It looked at the beginning
of the year like Kevin Costner would be a major contender in this category but
his absence from the Golden Globes and the subsequent controversy and
cancellation of Yellowstone has almost certainly done in any chance he
had of winning or even being nominated
It is likely that at least
two actors from Succession will be here, but I can’t in good conscience
advocate for Brian Cox. He only appeared in four episodes this year, which in
my opinion is not enough to qualify him as Lead Actor. I’m willing to make some
accommodations for actors in series I haven’t seen, but not all of them. The
seven nominees I will list are an acceptance of reality as well as speculation.
Jeff Bridges, The Old
Man
In another year Bridges
would be the obvious favorite to win in this category, but since alone among my
selections he is certain to get another bite at the apple, I think the nomination
will suffice. He has been nominated in every major awards group for Best Actor
in every major awards group that has met so far this season and deservedly so.
It’s not just the incredible work he does as the elderly former spook who so
many killers keep underestimating, it’s his ability to easily call upon
alternative identities when he needs too, manage to persuade a woman he’s
abducted that she needs to trust him, and to launch himself again and again
into danger that he has himself does not think he has any real chance of
surviving. Bridges’ character is not the Old Man in the title (I actually hope
Joel Grey can manage an Emmy nomination of his own) but the character he plays
is the one that we all relate to above all us. We disregard him at our own
risk.
Kieran Culkin, Succession
Even when I had horrible
problems with Succession, I never truly had one with the work of Culkin
as Roman, the youngest and by far the most troubled son of the Roy siblings. He
was the subject of merciless beating and abuse by Logan, but there was a part
of him so desperate for love that he was still willing to try and find even
before his father died. Of the three children, he spent much of the final
season more broken then the rest of them. In the last two episodes, you saw a
man so utterly destroyed he was willing to take abuse and a beating from a mob
because there was a part of him who wanted punishment. He spent the series
finale barely holding it together, trying to accept that he was never going to
get what he wanted but utterly broken throughout. Even his fight with Kendall
at the end was someone who could barely put up the effort. He admitted at the
end that the three of them were truly what their father had said they were and
at the end, the most angry Roy child had nothing to say. I honestly think
Culkin would have a much better chance of winning if he were to compete in the
Best Supporting Actor category, but since that category will be filled with Succession
actors – and because he really was a lead in the season – I understand why
he allowed it. I’m not going to say he doesn’t deserve it.
Bob Odenkirk, Better
Call Saul
Odenkirk by all accounts
should be the odds on favorite to win in this category – he’s already won the
Critics Choice for Best Actor and this is a series that has basically been
skunked by the Emmys in five previous magnificent seasons. (I don’t argue with
the five of the performers who ended up
defeating him in his five previous nominations; the fact that he wasn’t
nominated at all one year is a travesty.) And in a way, we saw every version of
Saul Goodman in the final season of this series – we saw the last gasps of
Jimmy McGill, we saw Saul just at his first introduction to Walter White, we
saw him trying to survive as Gene and giving into his nature. And in the final
episode of the series, we saw him finally embrace his better angels and get –
certainly by the standards of Breaking Bad - a happy ending. You throw in the fact that
Odenkirk almost died filming the final season of Better Call Saul and
if the Emmys don’t give him the Best Actor prize this year, that’s a
crime so blatant that Saul Goodman could make a meal of it. (Of course,
Odenkirk may not be done with the Emmys as I will argue when we get the
comedies.)
Pedro Pascal, The Last
of Us
This nomination is not
just part of recognition of Pascal for being part of what so far is the biggest
popular television hit of 2023 but a long overdue recognition for Pascal
himself. Pascal has been part of some of the biggest popular hits on television
in the last decade – he had recurring roles on The Good Wife and a major
arc on Game of Thrones and has been the title character on The
Mandalorian and is beloved by millions without even seeing his face for
most of it. Now as Joel on The Last of Us he plays a surrogate father to
a teenage girl who may be critical to surviving a zombie apocalypse and is an
action hero and a human being. He and the remarkable cast have done something
no one thought possible before this and effectively turn a video game into something
that is truly and utterly art. Pascal deserves the nomination for his body of
work and I have no problem with it.
Matthew Rhys, Perry
Mason
At this point, it’s hard
to argue that Matthew Rhys needs more recognition from the Emmys at this point.
He deservedly received three nomination and a Best Actor prize for his
incredible work as Philip Jennings, the increasingly reluctant Russian spy on The
Americans. (He’s one of the actors who defeated Odenkirk, and I have no
problem with that win.) He deservedly got another Best Actor nomination two
years ago for this same role and I guess you could say one last one would be
superfluous. But anyone who saw the second season of this series knows just how
great a performance he gave in it. We saw a man horribly conflicted about the
death of the woman he had thrown his life into saving from prison in the first
season and utterly without purpose. A
man who, upon learning his clients were guilty, wanted to throw them to the
wolves and only kept going out of a sense of obligation. We saw a man
becoming a pariah because of his
clients, lashing out at everyone around him, and finally uncovering the truth –
and it was uglier than he imagined. And at the end of the season, even though
he was going to prison, you saw him at peace in a way you just hadn’t seen in
nearly two years. It is a shame that a
series that had so much potential did not get a third season. Rhys deserves one
more nod.
Ramon Rodriguez, Will
Trent
It’s far more likely that
this spot will be filled by Diego Luna for Andor (rest assured, readers,
I will review
it in due time) but it’s hard to imagine him being a greater performer as
Rodriguez in the title role of this magnificent drama. Will Trent is one of the great characters to
come out of 2023 so far and you can never tear your eyes away from this man
with his three-piece suit and handkerchief, the man who adopts a Chihuahua in
the opening of the series because an orphan won’t let a stray go to a pound, a
man who has managed to survive being functionally illiterate to become a
brilliant detective, a man who manages to survive physical and emotional scars
of his childhood every day. And honestly, his performance in the Season 1
finale, when he finally learned the truth about his mother and the man who
murdered, is the kind of tour de force performance that even a decade ago, the
Emmys wouldn’t even blink twice at rewarding with a nominations. Perhaps it’s
because, alone among these nominees, Will Trent is a hero – a complicated one,
but still a hero – and Peak TV has grown tired of recognizes them. Rodriguez
demonstrates why we shouldn’t.
Jeremy Strong, Succession
It’s hard to feel any
sympathy for Kendall Roy at the end of everything that happened. This is a man
who spent his entire life thinking that the only thing he could was be the head
of Waystar Royco. It is a tragedy he was deprived of it, but there was never
any instant of him deserving it. That
viewer could feel something resembling sympathy for someone so utterly and
completely pathetic, who was willing to give America a fascist president so that
he could gain an advantage in a merger, a man who showed no love for his wife
or children at the end of it, a man whose most loyal follower – his assistant –
finally lost patience with him in the penultimate episode, a man who when
turned on by his siblings not only lied about killing a man – something we saw
happen in the season 1 finale and he confessed to in the Season 3 one – but
actually said he wasn’t a real person – is a tribute to just how great an actor
Strong is. For the record, he got exactly what he deserved and was entitled too
his whole life – nothing. We didn’t see him try to kill himself in the last
shot; Kendall Roy has been emotionally dead for years and no hell is worse than
the one he’s already in. No, I don’t want him to win an Emmy (he’s got one
already) but I’m alright with another nomination for him.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Skyler Astin, So Help
Me Todd
I don’t know if So Help
Me Todd qualifies as a drama under the parameters of Emmy voting: it is so
laugh-out loud funny at times it might very well be better served to be
nominated as a comedy. (It worked out better for Shameless in its later
seasons.) And certainly Astin is far more known for his brilliant comic
portrayals in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. But so much of what goes on Todd deals
with such deadly serious things – this is a legal drama and much of the cases
do deal with life or death matters – that I’m listing it here for this purpose.
What I know for show is that Astin is incredible in this series and has had one
of the most remarkable arcs of any character in the 2022-2023 season. He is, at
his core, still something of a hot mess but its been entertaining watching him
get to the point where we love watching him manage to con and reason in a way
that few characters on TV have. I haven’t enjoyed watching a protagonist
command the scenes this way since the early days of The Blacklist, and I
think there’s something to be said for Astin getting recognition he’s been
overdue for a while. It might be smarter to push for Dominic West for The
Crown or any of the leads on A
Million Little Things, but Astin’s the one I want to see get recognized.
Tomorrow I deal with
Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. I know, it’s going to be complicated this
year.
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