A little explanation. I’m
aware that, in its infinite wisdom, the Emmys seem to have decided that for
this acting category and this one alone, five nominees is enough to represent
all the talent that is comedy today. Apparently there’s room for six funny women
and eight supporting performances but only five lead actors.
Those of you with good
memories might recall that last year there were six nominated actors in this
category last year. I’m assuming there have must been a tie somewhere. I am
going to operate on an assumption that might very well happen again. For the
record, Emmy voters, there are a huge number of superb leading men in comedies
today and there still will be after this year is over. Maybe consider parity
going forward? All I’m saying. Enough commentary.
Bill Hader, Barry
Hader is going to a get lot
of love from the Emmys this year and not just an actor: he directed most of
the episodes in Season 4; he wrote half of them, including the incredible
series finale; he’s one of the showrunners. And he’s already gotten a
lot of love from the Emmys for Barry: two Best Actor awards (I still
think he was robbed last year) and so many writing and directing nominations,
it’s not funny. I don’t need to justify Hader getting one last nomination from
the Emmys this year: we’ve all seen the final season of Barry and we see
at the end of the day Hader the writer remained true to his mission statement
and did not let Barry of the hook. Yes Barry was traumatized and broken to the
end, but he used that as an excuse for his actions and his ‘reformation’ during
his role as a father. He would use any excuse he heard for what he did and was
never going to take responsibility for his actions. And in a sense, he both got what was coming
to him in the series finale and made sure that the lie he made for himself
outlived the truth. Hader probably won’t
win an Emmy for acting this year, and he’s fine with that no matter how much he
earned in his final season. I just want him to get at least one in some
category.
Bob Odenkirk, Lucky
Hank
Can Bob Odenkirk make
history and become the first performer to earn a nomination for Best Lead Actor
in a Drama and a Comedy in the same year? His nomination for the title
role in Better Call Saul is a certainty, a nomination here far more of a
longshot, at least this year? But it would be a fitting tribute to a performer
who has in the last decade shown some of the greatest range of any actor since,
well, since Bryan Cranston. Odenkirk has
been hitting the high notes of drama so perfectly as Jimmy that we might have
forgotten how great a comic he is, and it became clear in the tease of the
Pilot as to just how great a comic he is? (It also must be a relief for
Odenkirk to finally play someone his own age again.) Odenkirk was an utter delight
as Hank, the head of the English department at a university that he described
as a testament to mediocrity. His life has been miserable for so long that he
actually doesn’t want to be happy, and he can’t seem to do anything to want to
change things or improve. He has a wife who he clearly loves and a daughter he
could clearly help but he spends much of the season so self-consumed with
inaction that he doesn’t even think worth it. There is, of course, real trauma
in the midst of this from a father who abandoned him and a mother who not only
never loved him but still worships the father who left. When Hank finally
confronted his father, he learned that man was gone, and when he tried to share
he learned that his father was empty.
Odenkirk has demonstrated for years what a great performer he is. It’s
very likely he will some day earn nominations and awards for this role: maybe
we can show that Hank is lucky right off the bat.
Steve Martin, Only
Murders in the Building
I’ll tell you what’s one
of the biggest mysteries of all time. How is it that Steve Martin, one of the
great comic genius at every conceivable level has won exactly one Emmy in his
more than five decade career? (And no Oscars, or Golden Globes… well, I could
go on.) Seriously how has one of the greatest performers in history got more Grammys
than he has won Emmys for acting? It is unlikely that this will change in
this particular category this year (though I admit there may be a possibility
in another category, see below) but I am particularly overjoyed to see that
half a century after his first appearance on SNL he still has the
capable to surprise, delight and move us to a new generation of fans. Watching
him play Charles-Haden Savage, now dealing with being a suspect in the murder
of his building’s landlord, as well as the fact that the woman he fell in love
in the first season turned out to be a killer, reminds us that there is still
nothing that Martin can’t do. Martin has hinted for awhile that when this
series come to an end, he may finally retire. Emmys, you need to give him an
award by then; maybe two or three.
Martin Short, Only
Murders in the Building
For the record the Emmys
track record with Martin Short is slightly better than it is with his likely
co-nominee Steve Martin. He’s shared in two Emmys , the first for his role in
writing SCTV. Admittedly, he’s
had fewer nominations that Martin has had when it comes to acting (though some
of us are still bitter he did not win for Damages in 2010). Now that he
has resumed his elderly bro-mance with Steve Martin, the two of them are collaborating
on another project that the world loves. Playing Oliver Putnam, the flamboyant
failed Broadway producer who this season is also dealing with the fact he put
one of his backers in jail and the possibility that his son is not biologically
his, he continues to demonstrate why he is one of the great balls of comic
energy in history. Like his partner-in-crime, several nominations are certain
this year, and hopefully the Emmys will get to him.
Jason Sudeikis, Ted
Lasso
Much as I don’t think Ted
Lasso the show deserves a nomination for Best Comedy, I can’t deny that the
actor who plays him doesn’t deserve one for what will most certainly be the
last season of the series (though at this writing both Apple and Sudeikis
refuse to confirm or deny this). Ted spent much of the final season going on
his own journey, trying to figure out why he was still in England now that his
marriage was over, trying to make things right even with people who wronged
him, trying to deal with the ramifications of his past that he’d been burying
until Season 2. There were far too many problems with the final season of the
show: Sudeikis’ performance wasn’t one of them. And considering this will be
his final bite at the Emmys, I can’t pretend that it wouldn’t be fitting for
him to get one last nomination. That said, I hope the Emmys do not maintain
their institutional laziness and give the Best Actor Prize for Sudeikis for
three straight years. That is the only thing I can see that will stop the Emmy
from going to…
Jeremy Allan White, The
Bear
White has already taken
every Best Actor prize to this point since the awards show run started this
year: the Golden Globe, the SAG Award, the Critics Choice Award. Most of the
performers he defeated in his previous victories were competing against him in
this category (the one who wasn’t is Donald Glover, who might very well be back
again). And having seen his work as Carmine on The Bear, it is very hard
to argue why he shouldn’t be taking his first Emmy this year. White was utterly
magnificent from beginning to end of the first season as a man who had taken on
what everyone but him considered an impossible task, continued to be a
miserable boss and human being to every single person who worked for him,
including family, friends and allies and spent the entire season basically
doing everything in his power to ignore the trauma that involved his cousin’s
suicide that had precipitated his return to Chicago after abandoning his
blue-collar family to work as a sous chef.
Carm was miserable and unpleasant most of the season, almost never
letting anybody in – until the season finale when he finally faced just how
much damage his brother’s death had done to him and how he had completely
misread so much of the situation. I don’t know if the series will be anywhere
near as brilliant when it returns for Season 2 (it’s going to be a few months
before I finally start watching it) but I know that White, who has labored in
the fields of TV for a long time, deserves to win the Best Actor prize this
year. This fall, the Emmys needs to say ‘yes, chef.”
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATIONS
Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Reservation
Dogs
I realize I should
probably be advocating for Donald Glover here, but Glover’s already gotten his
share of recognition from the Emmys and doesn’t need. Like the series itself,
Woon-A-Tai is one of those actors who absolutely deserves all the recognition
he can get. I may end up advocating for much of the rest of the cast in the
remainder of the categories, but in Woon-a-Tai’s case, he clearly deserves it
the most. He is, in my opinion, the
breakout star of an incredible group of Aboriginal performers and it’s
fascinating to watch Bear’s journey even as the series continues to spread its
wings. Bear spends much of the season in
a feud with Elora, that neither are willing to back down from. He spends a lot
of it trying to be the man of the house and atone for the sins that his crew
committed. And in the season finale, when they made it to California after
years of trying, he finally managed to let go of the past and found a way that
might indicate future not merely for him, but his friends. Woon-A-Tai has been nominated for Best Actor
in a Comedy by the Critics Choice Awards and deserves similar recognition.
Tomorrow, I take on Best
Actress in a Comedy. No kidding, some of my personal favorites in this
category.
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