Here I am leaning even
more into my favorites. Few will doubt that Abbott Elementary will have
at least two of the nominees I list and the third is rising fast in the polls.
Alex Borstein is considered a certainty in this category and it is just as
likely that Juno Temple will return for her third shot. However, I will follow
my own path. I have no problem with one of the nominees from Ted Lasso in
this category and I will support her. I would like, however, to suggest another
nominee from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel who has been magnificent throughout
the series but may be the one performer on the show who is constantly
overlooked. A couple of my suggestions are very likely; one is a longshot, and
I am not going to list any performers from Saturday Night Live in either
category which may hinder me. Still, if I were making an ideal list of nominees,
these are the eight women I would choose.
Ayo Edebiri, The Bear
Edebiri is one of the
breakout stars of 2022 for her work on The Bear, she’s already won the
Best Supporting Performance awards from the Independent Spirit awards and
deservedly was nominated for Critics Choice award. She has been just as renowned
for her writing as her acting: she was one of the staff writers on Dickinson
and got an Image nomination for writing an episode of What We Do In The Shadows.
If that’s not enough she might very well get a guest acting nomination for here
work on Abbott Elementary as Janine’s sister. But few who have seen her
work as Sydney, the assistant who comes to work for Carmy because she loves his
talent, is thrown in the deep end, is resented by almost everybody and is run
ragged because she has too much ambition even for Carmy, is an outstanding
piece of work, hysterically funny and grounded in a way that so many of the series
just aren’t. She’ll get an Emmy someday,
if not this year.
Sarah Goldberg, Barry
Goldberg has had the misfortune
of playing the girlfriend of the title character, and as we have painfully
learned in so many anti-hero dramas, that subjects her character to a torrent of
undeserved abuse from the net no matter how hard she tries to be good. Sally
went through the ringer in so many ways this season: we saw her visit her parents
and see part of how she ended up as she was, we saw her try a new career as a
coach, but ultimately fall victim to her ambition. She ran off with Barry when
he escaped from prison – and when we saw what she became in the future, it was
horrifying to see how utterly empty and defeated she was to her fate. Then she
went off to LA to try and save her acting teacher, nearly lead to her and her
son’s death, and alone among all the characters in the series finale, faced the
truth of what she had become, realized how poisoned she was by Barry – and in
the future, came as close to redemption as anyone else. If Goldberg doesn’t get a nomination for her
final role – well, it’ll be fitting because it would be the unfairness that plagued
Sally the whole series. I hope she does.
Marin Hinkle, The
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
I have spent much of my
viewing life in awe of the work of Marin Hinkle, though much of the time she
has labored in roles that are unworthy of her (Two and A Half Men) or
were short lived (Speechless). In the role of Rose, Midge’s eternally
put upon mother, Hinkle found what was the role of a lifetime. Rose was in a way a predecessor for so much
of what Midge went through, tolerating the life that Abe led, unable to
comprehend who her daughter was and what she was trying to become, trying to
forge her own path in the final seasons.
Understandably, Hinkle was frequently overshadowed by her two powerhouse
female co-stars and has only received a single Emmy nomination for her work. As
the series reaches it conclusion, it would be fitting for Hinkle to take home
one last nomination, particularly as the series moved into the future and we
saw the sad fate of Rose, which in a way had her and her daughter’s
relationship come full circle. It’s unlikely Hinkle will be honored the same
way Brosnahan and Borstein will. But one last time for the Emmys, I’d like it
to be Rose’s turn
Janelle James, Abbott
Elementary
How do you not love Ava?
Every line that comes out of Ava’s mouth is hysterical. She has no filter, she
clearly doesn’t seem qualified for her job, she has no problem being who she
is. Every time James comes onscreen you smile, because you know she’ll say
something funny. And every so often – like when she takes a black history
course and realizes that she has spent her life being uneducated – you realize
that there’s more to her than that.
James has received nearly as much love from the awards show circuit as Sheryl
Lee Ralph: she deservedly won an HCA Award for Supporting Actress and she took
the Image award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy too. She is just as much a master of television as
her co-star Ralph is. Hopefully, some
day she’ll take a prize as well.
Sheryl Lee Ralph, Abbott
Elementary
Just like the character
she portrays; it has taken the world too long to appreciate just how brilliant
Sheryl Lee Ralph is. From the moment she accepted her Emmy last year in one of
the greatest moments in Emmy history, the world got it. And Ralph just keeps on
giving. Barbara continues to show the levels we all love about her throughout
the series, as she leads the fight against Abbott becoming a charter school, as
she finds to her horror she turned her students into con artists, as she does
everything in her power to be the mother figure Janine needs (including against
her actual mother) and as we all see the flaws in her as she finds herself
dealing with the inevitability of aging, the viewer continues to fall in love
with her as much as the world has with Ralph. She has the frontrunner status
with her Supporting Actress award at the Critics Choice (and yet another
brilliant speech) and is currently the odds-on favorite to repeat. I’m usually
opposed for the laziness of Emmys repeating consecutive years, but in Ralph’s
case (and Barbara’s) I’ll make an exception.
Christina Ricci, Wednesday
This one is my longshot in
the category. In a sense, there would be symmetry to it as Ricci is a certainty
for a Supporting Actress nomination for her work in Yellowjackets, along
with the symmetry of her breakout role as Wednesday in The Addams Family. But
honestly, I think Ricci deserves it on its own merits. Playing a character who does not fit in
either world in the school she attends, someone who seems to be an open book,
we eventually learned that she had the darkest secrets of all. (Though she’s being
played by Christina Ricci; we should have known better.) Is it selfish I want
to see her nominated because I’ve loved Ricci for thirty years? Of course. Do I
care? No. She’s Christina Ricci.
Hannah Waddingham, Ted
Lasso
Waddingham has been one of
the biggest sensations from Ted Lasso as the incredible Rebecca, who has
shown by far the most emotional growth from the moment we met her in the series
pilot. As the show enters its final season, Rebecca continued to find not only
professional, but personal and emotional happiness in a way that we all look
forward too. Waddingham slightly lost
favor in the eyes of awards show starting with the HCA’s passing over her in 2022. Her defeat at the hands of Ralph was not a
shock to me (though I was thinking that James or Hannah Einbinder would be the
one to dethrone her). Few could argue that she deserves a final nomination. One
last award, well, Rebecca has enough.
Lisa Ann Walter, Abbott
Elementary
I was slightly irritated last
year after the Emmy nominations took place and the Emmys had nominated every
regular but Walter. I admit that it was a crowded category and that I
didn’t want James or Ralph excluded, but Melissa is one of the most wonderful
characters in the entire series, a perfect balance of humor and heart, the
epitome of the blue-collar, (that’s slightly tarnished) working stiff we all
admire, who has family issues, who is absolutely devoted to her charges, who
does everything she could to help her students and her friends, and who
actually seems closer to happy in her love life than so many of her colleagues.
Would it be asking too much of the Emmys to nominate three performers from the
cast of Abbott Elementary? Yes. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it
anyway.
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Mireille Enos, Lucky
Hank
Enos has been laboring in
the TV fields for a while. She broke to fame on the first season of The
Killing, an AMC series that started like gangbusters and then collapsed.
She had a decent run in one of the few Shonda Rhimes series I liked: The Catch,
which was cancelled too soon. Now as Lily, the put-upon wife of the title
character, who is fundamentally frustrated by her husband’s terminal depression
of lack of ambition, we find her playing a role she does not usually play:
someone fundamentally down-to-earth who is worn down. Lily is in a sense as
much the frustrated educator we find in Abbott Elementary, wife to a
husband who seems happy being miserable, mother to a daughter who has no
ambition but insight into her parent’s marriage. In the last several episodes
she made a path towards her own future and career – and in the last minute of
the finale was initially happy – and then depressed to see that her husband
seemed willing to meet her halfway. I’m still not sure of what Lucky Hank’s
future is but I know Enos deserves recognition.
A few last thoughts.
Guest Actor and Actress are
likely to show quite a few appearances from Abbott: Edebiri is a
possibility, Taraji P. Henson almost certain to be nominated and win. There will very likely be countless nominees
from Only Murders in the Building; how many will be holdovers from last
year, such as Nathan Lane or Tina Fey remains to be seen. Poker Face has
a lot of possibilities for either category: Adrian Brody and Kevin Hart seem
like strong possibilities to me and I’m not halfway through the series. There
will almost certainly be quite a few Guest Spots for SNL this year, and
I imagine many of them will be faces from these nominees. Steve Martin and
Martin Short, Quinta Brunson and based on her appearance, I think Aubrey Plaza
could double dip.
As for writing and
directing, well, Bill Hader’s going to get at least one in each category for his
work on Barry (the series finale alone could get him one for each) Abbott
Elementary will certainly get a couple of writing nominations (the episode
at the convention is one that is likely to carry over). I would advocate for any
one of the final episodes of Atlanta, the series finale for directing
and ‘The Only Black Head of Disney’ for writing. And while I’m far from an
expert, the apparently one-take episode Review of The Bear seems to be a
shoo-in for a directing nomination.
Next week, I deal with
Limited Series nominations. I don’t expect to gel with the actual nominations
at all. That said, you might want to see.
Support the WGA!
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