My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Day 4: Outstanding Supporting Actor in A Limited Series/TV Movie

 

Again Hamilton isn’t here so this is already a better category than last year.  And it is estimated that there will be room for seven nominees. Traditionally this category can be a character actor-palooza in recent years finding room for talents who are breaking big (Sterling Brown, Ben Whishaw) or unknowns who have exploded (Yahya Abdul-Mateen’s victory for Watchmen was one of my favorite awards of the past decade, period).  They also find room for multiple nominees from standout series, and there are a couple that could do just that (Dopesick and The Dropout are by the far most likely)

I’m going to try and stick to a middle ground in my selections, balancing between (usually) one nominee for each series, while acknowledging there could well be more and that in most cases I won’t object if there were. I’m also going to try and pick out some of the more unlikely ones in certain series. So here we go.

 

Murray Bartlett, The White Lotus

Bartlett has been almost since August the favorite in this category, picking up nominations from the SAG Awards and winning at the Critics Choice this March. And anyone who watched his work as Armond, the increasingly put upon concierge at the title resort doesn’t have to explain why. When you consider everything all the guests put him through during what would be his final week at the hotel, the fact that he spent years dealing with addiction before spectacularly relapsing, the way he fought as hard as he could for his job and got no thanks from anyone at it, it’s a marvel that he managed to make it this long in his position and not spectacularly flame out. He was the comic highlight of a cast of much better known names and when he ended up being the one who was murdered at the hotel in the final minutes of the series, I felt an anguish that very few of the characters in so many more serious shows caused me to feel at his passing. Because all of these guests deserves what was coming to them, and his death will barely be noticed by management. I don’t know Bartlett has gone all these years without being noticed by, well, anyone, but in a category stock full of deserving nominees, he deserves this win the most.

 

Aaron Eckhart, The First Lady

Just as is the case with all the lead actresses in this category, all three of the actors who played the Presidents in this series are more than worthy of nominations. But Kiefer Sutherland has gotten more than his share of love from the Emmys and as much as I liked O-T Fagenble’s performance as Barack Obama, I just bear too much animus for his nomination in The Handmaid’s Tale last year to give him any credit from the Emmys ever again. But I’m not only choosing Eckhart by process of elimination. Eckhart has been one of the most overlooked character actors in film and television for more than a quarter of a century. Even when he gives exceptional performances in blockbusters – such as his unforgettable turn as Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight – he is always overlooked by a brighter sun. And just as was the case with all three female leads in the first lady, Eckhart is perfectly matched with playing Gerald Ford, a man who labored for a quarter of a century in the backbenches of Congress, never sought glory until it was thrust upon him, and then turned out to be what our country needed at that time. And in addition to everything else, alone among the three marriages portrayed, he actually had to give as much support to his wife during his time in office as she did to him. Of the three male leads, Eckhart is the most unlikely to earn a nomination. He’s by far the most deserving.

 

William H. Macy, The Dropout

I may be pushing for the wrong actor in this series. I have always admired the work of Naveen Andrews, even before Lost. I honestly would not object if he were to be nominated for this series, as is likely and would have even less of a problem if he became the eventual winner. But having seen the first couple of episodes, both his character and the one played by Macy in The Dropout strike me as fundamentally creepy and untrustworthy. And if we’re going to nominate an actor who plays both of these things so well, I’d kind of like it to be Macy.

Macy has put playing untrustworthy characters in his wheelhouse for years: that’s basically everything so many people loved about him on Shameless (it took until the series was almost over for me to warm to that part). But there’s so much of the utterly untrustworthy family ‘friend’ in his work as Richard, a man who thinks he’s entitled to be included on corrupt schemes because he knows better, as well as the fact I almost didn’t recognize him in the first episode that makes me thinks he’s worthy of the nomination. Again, no problem if Andrews gets it and Macy’s gotten more than his share of love from the Emmys already. But he’s always been one of my favorite actors, and it’s very clear how good he is even in a brief role.

 

 

Clive Owen, Impeachment: American Crime Story

We’ve spent so many years satirizing Bill Clinton on SNL and lionizing in public that I don’t think any of us were expecting the kind of work that Owen would do playing him in this series. We see him almost entirely behind the scenes, walking around the Oval office with Monica, quietly unassuming and modest, treating her so warmly we don’t even stop to consider the possibility that either he’s grooming her or how coldly he treats her when he’s done with her.  We’ve heard stories for decades about angry he can be behind the scenes, but this is the first time in any film or TV series I’ve gotten even a hint of just how menacing his anger could be, especially when he turns it on targets who dare to defy him on anything that gets in the way of his message. We’ve never seen him as a schemer and a plotter, willing to be as destructive to anyone who gets in his way and just hinting as the threats ‘Hilary’ would bring if she heard about it. Maybe that’s one of the reason so many critics refuses to rave about this series – they didn’t want to think that Owen’s portrayal of Clinton showed us that 42 and 45 had far more in common then we ever wanted to admit. Owen may have no realistic chance of getting a nomination (for reasons I argued about in the Best Limited Series) but he impersonated a president and did so with as much realism as any of the actors in The First Lady. Since there’s a very strong likelihood that at least one of them (though probably not the one I spoke out for) will be nominated, by that logic Owen has more than earned one as well.

 

Nick Robinson, Maid

Talk about cast against type: how can the baby-faced kid we fell in love with in Love, Simon and saw being the innocent victim in A Teacher play just a memorably horrible person in Maid? Note that I say horrible person, because as much the story portrays him and even though he is clearly a drunk and a domestic abuser, Sean just doesn’t play as a villain. He is a monster, I don’t deny that, but as we see over and over, he is just as broken as Alex is and has, if anything, an even more flawed support system. Robinson’s basic humanity as an actor stops us from truly detesting Sean, even though he often deserves our hatred. And its hard not to look at the final episode, when almost despite himself he acknowledged just how broken he is, in a way that most of the people in Alex’s world – including her father and mother – are in utter denial about. Perhaps I’m wrong to feel empathy for Sean, but I never felt him the monster so many domestic abusers are. And for that reason, I think Robinson deserves a nomination.

 

Michael Stahlberg, Dopesick

I spoke my early review of this series in the nature of evil that the Sackler family represents. And Stahlberg, one of the greatest character actors when it comes to this time of menace, is absolutely perfectly suited to the role of Richard Sackler, a man who quietly and single-mindedly pushes Oxycontin forward and creates the opoid crisis almost entirely for his own ego. There are those who have argued for all the time we spend on Sackler we don’t learn why he persists in doing what he does. Would any kind of motive mitigate what he did? Stahlberg does what he always does; he is quiet and serenely in underplaying every aspect of creating this drug, manufacturing a problem for it too cure, and finding ways to make it more profitable for his company without giving a damn for the consequences. That is the purest and most frightening form of evil manageable and if nothing else, justifies the entire existence of Dopesick. There are other brilliant performances in this limited series, and you could just as easily justify Peter Sarsgaard being nominated for his work as the relentless prosecutor who helps bring about Purdue’s fall.  But the quiet, utterly assuming of Stahlberg’s work – making a man you would pass on the street without picturing what he was capable of – makes him by far the most worthy nominee in this category.

 

Dan Stevens, Gaslit

There are many actors for this series I could advocate for her. I could pull for Sean Penn for literally disappearing into the role of John Mitchell, not just in makeup but in behavior. I could advocate for another vital actor to this series (and I will below). But the one I think most likely to get the nomination is Stevens for his work as John Dean. Here’s why. The real John Dean has been portrayed has the hero of Watergate. Stevens portrays him for the lion’s share of the series as a nerdy loser who so desperately wants to sit at the cool table with so many people not worth his time that he sells his soul for a bargain rate. It is only when he realizes how utterly trapped that he breaks down, and almost against his will, does the right thing. Even then, he is outraged when he learns he has to be punished for his crime for doing so. Only in the last episode, when he actually hears some of the things he spent years saying does he truly realize how far he has fallen and for how little he was willing to do it for.  Only then, does he truly become the hero and it’s not for doing the right thing: it’s for realizing how lucky he was. That’s a greater journey than Martha Mitchell takes. And for that – and because Stevens is one of the great actors on TV in the last decade – I think he has earned a nomination.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Shea Whigham, Gaslit

I will say this flat-out. Whigham’s performance as G. Gordon Liddy was the highlight of this series. There was no subtlety to it the way there was with all the other great performances, but that was the whole point. Even when Whigham tried to humanize his character, it was utterly clear that Liddy was one hundred percent nuts, and proud of it. The fact that Whigham tore into this role like a wolf with a T-Bone was perfect, especially considering that Whigham has spent basically his entire career in television being understated.  It was so much fun watching Whigham on screen throwing caution to the wind among the corridors of power, completely unaware of just how little anybody wanted to be in the same room with him. I so badly want Whigham to get nominated for his work – even more than Roberts and Stevens. But just as much as you couldn’t overlook Liddy in real life no matter how hard you try, I have a feeling the Academy will do the same. It’s impossible to deny Whigham’s work, but the Emmys have spent his career not wanting to be in the same room with him.

 

Tomorrow I finish up this series with Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/TV Movie as well as some other miscellany.

 

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Part 3: Outstanding Lead Actress in A TV Limited Series/Movies

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE

Even if Nine Perfect Strangers had not been turned into a regular series (why Hulu) it was an inevitability that several of Hollywood’s greatest actresses of all time would be among the nominees.  For some it is a question of which actresses from certain female led series will be nominated, and there is also a strong possibility that some of Hollywood’s most prominent up-and-comers will end up taking the prize. Here are my choices for the six actresses I think will take the spots.

 

Jessica Chastain, Scenes from a Marriage

I didn’t think it was conceivable that Jessica Chastain would get her Oscar before she got her Emmy – I clearly had no idea how extraordinary her work in The Eyes of Tammy Faye would be and that it would be enough to carry her. But I was certain from the moment I began to watch her work as Mira way back in September that it was an inevitability she was be among the top ranks of Emmy contenders for Best Actress. And in the past year even among a constant stream of great performances, nothing has changed my opinion on that front.

Chastain’s work as Mira was one of the great performances I’ve seen. She never rang a false note in a single episode of her work, and even though she was the person who had the affair (a change from the Bergman original) you sympathized with her character every step of the way. You could see the desperation she had in every scene, first in order to get out of her marriage, then her determination to get back in, then in the final episode trying to find out where they would end up. In what was at times one of the hardest things on television to watch this year, you could not take your eyes away from either Isaac or Chastain. Both more than deserve nominations for their works and whether they win or not (its unlikely in either case) Chastain should be rewarded for giving one of the most unforgettable performances of this year.

 

Viola Davis, The First Lady

I’ve made no secret of how vehemently I loathed How to Get Away with Murder. The primary reason I did was that, in my opinion, it wasted the talents of one of the greatest actresses of all time.  Now that Davis has given one of the greatest performances in her storied career as Michelle Obama, it is the way that history works that so many fans turned against Davis for – I can’t believe this – how she pursed her lips. As the real life woman she played learned over and over, sometimes you can’t just win. But Davis was perfectly matched as this ground-breaking woman for whom being the first African-American First Lady was a comedown from her previous ambitions. We see her trying to deal with the problems in health care, constantly being torn down by a media that wants to destroy every decision she makes, fighting with Rahm Emmanuel and everyone else on basically everything, and essentially trying to find her own path out of the shadow of her husband.  Davis is an iconic actress for an iconic woman and she is utterly worthy of the nomination I derided her for getting for her other iconic (but far less complicated) character.

 

Michelle Pfeiffer, The First Lady

I realize some people will be irked that I am excluding Gillian Anderson for her extraordinary work as Eleanor Roosevelt in this series. And to be clear I think Anderson is one of the greatest actresses of all time and if she gets nominated I will have no complaints. But Anderson took an Emmy last year for playing an iconic female political figure, so I think she would understand why I want to have this spot filled by another iconic actress who played another iconic political figure.

And let’s be honest, Michelle Pfeiffer has been such a great actress for so long that, almost like Viola Davis, we have a tendency to take her for granted. It boggles the mind that she’s never won an Academy Award, or for that matter, only one Golden Globe.  Of the three First Ladies at the center of this series, it was Betty Ford’s story that I found the most compelling. Because of the situation she was forced into against her will of the three ladies, because of all the obstacles she had to overcome throughout her life that she had to mask, either because it was politically or socially acceptable, and quintessentially because of Pfeiffer’s utterly sympathetic performance. Of the three first ladies portrayed here, Ford was the least ambitious, yet paradoxically may have accomplished the most in her brief time in the position. I would like to think the Emmys could do the same for an actress whose reputation has the same luster.

 

Margaret Qualley, Maid

She is the youngest and least experienced of the nominees in this category, but of all of them she gave what is arguably the greatest performance.  Alex had a struggle throughout the entirety of this series that makes the Book of Job look like Eat, Pray, Love where she finds herself consistently drowning and given heavier and heavier burdens the further along she goes. The closer she comes to climbing out, she finds herself back in the same pool this time with a lead life vest. It is somehow a miracle that she manages to find herself in a situation that she was able to pull herself and her toddler daughter out of. And in every single she was remarkable because in almost all of them, no one seemed to be considering a human being – not the social workers, not the people who hired her, not even her own mother. (Oh, we’ll get to her in time.) Qualley has had the misfortune of the greatest performance of her season in the same eligibility period that Kate Winslet was sweeping up awards right and left for Mare of Easttown. Now she’ll ‘only’ have to compete some of the greatest actresses of all time. I think we know by now that, like Alex, Qualley can hold her own against whatever is thrown at her.

 

Julia Roberts, Gaslit

The only thing keeping Roberts from an Emmy nomination is the network her series is on. Perhaps I’m being too generous. After all, three years ago working in collaboration with Sam Esmail, the producer behind Gaslit she gave one of the greatest performances of her career in Homecoming and she, like the series, were inexplicably ignored by the Emmys. But if she is overlooked by them for her work as Martha Mitchell it will be far more difficult to explain. She appears in a historic mini-series, which is the kind of thing the Emmys. She plays one of the most complicated characters in a virtually untold story about the most documented political scandal in history. She plays so many angles – alcoholic, a dysfunctional wife and mother, a woman being driven crazy by her husband, a victim of a ferocious assault, a woman who is deserted by her family and history, and ultimately a hero. Anyone of these is the kind of performance that traditionally receives Emmys; she has all of them at one time. Do I even need to mention by now she’s one of the greatest actresses of all time? So if she somehow gets overlooked this time around, to paraphrase Gaslit’s slogan: The Emmys are wrong. Julia is right.

 

Amanda Seyfried, The Dropout

Ever since I first laid eyes on Amanda Seyfried as Sarah on Big Love, arguably the most underrated series on HBO the first decade of his peak greatness, I’ve known that I was looking at a future superstar. I actually picked her for an Emmy nomination one season for her extraordinary performance in the groundbreaking episode ‘Come Ye Saints’. Ever since she left the series in 2010, she has almost always lived up to her potential whether in femme fatale roles in minor masterpieces like Chloe and Lovelace, undervalued masterworks like First Reformed, or singing her heart out in Les Mis and Mamma Mia. But with the exception of a brief return in the revival of Twin Peaks, she has not been back to the medium where she became a star. Until The Dropout.

I know all the controversies behind Elizabeth Holmes and having only seen the first episode, I know Holmes will obviously go into dark territory. But as you watch Seyfried play Holmes you see a woman who no one truly cares about, who everyone (including her mother) thinks a loser, and someone who thinks she has potential that no one will realize. I have no doubt that eventually we will see how corrupt Holmes was and how willing she was to do anything to achieve the appearance of success rather than actual success. But I also know that we will sympathize for her despite that because that’s how Seyfried plays every character we meet. I’m not sure yet if she deserves to win an Emmy but she deserves to earn her spot among the greats.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Renee Zellweger, The Thing about Pam

Am I making a mistake in using this spot to advocate for Zellweger instead of for Olivia Colman, who played a much more complicated killer in Landscapers? I suppose. But Colman did win an Emmy last year, so I feel less guilty in that sense. More to the point, in a series that I often found deeply flawed and hard to appreciate, Zellweger relentless determination to be so utterly contemptible as Pam, to go against her well-known screen persona and do everything in her power to utterly stomp down the slightest bit of likability, compassion or even humanity in her word as this real life Dateline headliner, made what would have barely had enough material for a TV movie for Lifetime into a limited series that I just couldn’t tear my eyes away from. Every time I wanted to recoil, the simple act of Zellweger’s slurping on a Slushee drew me back in.  It wasn’t the most brilliant performance on TV this year by a long shot. But for making something that had no business being a success at all utterly riveting, I think Zellweger deserves something.

 

Tomorrow, I take on the Supporting Actors in a Limited Series. I’m told they’ll have room for seven nominees this time out. I’m going to need everyone (again Thank God Hamilton isn’t here)

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Part 2: Outstanding Lead Actor in A TV Movie/Limited Series

Two quasi-related things. Last year, I overestimated the number of potential nominees. So this year, I’m only going to include six and give a possibility for a seventh. Second I’m aware of the number of potential nominees with connections to the MCU and while I suspect many of the nominees will have acted in those franchises, I suspect very few will be from Marvel Limited Series. I don’t think Loki, Hawkeye or Moon Knight have the same likely crossover appeal that Wandavision did. Just a theory. Anyway here I go.

 

Paul Bettany, A Very English Scandal

Paul Bettany may very well be one of the few –if not the only – performer from last year’s nominees in this category to end up repeating in it. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone. Those millions who only knew of his work as Vision in the Marvel Universe and can’t understand why he didn’t manage to win an Emmy last year for his work in Wandavision (for the record in an ugly category he was one of the more deserving nominees) will no doubt be awed by his work as Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyll who finds himself in the middle of one of the most notorious divorces of the 1960s. Those who no Bettany for his utter politeness in just about everything will be in awe of how he calmly uses his wife’s indiscretion to utterly destroy so that he can get his desired divorce. It’s a nasty turn for a man known for someone playing everything toned down, and one more than deserving of another trip to the Emmys.

 

Ben Foster, The Survivor

Ever since I saw The Messengers one of the most haunting movies about the military in history, I have always admired the work of Ben Foster. I’m well aware it wasn’t his first project – he was a semi-regular on Six Feet Under and he had a great part in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma -  but I’ve admired his work ever since. Sometimes he appears in projects well beneath his abilities but most of his films such as Rampart, Kill Your Darlings and Hell or High Water show how brilliant intense an actor he is. His work in the HBO TV Movie The Survivor – a likely frontrunner in that category – is a good measure of both his intensity and his restraint. Playing a boxer who had to fight against fellow survivors in concentration camps, he turned what could have easily been a clichéd story into a memorable role. Guided by Barry Levinson in his second Emmy worthy project of this season, he told a hard place true story where we never doubted a moment of his work. Actors and actresses in TV movies have increasingly found it hard to earn nominations in the eras of Limited Series, but there’s no doubt that Foster has earned one.

 

Andrew Garfield, Under the Banner of Heaven

Andrew Garfield never gets respect. He was denied a Supporting Actor nomination for his work in the extraordinary The Social Network. His work in The Amazing Spider Man series was vilified more because he made a cheeky suggestion about the potential for Peter Parker to be bisexual. And despite acting in some of the greatest films of the last few years – Hacksaw Ridge, Silence and The Eyes of Tammy Faye – he is always overshadowed by either the directors of his co-stars.

Now, playing a Mormon detective whose faith is tested as he investigates a brutal murder connected to LDS fundamentalism, he is likely to be nominated for a sterling performance in a series that once looked as a sure front-runner for Emmy nominations across the board, but is now more likely to be overshadowed by flashier Hulu limited series such as The Dropout and Pam and Tommy.  And even though his performance was a gift of restraint showing a man sliding into doubt, he will almost certainly be ignored for the prize by another exceptional performance by yet another Hulu Limited series (see below). Well, some day Garfield will get his due from the Emmys or the Oscars or something. In the meantime, let’s just quietly commemorate another great, dignified performance in his repertoire.

 

Oscar Isaac, Scenes from a Marriage

Oscar Isaac was listed by the New York Times as one of the greatest actors of the 21^st Century. He’s certainly one of the most undervalued. I have marveled at his work in independent films like Inside Llewyn Davis and Ex Machina and always marvel at how much he can convey with so calm on a tone. Millions know of him for his work in the controversial Star Wars sequels, and I suspect many would nominate him for his work in Moon Knight. But make no mistake, nearly a year after it débuted, his work in Scenes from a Marriage as Jonathan is one of the most astonishing performances of the entire season.

Jonathan was the husband who seemed to have a perfect marriage and then watched as he learned of his wife’s infidelity, their decision to separate, eventually divorce and find themselves in the final episode back in their old in each others arms. He and Mira seemed to bring out the worst and the best each other within the same minute, and even though he was often far more restrained in his feelings than his wife, you could see the pain and agony in him in every single minute. It was one of the most wrenching performances of the year.

Isaac’s work has received mixed results from the pre-Emmys awards; the Golden Globes and the Broadcast Critics focused almost entirely on nominees from earlier in the year, many of which were inferior. Only the SAG awards nominated him for Best Actor.  I think there is enough forward momentum for Isaac to earn a nod (he was also overlooked for his stunning work in another HBO Limited Series Show Me a Hero) and he’s reached this point in his career with almost no nominations for a decade of extraordinary work. He’s owed, and it’s for these scenes.

 

Michael Keaton, Dopesick

Ever since the revival of his career in the back-to-back Best Pictures Birdman and Spotlight, Keaton has moved from conventional leading man to a brilliant character actor. Almost since Dopesick debuted back last December, Keaton has dominated the lead up to the Emmys. And having seen his work as Harry Fennix, the doctor in a West Virginia coal mining town, its obvious why.

Fennix starts out as a simple doctor who buys into the sales pitch of a Purdue rep who convinced him that Oxycontin is an opoid that can cure pain with low addiction rates. In the early stages, we think we know where his story’s going – how he becomes a tool of the Pharma Company lured in by his basic isolation for decades by the need for creature comforts to becoming a drug pusher, even though he knows better. Then in the third episode, he is broadsided by a truck and is prescribed Oxy. By the next episode, he’s as addicted as his fellow patients, stealing their drugs and basically isolated. He has enough awareness of what he’s done to beat up the rep that comes back to his door, but too addicted not to start snorting it that same episode. I know that unlike so many of his patients, he will survive his addiction. I just don’t know what he’ll be like at the end of it.

Keaton’s work as Fennix isn’t the greatest performance in Dopesick or the most haunting (I’ll get to that later on) but it resonated the most by far because he is used by Purdue and becomes a victim at the end of it. It is almost a certainty that Keaton will win the prize in this category. And because of his history and the power of so many of his speeches, I really want to see him up there.

 

David Thewlis, Landscapers

I confess that this is the least likely of my choices to be nominated. Landscapers was overlooked by so many awards groups already and David Thewlis’ portrayal of Christopher is so utterly restrained and patient that you get the feeling he’s lived his entire life being overlooked by society. It’s pretty clear he’s lived his entire life for his wife rather than himself. And it is almost impossible for any actor or actress to get nominated for playing someone so utterly quiet and insignificant seeming. That’s the exact reason, however, why Thewlis absolutely deserves a nomination for his work. As someone who has spent more than a quarter century sacrificing everything for his wife, believing everything she says because he can’t conceive of upsetting her, of a man who doesn’t seem capable of murder no matter how many times the police tells him he is, of a man who seems so innocuous that you really wonder why the London PD was so determined to make him into a hardened criminal, Thewlis gave one of the great performances of one of the most stories careers in acting. Should he get nominated? Absolutely. Will he get a nomination? Probably not. But then, the character he plays would be fine if he never got noticed.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan: The Movie

Yes, you read that right. I’m about to advocate an Emmy nomination for a series – and a title character – that as recently as this January I considered part of one of the most overrated series in history. Keep reading.

For all the flaws I thought (and still think) Ray Donovan the series had, the film that ended up wrapping everything up completely redeemed the series. And I have to say Schreiber’s performance was a large part of the reason it worked so well. From the stunning opening where a bloody and wounded Ray tells his therapist “I killed my father” and then flashbacked on two separate fronts. We saw Ray as he went back to Boston for find Mickey to kill him, we saw him point a gun at him and pull the trigger on an empty chamber, we saw him reveal the truth about a crime to the only woman who could love him, take another bullet, and in the final ten minutes we saw him forgive his father for his sins, something he spent thirty years never willing to do…just before the final moments and we understood everything that he said. In the final minutes Ray took responsibility and most likely paid the final price for his sins. I spent the entire run of Ray Donovan demeaning every awards show that dared give it a nomination. I’m now asking politely for them to give Schreiber one. It’s not nearly as great a mea culpa as the one Ray ended up with, but it’s due him.

 

Tomorrow I take on Best Actress in A Limited Series. Spoiler: There will be a lot of Oscar winners and nominees in this category.

 

 

My Predictions (And Hopes) For This Year's Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Part 1: Outstanding Limited Series

 

Before I get started, I’m going to break my own rule and advocate for a couple of nominees in the Best TV Movie category. I would be grateful if the Emmys would nomination Ray Donovan: The Movie and Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas.  The former was an exceptional conclusion to a series that to that point I thought overrated and overblown (and as I have written even redeemed it) and the latter is the fitting conclusion to a series the Emmys unthinkably decided to give no real acknowledgment to when it was on the air. (Whoever decided that Emily in Paris was a better series than Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist needs to have their membership revoked. All of them.) Make it up to two series you didn’t real give enough appreciation to when they were on the air.

 

BEST LIMITED SERIES

I’m well aware that the cap for these nominations still inexplicably comes out to five. Nevertheless, I intend to make room for six as well as one for consideration. Furthermore, there will be limitations in this category because of series I haven’t seen yet (I have yet to see either The Dropout or Under The Banner of Heaven and readers of my blog know no force on earth will make me see Inventing Anna.) Despite that, I think most of my selections will mirror the ones the Emmys will make. And some they really should.

 

American Crime Story: Impeachment (FX)

Let’s start with a lecture. There is absolutely no reason why this exceptional written, directed and acted series – a show that is just a relevant to today’s America as the first two installments were – have been greeted with indifference from critics and basically ignored by awards shows. Except there is a reason. It’s not fatigue from politics the last few years, it’s the simple fact that all of these good Hollywood liberals and so many great writers still don’t want to admit a simple truth.

That for the better part of a quarter of a century they have lionized and deified a sexual predator and slut-shamed everybody who dared called him one. That they were willing to consider his wife a hero and make her President in her own right for the simple act of standing by a man who had spent his life harassing and abusing women. That we shamed Monica Lewinsky, called Paula Jones a hick and Linda Tripp a buffoon not because we didn’t believe them, but because they were too ugly to bring down a president.

That’s why Impeachment, despite the fact that every performance, from Beanie Feldstein’s work as Monica to Sarah Paulson’s portrayal of  Linda Tripp convinced of her own self-importance as a lowly bureaucrat to Clive Owen’s portrayal of Clinton as something close to a self-righteous demon is spot on, despite the fact that every element of the story is essential to the America we live as the trial of O.J. Simpson and the murder of Gianni Versace, despite the fact that Ryan Murphy held a mirror to our society that is essentially no less telling than his previous two installments, will almost certainly be shrugged off by the Emmys.  Hollywood says they want to speak to truth to power, but its very particular truth. If Murphy had charted the safe path, said that Ann Coulter and Kenneth Starr had decided to impeach Clinton because they didn’t like him, if they’d kept in the cameos of Matt Drudge and Brett Kavanaugh and George Conway, if they shown Tripp as a self-important villain who didn’t care about anybody but herself, this would be the frontrunner like the previous two entries. But no, it showed Clinton stalking Monica and showing her as a gaslit woman, it showed him deriding his co-worker for daring to say he was a sexist, and it showed Hilary as someone everyone was afraid of, who knew the truth, and stuck with him for her own selfish reasons. Impeachment deserves to be watched by every American and given every award it can get for its bravery. It deserves to be nominated for that as well as its quality. And it’s for all those reasons Hollywood will ignore it. I won’t.

 

Dopesick (Hulu)

Danny Strong has built an impressive career as a writer bringing us behind the scenes of politics and contemporary situation that would previous be considered unfilmable. In collaboration with Barry Levenson he has done much the same in Dopesick creating the slightly fictionalized look at how Richard Sackler (played by Michael Stahlberg in a performance that deserves to be at the top of the list for Emmy consideration) single-mindedly created the opoid crisis for the sole purpose of cementing a legacy for himself. By taking us through the world of a West Virginia doctor and his patients, a group of drug reps who care only about winning contests than the harm their drugs are doing, a DEA agent who focused her energy on Oxycontin and lost everything to it and the prosecution that slowly but surely brought it down, Strong, Levenson and the incredible cast have created what may be the strongest work of art about the evils of the drug war since Traffic nearly twenty years ago. Some might say there’s a happy ending when this is resolved, but if you followed the story you know there isn’t one for anybody.

 

The First Lady (Showtime)

I’ll admit some people might have problems with the constantly shifting timelines between the stories of three groundbreaking First Ladies. But all of that is more than overwhelming by the brilliance of the performances of three of the greatest actresses of all time as the leads: Gillian Anderson, making Eleanor Roosevelt utterly human as she adjusts to how the White House will never suit her, Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford, thrust into a role she never planned for, dealing with demons from her past and the petty menaces of her husband’s aides, and Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, who becomes the first African-American First Lady, and finds every element of her life being handled by people who hate her for just being. Every single role in this series is perfectly cast and many more are worthy of nominations - my personal hopes are that Aaron Eckhart and Ellen Burstyn receive nominations for their work as Gerald Ford and Sara Delano respectively, but there isn’t a false note in a single actor in the cast. There might have been an easier way to make these series, but there wasn’t a better one.

 

Gaslit (Starz)

The only thing standing between this series and the boatload of nominations it deserves is its network. If Gaslit aired on HBO or Amazon, it would be the frontrunner for Best Limited Series no question, but because it airs on a network that most cable subscribers do not know exists, there is a possibility that voters would overlook it. That possibility gets more remote by the day. It helps that the series is about Watergate, a scandal that we like to tell ourselves the good guys won but has never been shown in this form before. And the fact that Pickering as his cast tend to play so much of it not as high drama or thriller but as farce with All The President’s Men terrified to do anything to make King Richard (we never even see Nixon) angry at them, it plays perfectly. It also helps that the story is mapped up by two marriages: John and Martha Mitchell and John and Mo Dean. Promotions understandably focused most of the attention on the Mitchells, mainly because they are (superbly) played by Sean Penn and Julia Roberts respectively, each of whom doing exceptional work. But it is the courtship and marriage of the Deans, played by undervalued TV veterans Dan Stevens and Betty Gilpin, that is the heart of this series and makes us look at just how much we’re willing to sell our soul even if the buyer has no use for it and how redemption nevertheless lingers. Throw in exceptional performances from great character actors (Shea Whigham deserves a nomination for his brilliant work as G. Gordon Liddy) and you have one of the best shows of 2022. I hope the Emmys admit as much.

 

Maid (Netflix)

Some series are just too hard to binge. It does not make them any less powerful watch or less necessary. Netflix’s story of Alex, a single mother whose escape from the abusive father of her child is only the start of what becomes a Kafkaesque nightmare was one of the most horrifying series I’ve watched in decades, precisely because there wasn’t a single element that rang false, no matter how horrific the predicament for Alex became. Margaret Qualley has achieved the superstardom that she has been hinting at for the past two years, and she is given pitch-perfect support by her real-life mother Andie MacDowell, who has finally and completely realized her full potential. All of the performances are haunting all the way down because you don’t really see so many of the characters in Alex’s world as so much villainous as utterly indifferent to her problems. There are no doubt millions of Alex’s in the world every day and we just walk past them on the street, in their broken down cars, and as they clean up our houses. We need to ask more questions about the women we hire as domestic workers. I hope Maid does so.

 

The White Lotus (HBO)

An utter and complete rarity: a comedy that is almost certain to dominate the Emmy nominations in this category. Yes, so much of what happened in the title resort could be viewed as yet another subtle level of the class struggles between the rich and powerful as they go on vacation, but Mike White and his brilliant cast, from the incredible Jennifer Coolidge and Connie Britton to the awe-inspiring Murray Bartlett as Armond, made sure the viewer, at the very least, had fun every step of the way even as the guests and staff were going through other misery. Some critics have argued that the reason so many people love Succession is because they like seeing the rich and powerful as miserable as us. That argument works far better in The White Lotus, partly because they’re not as rich and partly because we actually get to see how miserable they’re willing to make the staff – and their wives – in order to enjoy themselves.  At the very least you should when you go on this kind of vacation and act like the guests here, you deserve what you find in your luggage.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Landscapers (HBO)

I had to make a choice between either Scenes from a Marriage or this series. Both were very ambitious stories centered on two very different couples with very different struggles at the core of their relationships. Each centered around two extraordinary actors – the actress in each case an Oscar winner, the actor in each case one of the most undervalued in their craft. And both were revelations technically. So why do I lean towards Landscapers over Scenes? Ultimately because the former was far superior technically.  The former series was a marvel – it was as much as Scenes as Marriage – but Landscapers was far more ambitious on a directorial and technical level, breaking down barriers and walls that even in the era of Peak TV I truly hadn’t seen before. I honestly have no more idea of the couples’ guilt in the murders they committed at the end of the series that I did at the beginning, and unlike every single true crime story, for Landscapers that it was its strength. It made clear from the beginning “This is a Story.” And it was a hell of a one to watch.

 

Tomorrow I start covering Actors in TV Movie/Limited Series (Again, count our blessings Hamilton isn’t here.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Need More Emmys in TV, Not Fewer

 

Last year around this same time I relayed an article that someone had suggested to the Emmys that we should stop separating the acting categories by gender in order not to offend those performers who identified as binary. I think I wrote roughly two thousands words dissecting the other idiocy of this idea in that it would historically tend to exclude far more performers than it would include, and that if it had been acting out previously, it would have immensely favored white males ahead of any other performer. I naively thought that was the dumbest idea anyone would ever suggest for the Emmys or any awards show in general.

I stand before you in awe of the stupidity of some of the people in my profession.

Last week, I read an article discussing that given the fluidity of so many series to cross the boundaries between drama and comedy – Succession and Ted Lasso were held up as the prime examples – that it might not be the worst idea for the Emmys to start eliminated genre considerations altogether.

Let’s start with the fact that for decades there have been series where the boundaries of comedy and drama frequently are hard to fathom. During the Aaron Sorkin years of The West Wing in particular, I thought it was one of the funniest series I’d ever seen. At no time would I ever have considered listing in the Comedy category. It was a Drama, and deserved to be nominated and win in that category. Nor is the only series which has had issues with genre over the years – Lost was a brilliant blend of drama and comedy for much of its run, Dexter mined a lot of humor out of the performance of Michael C. Hall in its initial run and House spent as much time dealing with the cruel comedy as the medical mysteries it pursued. No one even blinked when all three series were listed as Dramas. Indeed, some people couldn’t understand why Monk which was ostensibly a mystery and drama first, constantly nominated Tony Shalhoub in the Comedy category.  So to pretend that this is something that the Emmys have never dealt with shows a complete lack of an understanding of the history.

Second, why is it only television where everybody seems more inclined to give fewer awards than any other medium? When the Oscars wanted to give an award for Best Box Office film, the backlash was so intense it was immediately scrapped. Writers and directors have been complaining for years how comedies are never given their due, but no one will consider giving this as a category for the Oscars. No one has ever objected that Plays at the Tonys are divided among Dramas and Musicals and new shows and revivals.  But television always gets the short end. I’ve been complaining for decades that it is wrong for all the Supporting Actors and Actress in television – Drama, Comedy or otherwise – to compete against each other? But no one blinked when Kim Catrall was nominated alongside Nancy Marchand. Ever since the SAG awards were founded more than a quarter of a century ago, all of the actors and actress in TV, whether they are lead or supporting, compete against each other. In films alone are their differentiations. No one has so much raised a shout of protest. Why is that even as the level of quality of television has expanded in the past twenty years, not only does everybody cringe at the slightest expansion of nominees, but actually seems to want the number to shrink? I honestly think that some of my colleague would be happy if the Emmys simply gave prizes for Best Show and Best Performance and then everybody went home for another year.

I find this fundamentally galling because every other aspect of the Emmys – by which I mean the creative awards – is willing to acknowledge some level of differentiation in programming.  Dramas and Comedies are given awards based on whether they are single camera or multi-camera. There are often no differentiations between genres if the series is half an hour long or an hour long. In the past ten years, the Creative Arts acknowledged the number of period pieces and fantasies when it came to its hair, makeup and set-design. They already gave many of their makeup awards based on whether they are prosthetic or non-prosthetic, visual and sound effects based on the genre there in. Now I know that most of my colleagues don’t even bother to watch the Creative Arts Awards – probably don’t even know what channels broadcasts it when they air the highlights - but this indicates that the technicians are willing to differentiate between all the various genres out there.

And the thing is, there needs to be more differentiation between the dramas in particular.  The Emmys need to accept that they have flaws. For most of their history, science fiction has been regulated to technical awards - masterpieces like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica never got their due from the Academy in any major category. They nominated The X-Files but never gave it the grand prize, and an argument could be the Emmy they came to Lost only came before the true sci-fi nature of the series became obvious to the masses.

Sure, they’ll say they’ve reformed and now they nominate series like Stranger Things and Westworld regularly, but they have never gained the grand prize. And as much as they will claim credit for Game of Thrones (they shouldn’t, by the way) I have a feeling most of the voters viewed it not so much as sci-fi or even fantasy but a medieval period piece with dragons. And as we all know the Emmys love their period pieces and will nominate even the worst of them over the best contemporary drama. I don’t know any other explanation why Downton Abbey dominated the Emmys for six seasons but The Good Wife never saw a Best Drama nomination after that.

Yes, Mad Men and The Crown were works of art and triumphs of the best television can do, I will not deny that. But let’s not pretend that they were given excesses of awards over the years, even in the case of last year. In hindsight, it says a lot for the quality of Breaking Bad and Homeland that they managed to break through when they did and the fact that equally brilliant series like The Americans and Better Call Saul can’t even get the time of day from the Emmys.

The thing is the Emmys and critics need to do more work, not less. Series like The Mandalorian and Succession don’t take place in the same universes or play by the same rules. Why should they have to compete in the same category? Why does a dystopian future series like The Handmaid’s Tale dominate the Emmys well past its expiration date but a series that depict as dystopian present like Mr. Robot barely get acknowledged? The former series was infinitely more creative in its final season than The Handmaid’s Tale has ever been, hell in its last year, Handmaid’s Tale hadn’t even aired a full season, but the latter show got lots of nominations and the former got none. Where is the logic?

I know why my fellow critics are essentially advocating for this approach – there’s simply too much television and too many places to watch it. We need fewer shows and fewer categories to make our job easier. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t make such blanket statements.

I have raved in the past about the Hollywood Critics Association first ever TV awards last year, how they managed to slash the Gordian Knot about the difference between broadcast TV, cable and streaming I have spent the past decade ranting about with a solution I never considered – giving each service a separate category for Drama and Comedy. (They combined the acting categories for the first two, but given the high caliber of almost all the nominees I couldn’t complain.) I spent the better part of two months extolling everything they did from the nominees to the eventual awards.

Next week, in their second year, they actually intend to expand on their work. Limited series from all services were all in the same category in the first year; this year, they intend to differentiate between broadcast and cable and streaming. They intend to give awards for writing and directing (something no other major awards group that isn’t a guild has done) in every service in every category. They’re even willing to make differentiations like this for late night and reality programs. All of this will make their jobs infinitely harder, and they don’t seem to have even flinched at it. Organizations like this make me proud to be a critic. People who make statements like the one that led off this article make me ashamed.

Look, I get that being a TV critic is a thankless job and I can’t imagine that trying to nominate shows for any awards group is any more fun. Every time you do, no matter how hard you try Monday Morning quarterbacks – and I’ve been one of them for twenty years – blame you for who you chose and who you leave out, say you always repeat yourself or recognize too many programs that deserve and basically say that a trained seal could do a better job. But trying to say that somehow things would be easier for all consider if fewer awards were given to series and performers isn’t even close to the right solution. It’s the inverse of it. We need to give more awards, we need to differentiate genres, and we need to acknowledge that a series on NBC can be as good as one on Paramount plus. It won’t make our jobs any easier, but let’s be honest: would have fewer programs or eliminate genres honestly make any less difficult? All it would do was create a new set of problems that would make just as many people unhappy as the old way. Doing more work isn’t any more fun, I admit it, but isn’t that the job of a critics – and people who give awards – in the first place?

 

What Every Critic (Even Me) Gets Wrong About Art And Capitalism

 

Early in Stephen King’s magnum opus It, future best-selling novelist Bill Denborough is in the middle of his college writing course. All of his fellow classmates and teachers are pretentious who are exactly the kinds of people that critics of higher learning have been arguing against for decades. Finally after another long endless lecture on symbolism that everybody has agreed about for over an hour, but the class keeps droning, Denborough gets to his feet and says the following:

“Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics…culture…history…aren’t those natural ingredients in any story if it’s told well? I mean…can’t you guys just let a story be a story?

After a long silence, the instructor says softly ‘as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, ‘Do you believe William Faulkner was just telling stories? Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in trying to make a buck?”

When Bill ‘honestly considers the question and replied, “I think that’s pretty close to the truth, in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.”

“I suggest,” the instructor says, “that you have a great deal to learn.” The class breaks out into applause. Denborough perseveres, and when he writes his next story, it is given an F, labeled “PULP. CRAP.” Denborough than sells the story for $200, and when he receives the letter of publication, the professor writes another F. Denborough drops out of college and becomes a best selling novelist before he’s twenty one.

I have many problems with Stephen King – I have many problems with It in hindsight – but this segment resonates me with me now as much as it did when I first read the book (which I reread at least a dozen times before high school ended) nearly thirty years ago. King will never consider himself as great a writer as Faulkner or Shakespeare, but in less than a few pages he has successfully explained what has been the eternal dissonance between critics and scholars for centuries and certainly in the last several decades in particular.

Every professor of English literature, every New York film critic, basically anyone who has looked at any form of art basically ignores any idea that it was make money for someone, certainly not the artist. Whether they were a poet or a painter, a musician or a filmmaker, no matter how long ago or what country they were in, they were doing solely for the purpose of making art. Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade, and yes, Orson Welles made Citizen Kane only for the purpose of making art. They did it for free. They didn’t need to eat or pay rent. No they created art solely for posterity and their patrons and absolutely no other reason.

That’s some weapons grade bullshit. All of these scholars and academics will go through the motions of saying, it’s a shame that Renoir and Keats or Chopin died in poverty and unknown at the time, but they live on through their arts. Somehow the horrors of poverty, homelessness and disease only seem insignificant when it comes to artists.  I guarantee you that Rembrandt or Schubert or any of the dozens or hundreds of other artists would have gladly sacrificed the idea of being remembered if they could have had heat in their home or food on their table.

But the field of the liberal arts, of which my field is related, has decided fundamentally that all great art exists in a tabula rasa. It also fundamentally assumes that all of the artists we consider great succeeded not just because they were white man (although let’s not pretend that’s not a major factor) but because they were better than them. Which again, weapons grade bullshit. Was Da Vinci or Michelangelo truly better than any of a dozen other Italian artists of their era? Maybe not. But the Medici’s and the Pope thought so, and gave them money and freedom to do so. Was Shakespeare really a better playwright than Ben Johnson? An academic question. Elizabeth I liked his work, so he was allowed to write a lot more, and more importantly, more of his work survived.  Was Mozart really a better composer than Salieri? Despite what you may have seen in Amadeus, it might be a closer question than that. But Mozart was more popular among the crown princes, so his work survives and Salieri is the villain. Some artists are better known than others because they were in the right place at the right time. That’s true for everything. But they also wrote their pieces because their patrons wanted them, not because they truly writing or doing what they wanted most of the time.

I’ve read over and over that capitalism has destroyed society. (I’m actually going to make a point on this later.) Maybe that’s true. But face facts: art would not exist without it. If someone wasn’t willing to buy a portrait or read a book or see a movie, no one would finance it being made. And it is that divide that has fundamentally become the problem with so many critics in my field over the years. At the core of their belief is ‘art for art’s sake.’ I’m certain no one would have become an artist if they were just making art for themselves. You can not eat a portrait, you can not live in a book, and you can’t sleep on a symphony.  How many painter, musicians, writers have had to work lowly day jobs to support themselves until they became successful? Stephen King couldn’t make living selling short stories so he taught night school. He was going to give up writing before he finally sold Carrie in 1975.  Now he’s that one of the biggest literary successes in history, he’s not an artist. I have no doubt that if he’d given up writing and become a teacher, by this point some literary scholar would have found some stories in his magazines and wondered about ‘his untapped potential’. You’re either an artist or a sell-out, there is no in-between.

And it is this type of cynicism that fuels so many of the critics who yearn for the ‘good old days’ where movies were ‘about something’ and every other film was not ‘a franchise’. They conveniently forget that back in the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ every studio had ‘franchises’. They were just called B-Movies.  What do scholars think series devoted to Andy Hardy and Mr. Moto movies were but Tyler Perry and Hercule Poirot movies made for much less money? Because those movies were made in a matter of days and were essentially lightweight doesn’t mean that studio heads didn’t value them more. Hell, Louis Mayer once said about the classic Ninotchka that an Andy Hardy movie cost half as much and made more money. And Batman and Superman were just as prevalent in the theaters in the 1940s and 1950s as they are now. The difference was, of course, that they were short subjects and animated cartoons.

And such as always been the way. Gone With The Wind was not considered the greatest motion picture in history for half a century because it was a particularly brilliant epic nor had towering performances. It was because it was the biggest moneymaker in history to that time. The eight Academy Awards it received were not confirmation of its brilliance but rather a coronation of it in the eyes of Hollywood.  ‘Art for Arts Sake’ may have been in Latin on the MGM motto, but it’s not because Mayer or Goldwyn believed in it. Hell, I’ll bet neither of them even knew Latin. Some art designer thought it looked good next to the roaring lion, and they shrugged it off.

For decades, there have been anecdotes from countless writers and directors in the studio system all along the lines that they were interesting in money over art. We greet them as jokes because accepting the opposite would go against everything critics and scholars are taught.  Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler all did stints writing screenplays for Hollywood in the golden age because that’s where the money was.  Scholars and critics never look at their works in any literature course I know of, and invariably dismiss it as ‘slumming’. They couldn’t possibly have been working ghost writing dialogue for bad B-Movies  because it paid better than the novels that they are remembered for, no, it was because they thought they could add art to Hollywood.

But that’s always the way in art. If a writer or a director or a talent of any kind makes millions at his job, he is inferior to directors who might be better. Spielberg spent years being considered inferior to Martin Scorsese because Raging Bull and Taxi Driver were art and Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T., merely ‘blockbusters’.  Stephen King and Tom Clancy will never be considered great novelists compared to Jonathan Franzen or Donna Tartt because they are (or were) ‘genre writers’ instead of real ‘authors’.  Stephen Sondheim may not have as financially successful as Andrew Lloyd Weber, but his fans will always declare him superior because his work was not as ‘commercial’ as Weber’s. The fact that for decades Sondheim’s backers had to accept his shows would lose money; irrelevant.  After all, ‘art isn’t easy’.  (The fact that Sondheim wrote that line in satirizing the level of art and money is no doubt lost on most scholars.)

And that’s the thing that pisses critics off today. They have never accepted that capitalism drives film and television the same way it drives everything else. I have a feeling that’s why so many of them automatically snub comic book movies or sci-fi movies or any film that isn’t made for under a million dollars and isn’t even released in theaters. In essence they are like the students in Stephen King’s fictional college course; they believe those writers are working to make art. It’s why they find deeper meaning in everything, even if it isn’t there. They can not accept that those independent film makers are just interested in telling stories or trying to make a buck as much as Spielberg or the makers of Spiderman: The Mutliverse of Madness.  If those same filmmakers told them as much, they’d dismiss it.

Fundamentally, I think all critics – of film and literature, perhaps TV to a regard – have to accept that capitalism drives all art.  It always has and it always will.  Is it easier to accept that when the movie is The Rise of Skywalker rather than The Power of the Dog? Of course. But in both case, everybody connected with the film did it to make money first and then maybe to make art. Perhaps in some cases, it was just to make money so that they could make the projects they really wanted too – filmmakers like Gus Van Sant have admitted that with some of their all-too-commercial projects. But in either case, capitalism does drive everything.

And I think that same level of concern needs to be taken when it comes say, to criticism, itself. Perhaps not so much artistic criticism, but certainly almost all the criticism seen, say, at a blog like this one. All of the columnists at this blog may say they are writing their opinions to enlighten and inform about the world, about art, even about how capitalism has destroyed the world. But lest we forget, they are only writing about it at this blog in the first place because they are making a living doing so. I may be an exception, as I’m not making money writing this column or others like it, but that is only because I have yet to find a way to do so. Like everyone else who history might some day think to call an artist, I’m just doing what I can to make a buck.

Of course, criticism is like everything else. If I were to try and follow my model Roger Ebert, try to find art in the modern blockbuster as much as I did a silent movie, try to sell criticism on television and make it accessible to –gasp – the average citizen, I would no doubt be considered by my fellow critics as a sell out, someone who is making a mockery of his profession. Better to be a David Denby or a Rex Reed, someone who writes only for his fellow critics and scholars, for posterity not for the masses, even though they too are making a living by it. Unlike everyone else in society, if you’re making money at your living, you’re not a true artist. (Wait a minute…does that mean I am?)

Jeff Bridges Enters Peak TV with A Bang: The Old Man Review

 

Is Jeff Bridges the most underrated actor in history? There are few rhetorical questions that seem to have such an obvious answer. How could one of the most iconic actors in history only get four Academy Award nominations over the first four decades of his film career – none of them for such brilliant roles as the leads in Crazy Heart, The Fabulous Baker Boys and of course The Big Lebowski? Why on earth did it take thirty eight years after his stunning debut in The Last Picture Show to finally win for Crazy Heart? If I’m being honest two of the greatest performances he’s ever given came after the Oscar: the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit where in my opinion he made John Wayne’s performance look like a caricature, and Hell and High Water where he played a retiring Texas ranger chasing down two bank robbers on a quest that even he came to admire.  Equally astonishing is that, especially in the era of Peak TV, where senior actors are being routinely given lead roles in TV series – and in the case of some performers like Ed Harris and Michael Douglas, doing their best work in decades – that’s it taken him nearly sixty years since his work on Sea Hunt to finally make his TV starring debut. And all the remarkable considering that while it was shooting he survived both a bout with COVID and lymphoma. Watching the first three episodes of FX’s The Old Man, it has been more than worth the wait.

Bridges plays the title role, a man named Daniel Chase (maybe), a man who has lived in the same town for nearly twenty years, whose wife has passed of Huntington’s a few years earlier and who still appears in his nightmares, a man whose only companions seem to be two Rottweiler’s. Then one night an intruder breaks into his house. He shoots him dead, and then in a completely different tone of voice calls 911. He opens a floorboard in his house. He talks to the deputies calmly and serenely, and the next day he leaves, with plans for a new identity.

That same day, a retired FBI director named Harold Harper received a phone call about a file that’s been dead for thirty years. He’s recovering from the death of his son, but he instantly goes back into the office. Not long after Chase receives a phone call…from Harper.

It may tell you all you need to know that Harper is played by John Lithgow, an actor who despite his six Emmys to date still seems like he’s been undervalued.  Harper and Chase have a history. Harper knows why Chase is being targeted – it has something to do with an Afghan warlord that Chase worked for when the Afghans were considered the good guys in our fight against the Soviets. We see a bit of Chase in flashbacks (Bill Heck looks remarkably like a young Bridges). We know his mission was not warranted by the FBI. We knew he took a lot of actions that now would be looked unfavorably on. And we know that there is a connection between Chase and the man’s wife. Harper says Chase has two choices. One will result in his death, because no matter how skilled he was as an operative, he has been out of the game too long. The other involves going to ground but he will never see his daughter, his sole connection to the real world, ever again. Chase considers both options. He calls his daughter. And then he makes his choice. The two agents who go after him find out that they have gotten then they bargained for.

Chase now ends up in his new residence. There he meets a divorcee named Zoe. (Amy Brenneman, in my opinion, finally achieves the potential she has only occasionally hinted at ever since her arrival in TV in NYPD Blue nearly thirty years ago.)  She doesn’t like his dogs. Chase manages to persuade her that he should stay by cooking her breakfast. Reluctantly a connection forms. They go out to dinner. Both share details about their lives that neither would show to another person. Driving home, Zoe lies about his identity at a traffic stop almost without thinking. They spend the night together.

There are more details I should give. Harper is under intense pressure to find Chase and there is a man in his office that seems determined to get answers. He is working under the auspices of this Afghani warlord and is hated by everybody in the CIA. Why does he want Chase and what does he know? Flashbacks and the third episode reveal some details and it is clear to some of the characters (and perhaps the audience) as to why he is looking now. Chase’s daughter is heard entirely as a voice on the phone in the first two episodes. We are told she has been dead for awhile. Is Chase delusional? No, as we find out in a critical scene when he reveals some of the truth to Zoe. The actress playing the daughter is well known and if you’ve seen the series to this point, you know who she is and the role she has in the story. It is not my place to reveal her identity in this review, save to say the cliché “you’ve never seen her like this” is actually a truth in this case; it’s one of the biggest shocks so far in the 2022 season.

Even if The Old Man had any actor other than Bridges playing the lead (and at this point it’s hard to imagine any actor being able to play him) it would be a brilliant series. The action sequences give lie to all of the ones we see in so many blockbusters and TV series; every time Chase gets into a fight you can hear all the actors groaning in pain as every punch, stab and bullet enters the body. All of the performances are superb, Lithgow reveals depths that continue to surprise you even after all the awards he’s won, and Brenneman has a brilliant scene when she learns Chase’s secrets done entirely by facial expression and the smaller roles gel in ways you couldn’t imagine. Joel Grey has a cameo as a former director of Harper, where he’s painting a landscape. He never turns to face Harper and never raises his voice, but you can see the amount of rage and villainy that are in him in this scene.

But Bridges’ performance takes what would be yet another very good action thriller and turns it into a work of art. Many of his early scenes are either talking to himself or on the phone, the kind of scenes that seem like that of a lonely senior citizen, but even before we learn what he is capable of we can sense the danger that is in Dan Chase. I can’t imagine how Bridges could have performed these scenes in the best of health, much less while in recovery from illnesses that have killed people far younger than him. But there’s never a moment where you doubt the intensity of his work. Like the character he plays, Bridges’ is a survivor.

I don’t know how many people will die before the end of The Old Man or even is this series will be just a one-off or a possibility for a regular show. (It is based on a best-selling novel by Thomas Perry, but in the days where David E. Kelley has regular turned complete stories into multi-season series that is almost certainly irrelevant.) All I know is that the show has everything I look for in a thriller: dusty locations, realistic action and characters with secrets that not even people who’ve spent their lives in intelligence have a hint of (yet). The Emmy race for next season, in my opinion, starts here.

My score: 4.5 stars.