Dream Emmy Ballot 2013: Supporting Actress in a Drama

Troian Bellisario - "Spencer Hastings", Pretty Little Liars
Jessica Capshaw - "Arizona Robbins", Grey's Anatomy
Anna Gunn - "Skyler White", Breaking Bad
Annet Mahandru - "Nina ", The Americans
Monica Potter - "Kristina Braverman", Parenthood
Bellamy Young - "Mellie Grant", Scandal


Honorable Mentions: Morena Baccarin, Homeland; Christine Baranski, The Good Wife; Laura Carmichael, Downton Abbey; Joelle Carter, Justified; Erika Christenson, Parenthood; Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones; Kristen Connolly, House of Cards; Caroline Dhavernas, Hannibal; Kim Dickens, Treme; Natalie Dormer, Game of Thrones; Michelle Fairley, Game of Thrones; Miranda Hart, Call the Midwife; Lena Headey, Game of Thrones; Christina Hendricks, Mad Men; January Jones, Mad Men; Melissa Leo, Treme; Kelly MacDonald, Boardwalk Empire; Kate Mara, House of Cards; Susan Misner, The AMericans; Gretchen Mol, Boardwalk Empire; Olivia Munn, The Newsroom; Sandra Oh, Grey's Anatomy; Hayden Panettiere, Nashville; Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife; Jessica Pare, Mad Men; Morgan Saylor, Homeland; Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men; Maggie Siff, Sons of Anarchy; Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey; Mae Whitman, Parenthood; Chandra Wilson, Grey's Anatomy

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Rose Byrne, Damages; Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter; Linda Gray, Dallas; Laurie Holden, The Walking Dead; Anjelica Huston, Smash; Regina King, Southland; Mary McDonnell, The Closer; Debra Messing, Smash; Annie Parisse, The Following; Alison Pill, The Newsroom; Abigail Spencer, Rectify; Madeline Stowe, Revenge; Lauren Velez, Dexter

Dream Emmy Ballot 2013: Guest Actor in a Drama

Jim Beaver - "Shelby Parlow", Justified
William Daniels - "Dr. Thomas", Grey's Anatomy
Rupert Friend - "Peter Quinn", Homeland
Gregg Henry - "Hollis Doyle", Scandal
Derek Luke - "Gregory", The Americans
Patton Oswalt - "Bob Sweeney", Justified


Honorable Mentions: Dylan Baker, The Good Wife; Raymond J. Barry, Justified; Dan Bucatinsky, Scandal; Jere Burns, Justified; David Costabile, Suits; Ron Eldard, Justified; Scott Foley, Scandal; Michael J. Fox, The Good Wife; Walton Goggins, Sons of Anarchy; Harry Hamlin, Mad Men; Eddie Izzard, Hannibal; Nathan Lane, The Good Wife; Matt Lauria, Parenthood; Norm Lewis, Scandal; Gerald McRaney, House of Cards; Mike O'Malley, Justified; Harold Perrineau, Sons of Anarchy; Matthew Perry, The Good Wife; Jesse Plemons, Breaking Bad; Nick Robinson, Boardwalk Empire; Stephen Root, Boardwalk Empire; Jimmy Smits, Sons of Anarchy; Richard Thomas, The Americans

Wouldn't be surprised to see: Andre Braugher, Law and Order: SVU; Ciaran Hinds, Game of Thrones; Hal Holbrook, Monday Mornings; Lennie James, The Walking Dead; Gerald McRaney, Southland; Chris Messina, The Newsroom; Dallas Roberts, The Walking Dead

Dream Emmy Ballot 2012: Guest Actress in a Drama

Loretta Devine - "Adele Webber", Grey's Anatomy
Margarita Levieva - "Amanda Clarke", Revenge
Carrie Preston - "Elsbeth Tascioni", The Good Wife
Anika Noni Rose - "Corinne Bennett", Private Practice
Uma Thurman - "Rebecca Duvall", Smash
Bellamy Young - "Mellie Grant", Scandal

Devine's work stands out in part because it's a role she's played over most of Grey's Anatomy's run - this stage of Adele's arc, focused on the impact of Alzheimer's disease, was some of her best work on the show to date. Levieva gave a classic soap vixen performance, presenting a vibrant counterpoint to Emily VanCamp's studied restraint. Rose's performance in Private Practice came right on the heels of the conclusion of her arc on The Good Wife, and the contrast between the two was striking. I'm always fascinated when someone capable of going really big turns in a performance as quiet and haunted as Rose's work as Corinne. Preston formally joined the ranks of The Good Wife's recurring-lawyer MVPs this season. The moments when Elsbeth's dizziness shifts over into mastery of the given situation should get old, but somehow they never do. Thurman's work was one of Smash's best-executed storylines as a meta sendup of the concept of stunt casting. I think Scandal has some interesting ways of looking at women in power and women in close proximity to power, and Young's performance as the well-educated, post-second wave First Lady was a key part of that. The moment when Mellie manufactures a miscarriage to boost her husband's campaign was genuinely shocking.

Honorable Mentions: Debbie Allen, Grey's Anatomy; Joan Allen, Luck; Bailee Madison, Once Upon a Time; Vanessa Marano, Grey's Anatomy; Marlee Matlin, Switched at Birth; Julianne Nicholson, Boardwalk Empire; Julia Ormond, Mad Men; Meghan Ory, Once Upon a Time; Bernadette Peters, Smash; Martha Plimpton, The Good Wife; Anika Noni Rose, The Good Wife; Chloe Sevigny, Law and Order: SVU; Sofia Vassileva, Law and Order: SVU; Liza Weil, Scandal

I Wouldn't Be Surprised to See: Meredith Baxter, Switched at Birth; Joan Cusack, Shameless; Louise Fletcher, Shameless; Marilu Henner, Unforgettable; Lucy Liu, Southland

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: January 2-8

How I Met Your Mother

There were a lot of things to like about this episode - after watching a lot of Angel this past summer, I was thrilled to see Alexis Denisof return as Sandy Rivers - but I ultimately can't get behind the countdown. Using such a distracting gimmick to lead up to such a grave moment felt callous, and made me wonder if the show's writers are no longer sure of how best to utilize the tools at their disposal. Hopefully, the coming weeks will show that they still know how to maintain the balance between broad comedy and emotional authenticity that served the show so well in its early seasons.

Greek

As the series-concluding half-season continues, I imagine that I'll decide whether I think the show is pushing it narratively or not. The premiere made the almost-everyone-stays-at-CRU premise seem a little plausibility-stretching, but they've managed to do a lot within a relatively formulaic structure before, so we'll see.

Grey's Anatomy

- It was not at all surprising, and felt like it might have been ripped from an old ER, but I have to admit that I teared up a bit when they had the big reveal of Christina in the back of the ambulance. The Grey's writers haven't squandered any of the emotional potential of the fallout from last season's finale, and Sandra Oh continues to do some of her best work in the entire series.

- Today in Shallow Observations: It's been like a decade since Felicity, but Scott Foley is still totally cute.

Rewatched

Skins, Third Series

- Both the upcoming fourth series DVD release and the premiere of MTV's American version prompted me to rewatch the third series of Skins for the first time since it aired on BBC America in 2009. I was pleasantly surprised by how much more I liked it this time around - maybe it's the pacing, or that my first viewings of the first two series were fresher. While I still have some narrative quibbles, I was better able to appreciate the work of the young actors and the episodes as individual showcases, and I find now that I'm genuinely curious about the fourth series.

- What narrative quibbles, you say? Namely, this: I can appreciate any show that's willing to do something as dramatic as a season-to-season full cast change. However, the ties that remained between the first and second generations of Skins characters at times served to undercut the narrative arc of the third series. I understand that Nicholas Hoult was off becoming Tom Ford's new favorite person, but to me it seemed completely implausible that the dissolution of the Stonem's marriage and Effy's subsequent down-spiral would all occur with no intervention whatsoever from Tony.

- It seems to me that it's a major failing of American English that we have no pejorative equivalent to "wanker."

- One of the things that's been interesting about the press regarding the MTV remake and what distinguishes Skins from American teen shows is the tendency to classify the characters' actions as consequence-free. And while Skins tends to eschew the kind of immediate cause-and-effect framing of actions and consequences that one sees in a show like, say, 90210, watching any stretch of the show reminds me that a lot of really terrible things happen to any number of the characters. They may party like there's no tomorrow, but one of the great things about the show is that the writers don't harbor any illusions about the characters' actions not being unbelievably self-destructive. The greatest crime in the show's universe is avoiding confrontation with deeper emotional truths about oneself, and that, much more than any tawdriness, is what truly distinguishes Skins from its contemporaries.

Also Watched: Detroit 1-8-7, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Top Chef, Private Practice

Week in TV: September 19-25

Mad Men

- Only Mad Men would use a scene in a character's love life to distill an issue that still makes the feminist movement seem unapproachable to some women of color. While I sometimes wish that the show would take a more direct line on race in the sixties, it's difficult to fault the subtle portrayal of Peggy's increasingly willful naivete when I've known people who made the same kinds of rationalizations about why their particular milieu is predominantly white. We're heading into the years when militancy started to seem like the most viable option for some activists on the left side of the political spectrum, and I'm interested to see how the show's old-school conservatives react.

- Weiner is so specific about the way he wants things to play out that I'm sure it's not an accident, but I'm really fascinated by the way Kiernan Shipka and January Jones have started to sort of mirror each other in their performances. The subtle way that they've shown Sally picking up on Betty's mannerisms, particularly when she's upset, really distinguishes Shipka's performance from those by other actors around the same age.

- A second viewing didn't make her soup/pot metaphor make any more sense, but Joyce remains delightful.

- The moving of Miss Blankenship's body joins the lawn mower sequence as one of this show's all-time greatest dark yet hilarious set pieces.

How I Met Your Mother

Modern Family

Cougar Town

Community

30 Rock

The Office

- I decided to group these all together because it's difficult to write about comedies without it turning into a quotefest, and these were all good, but not superlative episodes. All ultimately made me happy to see the characters again, and all made me laugh at one point or another. None challenged my feelings from last season that my affections for HIMYM, 30 Rock and The Office are on the wane, but they didn't make me want to completely stop watching either. Solid week all around.

- My favorite line of the week, from Community - Jeff's observation that the message of Twilight is "Men are monsters who crave young flesh."

Glee

- I love Community, but I have to give "Best Meta Reference to Internet Commentary on the Show" to Glee's opener.

- So...Matt transferred out, and Sam and Sunshine transferred in? Does McKinley not have freshmen or graduates? The whole discussion about Will stating that New Directions welcomes everyone audition-free made me think that they could construct a really great episode around someone showing up with lots of enthusiasm and no singing ability. Not saying that this is true of me back in high school, necessarily, but upperclassmen who are established in an extracurricular activity can build up some serious ire towards green, excitable freshmen with no idea what they're doing.

- "Getting to Know You": Using the history of the musical to make a sly wink at criticism of the show's broad handling of minority characters, or just the first song that came to mind when they needed something to sing to a group of Asian children? Also, as much as I like Artie, it's hard to quibble with Tina's call there. Those are, indeed, magnificent abs.

- It's always nice to see the show repurpose show tunes, but I'm a little disappointed at the context surrounding the episode-concluding "What I Did for Love." A Chorus Line is all about people pursuing careers in the arts and the sacrifices they make to do so, and shares a lot with Glee in that respect. If Glee ever elected to do an episode with original songs, I think A Chorus Line's hyper-confessional libretto could serve as an interesting model for the kinds of songs they could do. The titular love is specifically of dance, the love that unites the disparate characters of A Chorus Line, which made it somewhat disheartening to see it turned into Rachel's tribute to her own narcissism. The show can use as much candor as possible in addressing how shallow its characters can be, but I couldn't help but think how much better it could've worked as a group number.

Sons of Anarchy

Robin Weigert! More Deadwood! Can we have John Hawkes next, please?

Terriers

With this third outing, Terriers distinguished itself from other mystery-of-the-week style shows with a dark, unsettling resolution to the episode's central case. The writers are showing that they're unwilling to simply coast on Donal Logue's natural charisma, and as a result he's turning in a standout performance.

Grey's Anatomy

Private Practice

- Good follow-up to last season's Grey's finale, particularly with the layered flashback structure and the use of the therapy sessions. The myriad ways that PTSD impacts the different characters seems like a rich dramatic vein for the show to tap throughout the coming season, with great performances by Sandra Oh, Chandra Wilson and Chyler Leigh in this particular episode. I also liked the way it sort of bled over into PP - they've managed to maintain the ties between the two shows without it feeling too strained.

- With the PP subplot, I had to include a link to Gene Weingarten's amazing, Pulitzer-winning Washington Post piece about parents forgetting their children in the car.

Also Watched: Rubicon, Chuck, Gossip Girl, Parenthood, 90210, Life Unexpected, Hellcats, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Nikita, Bones

Next: I watched allll the pilots...

Best of the 00s: Best Procedurals

Procedurals: also known as cop/doctor shows, or shows that I enjoy and frequently watch in syndication. They're ubiquitous, but here are five that stand out to me, each with a representative episode.

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999-present)

Every person has their favorite L&O; mine is SVU. The show is sometimes criticized for the intensity of its characters' "taking it personally" (particularly Christopher Meloni's Elliot Stabler) but I think the element of the personal, and its execution by SVU's rock-solid cast, is what makes SVU the best Law and Order franchise.

Episode: "Ghost", February 22, 2005

This episode serves as the follow-up to 2003's excellent "Loss," where the show's A.D.A Alexandra Cabot went into the Witness Protection Program after being shot while working on a case involving a powerful drug cartel. Cabot's return in "Ghost" to testify against that cartel features a great performance by Stephanie March as Cabot grapples with the past and rejoins colleagues who believed she was dead.

Bones (Fox, 2005-present)

I got sucked into watching Bones in reruns on TNT this summer. (They show two episodes a day! You can watch a whole season in two weeks!) The show utilizes unique characterization in a manner that frequently elevates what can be rote about mystery procedurals, particularly in the standout chemistry between Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.

Episode: "Aliens in a Spaceship", November 15, 2006

This episode, which introduces the serial killer The Gravedigger, is Bones firing on all cylinders. The Gravedigger's m.o. of placing victims in sealed containers and demanding ransom be paid before their air runs out comes brilliantly into play as Brennan and Hodges find themselves trapped underground in Brennan's car and use their collective scientific ingenuity to craft a series of MacGyver-esque survival-prolonging tactics. Shows featuring intelligent characters don't always utilize their alleged knowledge - this episode was a refreshing example of what can happen when they do.

Cold Case (CBS, 2003-present)

There is one surefire way to get me to weep like a baby: put on an episode of Cold Case. Sure, it'll take about fifty minutes, but when that ending montage comes where the ghost of the victim appears to their loved one to show that they're finally at peace, I am Cold Case's bitch. Recently I was watching an episode I hadn't seen before, and midway through I was all, "I'm totally okay. I'm definitely not going to cry during this one," and twenty minutes later I was reaching for the tissues.

Episode: "Forever Blue", December 3, 2006

I've written about this episode, which centers on the tragic story of two police officers in love in the late 60s, before, and there's really not much to add to that. I'll just say that I watched it again recently and not only did it still make me weep at the end, but it's become one of those things where knowing what happens at the end makes me weep throughout the episode.

House, M.D. (Fox, 2004-present)

Did Fox ever luck out with Hugh Laurie - he has defined the character of Gregory House so thoroughly that he carries the show over ebbs and flows in quality that would destroy one with a less charismatic lead. The show also benefits from functioning in a clearly defined niche - diagnostic medicine - which distinguishes it from other shows in a genre that can often feel tired.

Episode: "House's Head", May 12, 2008

This first part of the fourth season finale started with an intriguing premise: how does House solve a diagnostic mystery when a) he's the patient and b) he has a head injury resulting from a bus accident. The hour of step-retracing and fantasy sequences culminated in a gut-punch of an ending when House realized that his clues were pointing to Anne Dudek's Amber having been in the accident with him, which in turn lead to what is almost certainly the show's best-executed character exit.

Grey's Anatomy (ABC, 2005-present)

If it were a more consistent show, Grey's would probably be on my best dramas list. However, the highs have been so high that the show is impossible to ignore. When ads originally ran for the show, it didn't seem like it would depart too far from the standard medical show format. The tack of having patient problems reflect the interpersonal relationships of the doctors wasn't always as subtle as it could have been, but with a solid cast, creator Shonda Rhimes made it work. Every time I think I'm ready to give up on Grey's, it sucks me back in.

Episode: "It's the End of the World"/"As We Know It", February 5/12, 2006

Grey's was on fire in its second season (for serious, the season was concluding while my sophomore year in college was coming to a close and my friends and I were totally obsessed. One of my non-watching friends came by during one of the season's final episodes when he was leaving for the summer, and we were all fully watching the TV over his shoulder as we hugged and said our goodbyes.) and this two-parter - the first part of which was ABC's post-Super Bowl selection - is a perfect example of the show firing on all cylinders. Like many Grey's sweeps episodes, this pair featured an outlandish central case - a man comes in with an unexploded bomb lodged in his chest. Sterling guest performances by Christina Ricci as the EMT holding the bomb in place and Kyle Chandler as the bomb squad leader, plus the storyline of George assisting Bailey as she gave birth (which included the notorious first appearance of "va-jay-jay") made this a Grey's classic.