where people feel compelled to excuse "the way things were back then," but I think it's important to showcase resistant voices in media like this. Thinking critically about the past helps us understand then and now, and if this is the kind of writing that BE's going to continue to employ, then I'm in for the long haul.

Rubicon

I'll be honest, I really didn't think they would ultimately have the terrorist act seen through to completion, but I think that doing so distinguishes Rubicon from every other show airing right now. The whole season has gradually ratcheted up the tension in a glorious slow burn; many shows are daring, but few do so without also being showy. I'm on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in the finale - now that that tension has culminated in an explosion, what do the characters do next?

Mad Men

- Unusually low-key penultimate episode, at least as far as this show goes, which makes me a little concerned that something crazy is going to happen tonight. Like, both Sterling and Cooper keeling over dead or something. A plot point like Don publicly rejecting tobacco work represents a dramatic shift in the show - Lucky Strike is the client that forms the backbone of the pilot - but I think it would be uncharacteristic of Weiner to have some new savior show up in the finale. Most of the storylines feel right now like their implications are designed to play out in the long-term rather than the short-term - an exciting feeling after a finale, but an unnerving one beforehand.

- I usually like the oblique collection of out-of-context quotes that fill the "Next Time on Mad Men" teasers, but I wish that if they'd only been pulling from past episodes that they'd used the prior season finales rather than selections from this season. Not because I haven't liked this season (I definitely have) but because the past three finales are among the show's best episodes. A teaser with, say, Don's carousel speech and Peggy in the hospital from "The Wheel," Peggy's confession and Don's righteous smackdown of Duck from "Meditations in an Emergency," and various company-heist hijinks from "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." would actually get me excited about next week. As it is, I have to say I'm more intrigued to see how Rubicon closes out their season.

- This is mostly unrelated, but I really hope that somewhere among the lead-up to the Broadway arrival of the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying revival we get a picture of Robert Morse and Daniel Radcliffe together. Just because I'm pretty sure it would be adorable.

Chuck

- I'm not dreaming, right? This season has been mad boring thus far? I'm sure a lot of outlets will blame it on Chuck and Sarah being together, but the problem is not their relationship as much as it's the fact that they never stop talking about their relationship. There's a rational level of insecurity involved in any new pairing, but I think we passed "rational" sometime in Season Three's back six and now we're veering off into "grating". All I know is when 8 on Monday rolls around, I increasingly want to watch 90210 live and time-shift Chuck instead of the other way around.

- I know I should probably be offended by the incidences of obvious product placement, but there's something so blatant about the way they mention Subway that it just makes me laugh.

Glee

- Now that's how you use a song from A Chorus Line.

- When the characters were reviewing their summer vacations in the premiere, did we somehow skip over Artie's lobotomy? Or are we supposed to believe that breaking up with Tina prompted some sort of dramatic break with rational thought? Where he seemed essentially smart, though occasionally misguided last season, now he just seems like he's taken leave of his senses. (The football thing stretches even the bounds of Glee's universe. Rules or not, there's no way that a school system lawyer wouldn't intervene in the interest of liability there. I'm pretty sure the apprehension of being sued transcends hyper-reality.) I just wish that he could've had a serious, low-key discussion with Brittany about the implications of losing his virginity instead of condemning her for manipulating him with her slatternly ways.

Sons of Anarchy

- I was struck in this episode by the difference between the ceremony involved in accepting or dismissing a member from the club and Jax's cursory break-up with Tara; I don't think SoA's ever before delineated quite so clearly the status of women in the club's milieu. I'm interested to see where Tara's path takes her now; I suspect that like Bill and Sookie on this past season of True Blood, she and Jax may be more interesting apart than they are together. It's not classy, but I'd love to see Tara totally lose her shit.

- Where's Wendy in all this kidnapping rigamarole? If I recall correctly, when last we saw her she was headed for a halfway house to become accustomed to sobriety. To some extent, it makes sense that they wouldn't tell her what's going on, in a variation of what kept them from sharing the news with Gemma for so long - don't alarm the recovering addict. But it would be nice if they'd mention her every once in a while, even if it's just to say that they're continuing to keep her in the dark.

Undercovers

Just what I was hoping for - oblique references to mysterious secrets! There may be hope for this show yet.

Hellcats

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the new crop of shows this fall, at least on the networks. The pilot was a little obnoxious, but Hellcats has actually turned out to not be terrible - its recent episodes have bestowed its main characters with decent development, and though it's depiction of both college cheerleading and the life of a pre-law student may not be 100% "accurate" in a real-world sense, the show does know its universe and communicate its ins-and-outs clearly. Special credit to Ashley Tisdale, who may be one of least broad actors to come out of the Disney/Nick machine in a while.

Terriers

Whenever I'm watching Sons of Anarchy and catch ads for Terriers, I'm struck by how mismarketed the show seems. The commercials highlight the goofy vibe and amiable banter between Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, and if I wasn't watching the show I think I'd think it was pretty lightweight. Since the third episode, though, the show's been tempering that goofiness with some serious doses of darkness that make the show unique, and very, very good. That last scene with Hank and Katie was heartbreaking, and the kind of scene that makes you realize that you've become totally invested in a show's characters.

30 Rock

- I can't believe this is the first time I've wondered this, but something about the use of the TGS sketches in the live show brought it to mind: Does SNL exist at 30 Rock's NBC?

- While I like Jon Hamm a lot, I've never really found Drew terribly funny, and I think his ad (in both versions of the show) was the most SNL-esque moment of the show just in distance from reality. Later in the evening I saw one of those Allstate "Mayhem" ads with Dean Winters, and thought how much funnier it could've been with an ad from Dennis instead.

Also Watched: How I Met Your Mother, 90210, Gossip Girl, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, Caprica, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Law and Order: LA, Community, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Degrassi, Gigantic, Law and Order: UK

Week in TV: October 3-9

Boardwalk Empire

For an American Studies scholar, this show is kind of a smorgasbord of references. (1920 is right in the sweet spot of an era that a lot of historians like to work in.) Allusions to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Horatio Alger in the same hour? Nice.

Rubicon

I love how quiet this show is. The writers really trust the actors to communicate the paranoia and foreboding that sell both the broader conspiracy and the terrorist plot, and it's made the show uniquely good.

Mad Men

- It remains to be seen how the departure of Lucky Strike will play out long-term (I can't possibly be the only fan sitting there all, "Bring back Sal! BRING BACK SAL!"), but I think it will color rewatching of prior episodes in an interesting way. As embarrassingly desperate as the party in "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" is, how much more awful will it feel when you can put a date on when all that effort proves to be for naught?

- I've never really understood those people who believe in the Great and True Love of Joan and Roger, and I think the past few weeks have shown many reasons why they shouldn't be together. I mean, I get it: almost anyone seems like a better option compared with Dr. Greg. But Greg being kind of a horrible person doesn't make Roger not a horrible person too. The selfishness? The lack of respect for anyone besides himself? Betty gets a lot of press for being essentially a child, but I'd argue that Roger's development is similarly arrested.

- I like Abe.

- I don't think I've talked before about the wonderfully smarmy performance Kevin Rahm's given this season as Ted Chaough. I love straight-up shamelessness in a television character.

How I Met Your Mother

HIMYM is actually one of the major reasons I decided to try to do a weekly TV post. Back in the spring, I started to write a post about why I felt the show needed to establish an end date - it felt like they were spinning their wheels, and I didn't care about or like Don at all, to the degree that the writers' attempts to push him as Robin's potential soul mate actually made me angry. (The post was a tandem commentary on HIMYM and Big Love, and if that show's issues continue on to its next season, then I'll bring up those points again too.) The post sort of faded away, half-written and unpublished, and I finally deleted it when I realized that the points weren't really timely anymore. Hence, week-to-week observations. All of which is to say: I'm pretty sure that much of the audience got "closure" on Don a while ago, so hopefully Robin achieving the same will prompt the writers to pretend that whole thing never happened in the first place.

Glee

As far as Glee's themed episodes go, this was pretty middle-of-the-road for me. The question of how religion functions in people's lives is one that television shows rarely engage, so that was nice to see, but other shows have done it in recent years with a lot more nuance (Friday Night Lights, to mention one. This week's Community, to mention another.) Chris Colfer knocked it out of the park, though - among the show's main cast, I think he makes the most out of his showcase episodes - and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" did make me tear up.

Sons of Anarchy

We've had enough of a break from Stahl's all-consuming craziness that I'm excited to see where her deal with Jax goes. Like everything on this show, it seems inevitably doomed to fail spectacularly, but it's always an interesting ride getting there.

Undercovers

I think this week pinpointed for me what's making this show so boring so far. While I understand why they wanted to stay away from a major conspiracy angle, there's also nothing cohesive driving the show from week to week. When you look back at the early episodes of Alias, the storyline that comes out of Danny's murder drives Sydney in a way that gave Jennifer Garner's performance a propulsive fire (Nikita, so far, has been similarly passion-driven). On Fringe, the circumstances are so crazy that they demand action. Chuck's writers have managed to make the wheels turn with a combination of Chuck v. Intersect and CIA/NSA v. various nefarious external groups and conspiracy-mongerers. "Spies plus marital drama" is an interesting idea, but without interesting execution the show is going to fail sooner or later. I really want to support this show and keep watching it, but without a creative bump it's going to turn into a chore.

Top Chef: Just Desserts

There's "not here to make friends" and then there's the cast of this show, who seem to have built up a serious amount of mutual animosity in a relatively brief period of time, even for a reality competition. You'd think that with people deciding to leave of their own free will, or having some sort of oblique not-entirely-on-camera meltdown, that the other contestants would just sit back and let it happen. You already look like the good ones by default! It's Sibling Politics 101! Instead, the overly critical tone from various others comes across as hyperbolic, needless bitchery and the whole thing seems like it's teetering on the precipice of descending into total mania.

Bones

If the writers aren't careful, Hannah is going to land firmly in the same territory as Don on How I Met Your Mother last year. Telling us a new character is awesome is demonstrably not the same thing as actually introducing a new awesome character.

Also Watched: Nikita from last week, Chuck, 90210, Gossip Girl, Hawaii Five-0, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, Caprica, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Hellcats, Terriers, Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Nikita, Private Practice, Degrassi

New Shows:

Law & Order: UK

It was interesting to watch this after seeing the Law and Order: LA pilot. The Los Angeles version made me doubt whether the franchise could really work in another city, but then the UK version restored my confidence. The show sticks very closely to the original show's template, but with a unique chemistry among the permanent cast that makes it work almost immediately.

The A-List: New York

True story: I turned this off after about 45 minutes. I'm not big into the Real Housewives genre of shows - after the cast members introduce themselves and start talking to one another, they tend to achieve a level of vacuousness where my brain just completely tunes out. Also, teen Liz, who rooted for Reichen and Chip to win The Amazing Race back in the day, is disappointed that Reichen seems to be kind of a fame whore. I believed in your love!

Gigantic

The N's original programming isn't bad, necessarily, but their writing is never quite as sharp, and the drama not quite as daring, as some of the comparable-age-group offerings from ABC Family or the CW. Still, half-hour shows are perfect for morning coffee, and the mix of actual children-of-actors and former child actors in the show's main cast suggests that the show could demonstrate a more knowing sense of the scene it depicts than was on display in the pilot.