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

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: The Unsubmitted

It's well past time to get this show on the road. Ideally, I like to get these done and posted before the nominations get announced. We'll see how far we get before tomorrow morning.

Andrew Scott - "Jim Moriarty", Sherlock

Here's where I wish for a site that focused on the mechanics of how the television academy votes, because I'm not sure whether PBS electing to submit "A Scandal in Belgravia" for Sherlock precluded Scott from submitting his work in "The Reichenbach Fall". (It's a curious decision overall, as I think "Reichenbach Fall" is a stronger episode all around, especially for the central actors.) If that isn't the case, it's not surprising, necessarily, that Scott didn't submit, given that Cumberbatch and Freeman didn't get nominated last year, but his performance was such a standout that it's disappointing regardless. (He just won a BAFTA, for goodness' sake.) The scene where Moriarty insists he's actually an actor was eerie perfection in sowing little seeds of doubt.

Indeed, there's a whole chunk of British actors who I was surprised to see unlisted in the ballot of prospective nominees. Underinformed management teams across the pond?

Jack Gleeson - "Joffrey Baratheon", Game of Thrones
Charles Dance - "Tywin Lannister", Game of Thrones

More than the others, I think these two being absent from the ballot represents someone asleep at the wheel in compiling HBO's submission package. Gleeson and Dance helped the show's writers demonstrate a sense of scope in depicting the Lannisters and their thirst for power - Tywin as the craftiest guy in the room, but also a man who recognizes the potential inherent in being the one pulling the strings instead of the public face, and Joffrey as the rotten manifestation of all his family's foibles.

Laura Carmichael - "Lady Edith Crawley", Downton Abbey
Zoe Boyle - "Lavinia Swire", Downton Abbey

The Downton Abbey-as-convalescent-home storyline gave Carmichael an opportunity to grant some much-needed shading to Edith as she discovered a sense of purpose in helping others. (And Carmichael pretty much single-handedly kept that whole potential-heir/burn-victim story from going too far off the rails.) I think the fundamentally good-hearted but ultimately doomed young woman (Beth March, Melanie Wilkes, etc., etc.) is a deceptively difficult role, but Boyle performed hers capably.

Anna Chancellor - "Lix Storm", The Hour

An old-school character for a period show, Chancellor's savvy, experienced newswoman provided good low-key balance to the energies brought by Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai. (And her character feels more and more valuable the more I watch of The Newsroom. Another rant for another time.)

Alex Karpovsky - "Ray", Girls
Andrew Rannells - "Elijah", Girls

Both Karpovsky and Rannells performed admirably in their roles as the blunt truth-tellers of the Girls universe, keeping the show on an even keel by tempering the self-absorption of other characters. They also had my absolute favorite moments in the finale - Karpovsky's scenes with Zosia Mamet (there is like not even enough material there to get shipper-y over, and yet I am slightly obsessed with the concept of Ray and Shoshanna together. I need it to happen in Season Two) and Rannells' line reading of "Girls who huff." (The tone of which is difficult to communicate here, but it cracks me up every time.)

Matt Ross - "Dr. Charles Montgomery", American Horror Story

I already think Ross was criminally underrecognized for his work on Big Love, so that's probably giving him a boost here. But he made Dr. Montgomery's Frankenstein-esque forays into medical experimentation some of AHS's best trips over the top.

Lamorne Morris - "Winston", New Girl
Dan Byrd - "Travis Cobb", Cougar Town

I tend to take a sort of "Throw your hat in the ring! Why not?" attitude towards most potential submissions, especially when most or all of the other members of an ensemble present as contenders. It took New Girl's writers longer to "find" Winston than it did for Nick and Schmidt, but by the end of the season, Morris had turned in some good moments too. (Like the Theodore K. Mullins speech). And some of Byrd's best work on Cougar Town came this year in their exploration of Travis and Laurie's relationship.

Taran Killam - "Mr. Rad", Community

Maybe Community's best one-off, grounding the show's Glee parody in crazy-eyed mania and subtly sending up Matthew Morrison's performance as Will Schuster.

Roger Bart - "Mason Treadwell", Revenge
Ashton Holmes - "Tyler Barrol", Revenge

Bart was the best of the characters against whom Emily sought revenge, showing the cracks in his man-about-town facade where his image of himself as a journalist comes into conflict with the knowledge of how he sold his soul and screwed the Clarkes over. And Holmes' performance fit perfectly into the vein of classic crazy soap villains, from quiet menace to devourer of scenery.

Jay Jackson - "Perd Hapley", Parks and Recreation

Jackson has become Parks and Rec's most valuable tertiary player over four seasons, representing the heart of Pawnee's absurd media culture. The fourth season's depiction of the election cycle gave him ample opportunities for more examples of Perd's affable cluelessness - my favorite might be his running out the clock on Leslie's response in "The Debate."

Morena Baccarin - "Isobel Swift", The Good Wife
Mary Beth Peil - "Jackie Florrick", The Good Wife
Parker Posey - "Vanessa Gold", The Good Wife

Baccarin held her own as a foil to Dylan Baker's Colin Sweeney, a character who is essentially designed to suck all the air out of the room. Peil was great both in shrouding Jackie's machinations in a faux-innocent "who, me?" exterior, and in muddling her motivations as potential mental issues came into play in the latter episodes of the season. And maybe it's residual Josie and the Pussycats love, but I thought Posey and Alan Cumming were delightful together as politically minded exes.

Kate Burton - "Vice President Sally Langston", Scandal

Burton had twice as many potential submissions as ultimately ended up on the ballot, so I'm not surprised that her Scandal role fell by the wayside. Nevertheless, her scenes as the evangelical Christian VP of Scandal's universe didn't veer over into caricature when they easily could have and suggested that the show going forward may have some very interesting things to say about women in politics. (And as a lover of troupe-building creators, I love that Shonda Rhimes gave her such a different character from Ellis Grey to play here.)

Alison Brie - "Trudy Campbell", Mad Men
Embeth Davidtz - "Rebecca Pryce", Mad Men
Christine Estabrook - "Gail Holloway", Mad Men
Sam Page - "Greg Harris", Mad Men

None are terribly flashy performances, but all contribute to the fully realized world of Mad Men, particularly in the interplay and contrast between home and office beyond whatever Don's situation is in any given year. I've always been disappointed not to see Page submit his name for consideration - true, most (if not all) Mad Men fans hate Greg, but Page has always done a great job of presenting him without judgment, with all his weaknesses. You want Greg to accept responsibility for why things in his life are the way they are, but also understand why he doesn't feel the need to be introspective. I don't think Page gets enough credit for that.

Books Read: August 2011

August 3: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Somewhere in the middle of this book, I began to feel like I needed to start back at the beginning of A Game of Thrones and make myself a comprehensive flow chart of characters, locations and situations as I read. While I understand the complaints of the fans who waited for years for this book to come out, I have to say that starting the series just this year means that I haven't had the time to re-read and obsess, making the ever-expanding cast of characters much harder to grasp in anything even approaching a comprehensive fashion. There ends up being a lot of "Oh, this is like that guy with the thing..." For most of the points of view, this doesn't make too terribly much of a difference in appreciating Martin's depiction of a world being subsumed by darkness (and wondering how on earth they'll translate some of the stories to the screen if Game of Thrones gets this far). It's certainly a lot of information to process, though. A few years until The Winds of Winter doesn't sound bad at all to me.

August 28: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

I ended up re-watching Sherlock as I moved things around my apartment in preparation for the hurricane, then decided to download this on to my Kindle for some weekend reading. Which then came in handy after my power went out. I don't really think I understood how much of the adaptation for the show is really about capturing an ethos rather than telling the exact same story until I read A Study in Scarlet. It's sort of intangible and difficult to describe, but there's just something tonal that the writers behind the show seem to get about Holmes, Watson and the structures of the mysteries that were missing in the recent Guy Ritchie film. Not gravity, necessarily...I'm not sure exactly what word I'm looking for.

I also read "A Scandal in Bohemia" - it seemed like an appropriate companion piece to the weekend to read the story of perhaps literature's most well-known Irene - and I'm really curious to see how it translates in the show's second series. The basic setup of the story - a prominent man tries to retrieve a potentially reputation-damaging photograph - seems very well-suited to Sherlock's style of updating. And after seeing the way he's framed characters like River Song and Madame de Pompadour in "The Girl in the Fireplace" in Doctor Who, I'm really intrigued to see how Steven Moffat writes a 21st-century Irene Adler as a foil for Holmes.

Weeks in TV: August 21-September 3

True Blood, 4.9: "Let's Get Out of Here" and 4.10: "Burning Down the House"

- It's made for kind of a whackadoo mix of storylines, but I love how the various spiritual possessions, skinwalking ventures and V-induced dreams have broadened the range of material that TB's ensemble has to play with.

- I'm sort of of two minds about this season. On the one hand, I think this season has done the best job of any so far of drawing upon the books; the books take place from Sookie's point of view, so she sort of darts in and out of the situations concerning different characters, and the show has established a broad enough cast of regulars that each of those stories has someone we know in it, which I think makes the audience more invested in everything that's going on than we've been in past seasons. On the other hand - like I said above, the mix has tended to be more crazy than cohesive.

Pretty Little Liars, 2.11: "I Must Confess"

- Oh, Dr. Sullivan. As soon as she told Emily that she knew, I was all, "Tell her over the phone, you're obviously going to get murdered!" Between the therapist's disappearance and Emily's Tragic Massage of Epic Creepiness, A's really starting to transgress some serious boundaries.

- Speaking of A, I loved the little "Update on Major Suspects" sweep through the audience for the doctor's hilariously unsubtle speech on text bullying, especially since Noel, Lucas and Mona had no lines or other scenes in the episode. I love when a show grinds the gears into place for a finale.

- Mr. Hastings, making a late-in-the-game play for Creepiest Weirdo in Rosewood! (Amid stiff competition!)

Pretty Little Liars, 2.12: "Over My Dead Body"

- PLL is approaching Lost-esque levels of obliqueness with their persistent refusal to offer concrete answers to their ongoing mysteries (I believe Garrett and Jenna were behind most, if not all, of the machinations of this episode, but enough of the notes related to that business were unsigned that I don't think they're necessarily A), but they do totally out-there creepiness better than just about any other show on television. Those dolls were truly something else.

- The idea of doing a one-off flashback Halloween episode is genius. More cable shows should have holiday episodes independent of their seasonal arcs. A Sons of Anarchy Christmas! Valentine's Day at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

Doctor Who, 6.8: "Let's Kill Hitler" and 6.9: "Night Terrors"

- I've tended to like the episodes focused on the quartet of the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River, but more and more it seems like the actors are landing the big emotional moments while having to spackle over some increasingly gaping plot holes. Like, as an immediate reaction, I would say that I liked this episode a lot, but if I think about it for more than about five minutes, my head swarms with unanswered questions and a creeping desire to try to pick apart the timeline. (see also: Point #5 in the io9 article linked below) Still, a delightfully energetic performance from Alex Kingston and great banter from Steven Moffat. Obviously, I'm torn. Strike this one down to revisit when the arc picks up again.

- "Night Terrors" is a solid episode, with a legitimately scary conceit in the dollhouse of horrors, done a serious disservice by airing out of production order. Declining to tie the episode's themes of the importance of family love and embracing an unconventional child to the broader arc of the story of the Williams-Ponds makes the characters seem flaky at best (and callous at worst: Rory's joke about letting the monsters get the boy feels...inappropriate given that, you know, his baby got kidnapped by nefarious aliens) and makes the writers seem like they're not paying attention to what's going on. If they absolutely had to move things around, it might've been better to switch this one with, say, "Curse of the Black Spot."

- This post is about to get totally linktastic. First! An interesting piece from io9 about things Doctor Who could do differently.

- AND: Steven Moffat is seemingly everywhere giving interviews about the second half of this series

- Daily Beast Interview

- Alan Sepinwall at HitFix Interview

- Mo Ryan at AOLTV Interview

Miscellaneous Other Links:

- Not terribly detailed, but with awesome, military-uniform-including cast photo: On the second series of Downton Abbey (Aside: Dear PBS, If the BBC can work it out so Brits and Americans can all watch the same new episode of Doctor Who on the same calendar date, can we please work on the timing of the Masterpiece selections' trip across the pond? I feel antsy just thinking about having to wait extra months for DA and Sherlock. Affectionately, Liz)

- Between Comic-Con, the TCA and the upcoming Emmys and start to the fall season, there's a veritable smorgasbord of showrunner interviews popping up all over the place online. The Daily Beast interview with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss is kind of delightful; they're clearly really jazzed to have the opportunity to dive further into George R.R. Martin's sprawling cast of characters.

- A.V. Club interviews with two of my very favorite TV people: Victor Garber and Martin Starr

- I'm fascinated by the ongoing discussions around AMC, their evolving brand identity, and what seems to be a growing suspicion among commentators that within the next few years their whole original programming enterprise could collapse like a house of cards. I started in on a post a few weeks ago, following the whole rigamarole around Kurt Sutter leaving Twitter - various outlets tried to frame it as some sort of showrunner smacktalk showdown, but I think that at the heart of what Sutter was saying about AMC, Mad Men and The Walking Dead was a criticism of the network for not managing its properties in a balanced way - but it sort of got lost in the shuffle (as too many posts do.)

Anyway: a fairly comprehensive timeline of this year's developments for the network from the New York Times and an excellent Vulture piece from this week. Potentially more thoughts on this in the future, maybe with the end of this season of Breaking Bad (a show I like, and certainly I can recognize why people love it, but I've had a few Sundays this summer where I've missed watching programs that night, and Breaking Bad is never the show I'm really burning to catch up on, you know?), especially if there are any more announcements that give off that "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" vibe.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actor in a Drama

Sean Bean - "Lord Eddard Stark", Game of Thrones

Kyle Chandler - "Eric Taylor", Friday Night Lights

Jon Hamm - "Don Draper", Mad Men

Michael Imperioli - "Louis Fitch", Detroit 1-8-7

Donal Logue - "Hank Dolworth", Terriers

Timothy Olyphant - "Raylan Givens", Justified

So...who's got a chance in Bryan Cranston's year off? Is it fair that my love of Bean's performance is partly influenced by having read the books on which Game of Thrones is based? The deeply entrenched sense of honor that guides the Starks, for good or for ill, was firmly established by Bean in every episode of his appearance as Ned Stark, and it should resonate through the series. Chandler, of course, has always been great - the frustrations of intra-team discord and the ever-shifting scene in Dillon showed that he still found new layers in Eric Taylor even up until the end. When I rewatched the last season of Mad Men recently, I was struck by the way that Jon Hamm wore the weight of Don's disappointments in his weariness and shambling drunkenness. He had great showcases in individual episodes like "The Suitcase," but it's really an absorbing full-season performance. I almost hate Imperioli and Logue for making me fall in love with their doomed series; Imperioli showed impressive command over a series of quirks that might have buried another actor and Logue's performance was driven by an engaging charisma that infused every case the show covered with a sense of importance because Hank cared about them. Olyphant is another whose performance beautifully encapsulated the push and pull between a man and his ideas of honor as Raylan wrestled with his darker impulses and his past in Harlan.

Honorable Mention: David Boreanaz, Bones; Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire; Vincent D'Onofrio, Law and Order: Criminal Intent; James Badge Dale, Rubicon; Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy; Andrew Lincoln, The Walking Dead; Holt McCallany, Lights Out; Stephen Moyer, True Blood; Bill Paxton, Big Love

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment; Michael C. Hall, Dexter; Jeremy Irons, The Borgias; Hugh Laurie, House; William H. Macy, Shameless; Christopher Meloni, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Ray Romano, Men of a Certain Age; Tom Selleck, Blue Bloods

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actor in a Drama

Peter Dinklage - "Tyrion Lannister", Game of Thrones

Walton Goggins - "Boyd Crowder", Justified

Arliss Howard - "Kale Ingram", Rubicon

John Noble - "Walter Bishop", Fringe

Denis O'Hare - "Russell Edgington", True Blood

Michael Raymond-James - "Britt Pollack", Terriers

The category which, in my opinion, contains a significant share of the year's best work (A.K.A. the category of Liz's Endless Waffling, A.K.A. much of the reason why these posts are going down to the wire pre-nominations announcement). All six brought wit and a distinct spark to their respective shows. Dinklage did the best kind of adaptation work - the kind that makes you excited when you're reading to someday see the material embodied by the actor. Goggins let Boyd's struggle with his past flicker behind guarded eyes and never made his return to a life of crime feel like a foregone conclusion. Howard's cool made Kale Ingram TV's best espionage-affiliated gentleman since Jack Bristow. Much of Fringe's cast got to show great range in the dual roles dictated by the focus on the parallel universe, but Noble showed Walternate as a fierce villain, while keeping the original's distinctive loopiness. O'Hare pushed True Blood to its campy limits, devouring scenery with glee and making Russell a truly Big Bad. Raymond-James brought an easy charm, with hints of darkness, to Britt, ultimately making him - all apologies to Martin Freeman - the best detective sidekick of the year.

Honorable Mention: Scott Caan, Hawaii 5-O; Justin Chambers, Grey's Anatomy; Rockmond Dunbar, Terriers; Jared Harris, Mad Men; Joshua Jackson, Fringe; Michael B. Jordan, Friday Night Lights; Joel Kinnaman, The Killing; Taylor Kitsch, Friday Night Lights; Ryan Kwanten, True Blood; Matt Lauria, Friday Night Lights; Dallas Roberts, Rubicon; Nick Searcy, Justified; Brent Sexton, The Killing; Alexander Skarsgard, True Blood; John Slattery, Mad Men; TJ Thyne, Bones

Particular props to the ensembles of: Boardwalk Empire (Stephen Graham, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Shea Whigham, Michael Kenneth Williams); Game of Thrones (Mark Addy, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Aiden Gillen, Kit Harington, Jason Momoa); Detroit 1-8-7 (Jon Michael Hill, Shaun Majumder, James McDonald); The Good Wife (Josh Charles, Alan Cumming, Matt Czuchry, Chris Noth); Sons of Anarchy (Mark Boone, Jr., Dayton Callie, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking, Ron Perlman, Theo Rossi); Treme (Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, Steve Zahn)

Yes, this version of narrowing encompasses forty-five actors beyond the ballot limit.

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Andre Braugher, Men of a Certain Age; Billy Campbell, The Killing; Irrfan Kahn, In Treatment; Delroy Lindo, The Chicago Code

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

Week in TV: June 19-25

Game of Thrones, 1.10: "Fire and Blood"

- Baby dragons!

- This episode had some great scenes from the book that really translated well - the declaration of King in the North, the shot of the Night's Watch rangers heading north of the wall, Arya meeting Gendry, the confrontation with Catelyn and Jaime. They really seem ready to attack A Clash of Kings with all the energy it will require. I'm excited for next spring already.

- Sophie Turner really seems to be digging in as Sansa's story gets progressively grimmer and grimmer. At this rate, assuming they get to a third season, eventually we'll apparently be seeing some sort of masterpiece of pathos with her and Peter Dinklage.

- I wish they would've swept further across Westeros and checked in with at least Renly before the end of the season. I understand that there were necessary limitations based around the simple fact that they filmed without knowing whether or not they'd have a second season, which means no Stannis, no Greyjoys, no Tullys, no new sets for Riverrun or Highgarden, etc. It just made the sense of the developing war seem a bit lopsided in predominantly focusing on the Northern army and the Lannisters.

- The past few weeks sort of got away from me - partly because this was the only show I was interested in writing about, and it thus got lost in the Sunday-to-Sunday schedule, and partly because the really big events weren't surprises to me after reading the book. "The Pointy End" was well-written by George R.R. Martin; he seemed to add a shade of his own understanding of the various Starks that really shaped the episode well (Rickon speaks!), and the scene with Cersei dismissing Ser Barristan from the Kingsguard. (Of all the characters I'd like to hear more from in A Dance with Dragons, Ser Barristan's at the top of the list. I've got my fingers crossed for some chapters where he's just regaling Dany with stories of the Targaryens and Westerosi history.) "Baelor" did an unbelievable job with the final scene - I really liked the way they depicted Yoren finding Arya in the crowd as a sort of last mercy on Ned's part. And both the conversation between Maester Aemon and Jon about being a king's brother and the introduction of Walder Frey were all I'd hoped they'd be.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 10.7: "Icarus"

One of the major bummers about the Internet uproar over the finale of The Killing is that it overshadowed what seems likely to be one of the last great "ripped from the headlines" episodes of the Law and Order universe. (I won't completely rule out SVU making a serious rebound post-cast-adjustments, but it seems unlikely right now.) However much I hyped up the ripping of Spider-Man in my own mind, the actual episode was somehow even better. The depiction of stage flying was amazing. The faux songs were amazing. Cynthia Nixon as Not Julie Taymor was AMAZING.

The Killing, 1.13: "Orpheus Descending"

- I can't sustain the exquisite levels of exasperation and rage sustained by Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall in their reviews of this finale, but I can try to put a finger on what specifically about this show was so disappointing to me.

I stopped watching week-to-week about a month before this finale; the show's vaguely defined structure of introducing and dismissing suspects made it fairly clear that the audience wasn't likely to get any important information about who killed Rosie until the writers were ready to reveal who, exactly, that was. Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes continued to do strong work conveying the Larsens' grief, but there wasn't enough variation in their story from episode to episode. The political campaign wasn't engaging. Dismissed suspects faded away, out of the show entirely, where they could've been used to build the show's world. The show's story arc was oddly flat; in post-finale interviews Veena Sud said that she thought people were disappointed because they expected the show to be more like an average procedural. I actually think it's the opposite, as contemporary television structuring goes - people were disappointed because the show didn't behave more like an average serial. (And these days, I don't think anyone tuning into a show on AMC would expect a procedural of any kind.) The eight-to-thirteen-episode cable serial season, as it's come to be established in the past fifteen or so years, has come to represent a more thoughtful use of story and character with more rise and fall and flow than The Killing ever demonstrated.

The real disappointment to me, though, came in the finale's tying of Holder to some sort of conspiracy dedicated to implicating Richmond in the murder, at least in the short term. I watched the four episodes preceding the finale over the weekend, so I already knew that the show had been renewed. When I watched the Linden-and-Holder-focused "Missing," I thought that there could be something there for a second season. I could, conceivably, be engaged in a show about Linden and Holder solving an entirely different, better-written season-long mystery. But it seems that that dream is not to be. At the very least, the finale twist erodes the trust that had built up between them, and at worst it casts Holder as a villain and completely wastes the potential inherent in their partnership. It's not just that Holder was the only character I sort of liked after twelve episodes - Joel Kinnaman was more or less keeping the show afloat with his squirrelly energy - it's that the writers seemed so determined to keep everything shrouded in mystery for as long as possible that they ultimately left Linden not unrelatable but unaccessible. The best detective-driven shows can make you care about a case simply because their protagonist cares, regardless of whether they're "likable" in a traditional sense - I keep wistfully thinking of Veronica Mars and Hank Dolworth - but Linden is still practically a blank in all those respects. Upon the conclusion of this episode, AMC aired a commercial exhorting viewers to tune in next year to learn who really, truly killed Rosie Larsen. And all I could manage was a strangled cry that I simply don't care.

- The ads for the upcoming season of Breaking Bad felt like a mirage of quality storytelling and sustained story arcs in the desert of...whatever this was. I may or may not have exclaimed, "SAVE US, Vince Gilligan!" aloud to my television.

- I feel like Cold Case is being unfairly maligned in the criticism of the things that weren't so great about The Killing. Yes, the show often felt like one long episode of today's standard crime procedurals, with suspects introduced and dismissed as if the weeks between episodes were more like extra-long commercial breaks. But Cold Case, more than any of its peers, excelled at one thing at which The Killing routinely failed: establishing an emotional connection to the victim. The best Cold Case episodes made the victim feel like a real person, and made their death feel like a tragedy. The Killing did neither, and I think many of the show's other problems stem from the void that Rosie Larsen continues to be.

- I love reading online responses to shows like this, and this finale produced a smorgasbord of them. Here I'll cite Myles McNutt's interesting piece about the AMC brand and how The Killing may be undermining their image. I realized during over this past television season that I'm less and less willing to take it on faith that AMC's new shows are worth taking a chance on. I'll probably give Hell on Wheels a chance when it premieres, but I'll be much warier of its potential than I will be for, say, the new shows coming from HBO or FX.

- I understood why AMC decided to cancel Rubicon back in the fall, truly. But, I'll be honest, now the fact that this amorphous show gets to have a second season and we will never get more time with Rubicon's characters is kind of pissing me off.

Pretty Little Liars, 2.2: "The Goodbye Look"

- I love how these girls' parents try to dictate something like keeping them separate from one another but then contribute no real supervision to attempt to enforce it.

- In my imagination, outside of class all the other students talk about how blatantly obvious it is that Ezra and Aria are hooking up. (Oh, how I hoped Mona would actually say as much to Aria.) "He was giving our English class this heartfelt goodbye, but was so clearly talking to only her. He didn't break eye contact with her the whole time!" "I totally saw them making out on the hood of his car out in the parking lot!"

- Parents on teen shows are interesting. On the one hand, they can end up being a vital puzzle piece that makes the show great - your Joyce Summers, your Harold and Jean Weir, your Graham and Patty Chase. On the other, some work fine without them - I've basically accepted that we're never going to meet most of the parents on Glee, no matter how little narrative sense it makes. PLL, besides the obvious gap between imagined and actual authority cited above, tends to use them fairly well. Here, though, I find myself really, really wanting to meet the Cavanaughs. Who are these mysterious people who raised these two weirdos, perhaps the weirdest kids in a town full of strange, twitchy teenagers? What are their family dinners like? Do they not notice that Toby projects sadness all around him all the time, or that Jenna is seriously, seriously creepy, or do they just not care? Every time one of them mentions their parents, I'm like, "I must see these people made flesh!"

Friday Night Lights, 5.10: "Don't Go"

"Apt" seems insufficient as a descriptor for that episode title. I've had, I don't know, over a year to accept that this show is ending, but it didn't really hit home until this episode. Tim's parole hearing, especially Buddy's surprisingly touching speech to the board, broke some sort of emotional dam inside me, whence flowed a veritable geyser of tears. I'm not prepared for the next three weeks.

Week in TV: May 29-June 4

Game of Thrones - 1.7, "You Win or You Die"

- In Which the Starks' deeply ingrained sense of honor begins to come back to bite them in the ass - a theme that I'm sure will only get more and more heartbreakingly wearying as the series progresses.

- I'm not sure that I ever had the impression from the books that Tywin Lannister was the sort to literally get his hands dirty, but I can't quibble with such a perfectly badass introduction. I really love Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's performance in the episode's opening scene as well - you get so much of the fraught relationship between the Lannisters just from the way he shows Jaime quietly shrinking in the presence of his father.

- It's interesting that the show is making me notice parallels that I didn't necessarily see in the books , just from the ways the different story threads are arranged - specifically, I never really thought about the relationships in common between Jorah and Dany with the Dothraki and the Old Bear and Maester Aemon at the wall until their scenes were put together in this episode.

- Idle Thought: It occurred to me as I read Alan Sepinwall's piece on the Deadwood pilot that maybe part of the reason why GoT's recurring use of Expositional Monologuing with Prostitutes feels so clunky is because Al Swearengen already proved himself the master of the form.

Friday Night Lights - 5.8, "Fracture"

- Kyle Chandler has had many great moments across this series, but Coach Taylor quietly yet aggressively running Derek off of his property has to rank in the top ten. Julie must've told her illicit T.A. paramour exactly nothing about her parents to make him think that showing up in Dillon was a good idea.

- I missed the opening credits, and thus got to be pleasantly surprised by Matt's appearance (and, sure, let out a bit of a girly shriek). I may have to re-embrace my final-season-of-Lost strategy of deliberately ignoring the credits to keep the guest appearances as fresh as possible.

- It's really too bad this show has already wrapped. The ladies of the Landing Strip deserve to have their own webisodes where they dole out beauty tips and relationship advice.

Other Shows

The summer season of internet TV writers rewatching past shows began this week, and there's a lot of shows I just might rewatch along with them - Six Feet Under, Veronica Mars, Deadwood. Sunday's popularity as the night for cable dramas means that even with So You Think You Can Dance, the summer schedule of new programming has really front-loaded weeks. And rewatching should mean that I can pace myself week-by-week and resist the temptation to marathon.

In particular, I really enjoyed Ryan McGee's piece on the Alias pilot, because it articulated a lot of things I haven't previously put together about the show's significance in my development as a television viewer and fan. I've already written here about how Freaks and Geeks marks a turning point in my TV-watching evolution, but I don't think I've given the same degree of thought to Alias. I was a sophomore in high school when Alias premiered and, like Freaks and Geeks, Alias was one of the first shows that I really loved in a way that I knew was fundamentally different from watching NBC's Thursday night lineup just because it was popular.

It was the first show where I had a concept of the showrunner behind the scenes (J.J. Abrams, in this case) and how he shaped and drove what happened on the show. It was the first show where I really looked at fan sites online. The first two seasons are some of the first, if not the first, TV DVDs I owned. It isn't just a game-changer for network television as a serial, as McGee outlines, but on a personal level it gave me a degree of familiarity with genre television I hadn't had before, which in turn made me more receptive to shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost (and probably about a dozen others I could name). If Freaks and Geeks helped me to define my concept of myself as an independent television viewer, Alias helped me think about the kinds of genres I wanted to explore and thematic paths I was then interested in traveling down.

Week in TV: May 22-28

Game of Thrones - 1.6, "A Golden Crown"

- Peter Dinklage and Jane Espenson: a match made in snarky-fantasy-TV Heaven. (I'll also add props for Arya's excellent "bitch, please" asides when Sansa talks about how much she wants to stay in King's Landing and bear Joffrey's babies.) Of all the show's characters, I think Tyrion's voice is losing the least in translation from the original book, and Dinklage is doing a bang-up job. When I read A Clash of Kings, I kept thinking that if that material made it to the show relatively intact then he'd probably end up with an Emmy, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he sneaks up and becomes a frontrunner for the award this season.

- I have mixed feelings about having read (most) of the books before watching this show. (I don't know that I've mentioned before that I'm in the middle of A Feast for Crows. It's slower going than the first three.) On the one hand, knowing who dies when and how terribly tinges some scenes with an air of tragedy that's hard to shake (the different combinations of people who don't know they'll never see each other again in the departures from Winterfell in the second episode made me unexpectedly burst into tears - I didn't realize before then that I cared that much). On the other, it does occasionally give things a bit of "yelling-at-the-screen-during-a-horror-movie" flair. Like that scene where Sansa made up with Joffrey - sometimes it's an "Oh, Sansa," sometimes it's a "Girl, RUN," sometimes it's a "Ooh, honey, this is not going to work out in your favor." Good times.

Glee - 2.22, "New York"

This episode ended up seriously frustrating me, and I'm trying to put a finger on why without devolving into a pure rant. I just still can't believe that they tried to play off Rachel and Finn kissing as the reason that the club didn't make it past the first cut at Nationals and not their unformed, unfocused, bullshit "rehearsal" "process." It seems insulting to a) songwriters and b) actual glee clubs who actually work to prepare themselves for competition to suggest that a group - even with the "pluck" and "determination" of the New Directions - would show up at a competition like this with barely a day's work on their performances and not be repeatedly and dramatically shown up. (Sure, they didn't make the cut, but twelfth? Seriously?) I haven't been in a chorus in over a decade, but chunks of songs I sang then surface out of my mind all the time. You know why? Because we practiced them - ad nauseum. As much as the show tried to sort of place Jesse in the non-dreamer villain column in critiquing the club, he was also mostly right. There have been enough song performances that have landed more in the "flight of fancy" realm than the "actual performance" one this season for me to think must be some way for this show to show the club taking the competition structure as seriously as they pretend to and still showcase a variety of songs.

I keep thinking about this show in comparison with Friday Night Lights - last season, I kept thinking that Will is the kind of character who imagines himself to be someone like Coach Taylor, but is actually more like Assistant Coach Stan. (Except I actually wish FNL would follow up on that one time when Julie awkwardly ran into Assistant Coach Stan at that gay bar, and never want to see another story about Will's romantic life ever again.) FNL lets the structure of the competitive season shape the show, and even though its characters are sometimes underdogs, it never pretends that the team's success happens without focused hard work. I wish Glee had enough confidence in its storytelling to do the same.

Other Shows:

Oz

- The first three seasons felt like some of the most human television I've ever seen, asking the viewer to consider people and society and how they're all held together in a way that felt truly unlike any other show I've watched. It's a fascinating snapshot of domestic politics in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I doubt that another show will ever offer as thoughtful a portrayal of the issues involved in the death penalty. The later seasons devolve a bit into sensationalism, more melodramatic storytelling and distractingly prominent guest stars, but it remains a singular show. I can see seeds of the cable TV revolution in Oz, though I can also see why the show may not have received a lot of awards attention even with its superlative acting ensemble. I'm even more intrigued now to watch The Sopranos and The Wire.

- The fact that nearly every character on this show is a Bad Dude or Lady has given an unsettling air to so many things - Criminal Intent, Fringe, those Farmer's Insurance ads with J.K. Simmons...I'm not sure I could go back to watching Dexter even if I wanted to. I think the only media that doesn't feel adversely impacted is Dean Winters' set of "Mayhem" ads for Allstate. That being said, that ubiquity just reinforces the feeling that the casting directors who work with HBO's shows don't get nearly enough credit as star-makers, or even just as discoverers and highlighters of talent. (In my dreams, next year Vanity Fair devotes one of their excellent photo spreads to 15 years of HBO dramas.)

- It was interesting to finish watching this show in the same week when Christopher Meloni's decision to leave Law and Order: SVU was announced, as Oz repeatedly made it dramatically clear that SVU was wasting Meloni's boatloads of God-given charisma.

- This was the first full series I watched via HBOGo, and while I'm not overly fond of watching things on the computer I was pleasantly surprised by the streaming service. While the actually streaming software (or maybe just the site's bandwidth, I don't know, I'm not a techie) still seems to need some tweaking (it's not as consistent for me as, say, the Netflix player), the selection of series in particular is great - the streaming counters the main frustration of watching HBO dramas through Netflix, where the breakdown of episodes-per-disc means that watching multiple seasons can move at a snail's pace. It's verrry tempting to blaze through the relevant remaining entries on my "best of the 00s" wishlist (four down in the last 18 months - holla!) - for now I'll settle for figuring out how it can best supplement the reading I'm starting to work on for comps.

Week in TV: May 15-21

Game of Thrones

- I kind of loved the scene with Renly & Loras, if only because it makes me really excited for the show to introduce more of the Tyrells - doesn't "capitalize on an intimate or vulnerable moment with your partner to advance your personal agenda" seem like a move straight out of the Queen of Thorns' playbook? I love the way the books increasingly present the Tyrells as super-schemers, but with less of the overinflated sense of self you see in other houses, and I think that the show's original writing could draw Margaery in particular as an interesting counterpart to Sansa.

- The beginning of the trip to the Eyrie was just the best - the uneasy side-eye action between Catelyn and Tyrion while Lysa rants crazily from her throne? THE BEST.

- I forgot to mention previously how much I love the opening credits. I can't wait to see how they render Riverrun, the Twins and Harrenhal.

The Killing

I'm going to start letting episodes accumulate on the DVR and watch them all closer to when the season ends. I was just so disengaged during this hour, and found at the end that I didn't particularly care about that disengagement. Still well-performed by its principal actors, still drearily-paced.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent

I don't know that I've ever seen an episode of any Law and Order franchise use a flashback like this one did. Connecting Goren's therapy back to his interplay with Nicole Wallace was cleverly written and well-edited; I hope they keep drawing on that sort of continuity in this set of episodes.

90210

I couldn't let the season finale pass without observing how much I enjoyed the storyline of Adrianna switching out Silver's meds. It was Classic Spelling: a circumstance that would be horrible if it occurred in real life, but that made for excellent melodramatic television (like Adam Carrington painting Jeff Colby's office with lead paint to gaslight him back in the day on Dynasty). This episode's appearance of the Ghost of Javier was just the icing on the cake.

How I Met Your Mother

The semi-reveal of the wedding at the end of this episode was so terribly frustrating, and perfectly encapsulated the things that have been distancing me from my former status as a fan of HIMYM. The writers keep throwing the ball out ahead and then promising that the journey to get where the show is going will be worth certain information remaining shrouded in mystery. But - it isn't. I used to be so excited for this show, but when I heard that it was being renewed for not one, but two more seasons, I just felt exhausted. I believe that they could still have great stories remaining for the characters. I believe they could mine good material from Lily and Marshall having a baby. I believe they could find their Paul Rudd, so to speak, in casting a girlfriend for Ted who's not an unbelievably grating character (or even, Heaven forbid, the Mother). It just doesn't seem like Bays and Thomas are willing to go there without a set endpoint, and I don't know how much more patience I have for wheel-spinning.

Friday Night Lights

I love how Billy and Mindy are a) turning into Taylors-in-Training, with various hits and misses as mentors to the teens in their lives and b) adopting Luke and Becky as surrogates for Tim and Tyra. Their messiness is so endearing.

Week in TV: May 8-14

Game of Thrones

- This episode was particularly exposition-tastic. It wasn't really a great stand-alone episode of television, but it dispensed a lot of information vital to the series in as elegant a manner as possible, which is all that one can really ask of an adaptation dealing with as sprawling a world as this one.

- Sansa's discussion of mothering male heirs in this episode, and the show's ongoing descriptions of houses with interrupted lines of succession due to war made an interesting contrast with the recent royal wedding business. Obviously, the newly-minted Duchess of Cambridge doesn't have to worry about those same negative implications of producing female heirs, but the suggestions of a reproductive imperative in royal marriage were still swirling all around that event.

- There are many character introductions that fill me with delight (the third episode did a great job of bringing in a lot of the series' major supporting characters without making it feel like too many pieces were coming into play) but inception of Jon and Sam's wonderful bromance made me particularly happy.

- The Skins fan in me freaked out to see Joe Dempsie playing Gendry. It's always nice to see an actor you like in a role that starts out relatively small - it speaks to the potential for world-building in the show that they've already cast the role with someone who can handle it becoming more prominent. It's probably looking too far ahead to think about how awesome he might be working with Maisie Williams in the second season, but I'm excited anyway.

The Killing

I keep thinking back and comparing this show with the first season of Veronica Mars in reflecting on why I think it's not quite working. Veronica Mars did a great job of sustaining its overall arc, especially in pacing revelations regarding the conspiracy around imprisoning the wrong man for Lilly's murder and in maintaining a cloud of suspicion around several characters until the final reveal of the real murderer. It made Lilly Kane a vivid character in her own right, showing not just that the remaining characters missed her but illuminating her unique personality and presence. And it introduced Aaron Echolls with subtlety, showing that he could be a villain without making it immediately clear that he was the villain.

Conversely, I feel like I can't say much about Rosie Larsen, besides that she liked butterflies and had some shady friends. The show has drawn great performances from Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes in showing the Larsens' grief, but still has this distinct void around who Rosie was and what specifically they miss about her. While I could see the Richmond campaign tying back in to the murder investigation later in the season, right now it's making for a dull B-story that highlights how little is being solved week-to-week in the A-plot. I'm trying to be optimistic, and could definitely see them pulling out a great couple of episodes once they let the audience in on who the killer was and how he or she has been covering their tracks. Right now, though, it's not quite all gelling.

Gossip Girl

I love the way the show uses Desmond Harrington. It's like Stephanie Savage keeps him locked up in a closet somewhere in Silvercup and once a year just sort of drags him out, dusts off the mothballs and sticks him in front of a camera to do the Jack Bass thing. He's turned into one of the show's few recurring characters who is used exactly the right amount.

Parks and Recreation

- So back in January, Amy Poehler did this interview with Alan Sepinwall where she mentioned the drunk talking heads from "The Fight" and how awesome they were, and I kept thinking back to that wondering when they would come up and whether I was over-hyping them in my mind. The reality, somehow, was so much better.

- There's something I really love about April's pretense that the Snakehole Lounge is actually named after someone whose last name is Snakehole.

Friday Night Lights

- I love how over the years my FNL viewing keeps coming around to some point or another where I end up shaking my head sadly at the TV, sighing, and saying, "Oh, Julie." I can't even quibble with what a terrible decision-maker she is, since the vast difference between her idea of her worldliness and her actual worldliness been such a consistent part of her character nearly since the pilot. (In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a fairly direct line between that charmingly pretentious analogy she makes between the Panthers and Moby Dick and her ultimately having an affair with a TA.) I just hope the rest of the season doesn't leave her too downtrodden.

- It is positively eerie how much the kid they have playing Buddy, Jr. looks like Brad Leland.

On pickups and cancellations:

We're heading into one of my favorite times of year, when the TV year ends. The next weeks will have upfronts with pilot pickups and show renewals, and then comes Dream Emmy ballot time. (Yay!) It's been interesting to watch the news of cancellations and renewals coming down this week - it seems like most of the networks are ready to clean their slates and work on reshaping their brands. If there's been another season since the writers' strike with so much turnover, I can't recall it. Most of the cancellations were unsurprising, though some were disappointing - I felt like Detroit 1-8-7 and Off the Map had great casts with material that could've made great shows with a little tweaking and refining. And I was happy to see that Happy Endings got a renewal - there's definitely the potential for a great second season there, a la How I Met Your Mother. More commentary yet to come as the weeks progress and I reflect on which shows I may stop watching looking ahead to next season...