The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) has voted on the nominees for the 5th annual Critics Choice Television Awards.
This is a relatively new awards body, formed in conjunction with the increasing amount of attention paid to TV among elites. The group is more low-brow than the longstanding Television Critics Association (TCA), with the BTJA including less-known writers as well as some awards columnists. But, the group is definitely reputable and provides a nice middle ground between the mainstream of the Emmys and the specialization of the TCAs.
Below is analysis separated by Comedy and Drama categories. I’ve listed out the series nominees, and get into every acting nominee through my analysis. Overall, this was a great day for FX and a rather disappointing one for Netflix, where only three of its shows -- Orange Is the New Black, Bloodline and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt -- scored nominations, two of which earned just one apiece.
All shows and actors nominated are in bold, and I’ve provided links to the series that this blog has written on in the past. (I'll be writing about the movie/miniseries nominees in greater depth at the end of May.) Read on…
Comedy: Freshman Transparent leads; Broad City, Veep and Silicon Valley tops among returnees; Louie and Parks and Recreation get snubbed
Best Comedy Series nominees
Jane the Virgin (The CW)
Mom (CBS)
Silicon Valley (HBO)
Despite the slew of critically-acclaimed freshman comedy series to debut this TV season, there was little doubt that Amazon’s Transparent would lead the pack. Indeed, Jill Soloway’s tragicomic Amazon original tops all comedy series with four nominations -- along with Best Comedy Series, it competes in Best Actor (Jeffrey Tambor), Best Supporting Actress (Judith Light) and Best Guest Performer (Bradley Whitford). Transparent had a very good year-end awards run, winning the Golden Globe for Comedy Series and Actor (Tambor), as well as the DGA Award for episodic comedy directing (Soloway). It’s remarkable that this show, so perceptive and smart and prickly, has had the run it’s had. Onward.
Broad City, Silicon Valley and Veep are the three returning series to the Comedy Series lineup, and that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. In the case of Broad, Ilana Glazer has earned a second consecutive Best Actress nomination (while her equally-funny co-star, Abbi Jacobson, is snubbed once again), while Susie Essman’s memorable guest appearance as her mother was also recognized. Broad City has only built on the critical success of its debut season, a characterization identical to Silicon Valley. The Mike Judge tech sitcom is back in Best Actor (Thomas Middleditch), and while its Supporting Actor nominee from last year, Christopher Evan Welch, has since passed, the series retained the slot with T.J. Miller earning recognition. Finally, Veep’s three nominations keep it up top even as the BTJA continues to show favor for newer programs. Reigning champ Julia Louis-Dreyfus returns to Best Actress, while Tony Hale competes again in Best Supporting Actor.
To varying degrees, this quartet seems to about sum of the critical consensus of the moment. In fact, while niche hits You’re the Worst, Mom and the CW’s Golden Globe-winning breakout Jane the Virgin (also nominated is Globe-winning leading lady Gina Rodriguez and, more surprisingly, supporting actor Jaime Camil) -- as in, the rest of the Comedy Series nominees -- certainly have a smaller (or less vocal) audience, what didn’t get nominated is more surprising. Despite a love-fest for the final season of Justified (more on that in a minute), the group completely snubbed Critics’ Choice winner Parks and Recreation for its closing run. That’s a big omission, especially since this actually marks the first year the show has not received a nod from the group. Same goes for FX’s Louie, which was nominated last year in multiple categories despite a more divisive reception from critics. I’d also wager this was a seriously disappointing showing for Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which premiered to great reviews and a whole lot of fanfare but only scored a nod for scene-stealing supporting man Tituss Burgess (which, to be clear, is totally deserved). Netflix also earned nada in the categories for Grace and Frankie, which was screened to BTJA members in preparation for this morning’s nominations announcement.
Beyond the big players, it seems as if every worthy show got its due -- especially those aforementioned freshman hits. Anthony Anderson and Will Forte scored Best Actor bids for Black-ish and The Last Man on Earth, respectively; Constance Wu repped Fresh Off the Boat in Best Actress; HBO’s Togetherness, despite its low profile, nabbed nods for (barely) supporting star Melanie Lynskey and guest player Peter Gallagher; and Lisa Kudrow made her way into Best Actress, as a little love was thrown The Comeback revival’s way. Aside from the underperformance of Kimmy Schmidt and perhaps Black-ish, no stone was really left unturned. It’s a defiant move on the part of the BTJA, who definitely showed their hand in embracing a big year for new TV comedy; I’m not sure there were any notable casualties worth brooding over anyway. Big Bang, mercifully, was dropped from Series, even as leading man Johnny Galecki (why?) and fan-favorite supporting player Mayim Bialik returned to the fold. We lost Louie, but the show is past its prime and its episode order was drastically reduced this year. (The final 2014 nominee, Orange Is the New Black, swapped categories in line with the TV Academy’s ruling from a few months ago.)
Several 2014 acting nominees made their way back, including the red-hot Amy Schumer for her eponymous series, bumping up from supporting (which made no sense anyway). The BTJA also brought back Josh Charles, last year nominated for his explosive Good Wife season and this time a delightfully surprising guest inclusion for Amy Schumer. Chris Messina is a Best Actor nominee twice now for The Mindy Project even as its titular star is still without any recognition from the group. Though most of the love has gone to Fred Armisen in the past, Carrie Brownstein is a supporting (?) nominee for Portlandia. Becky Ann Baker is again a guest nominee for Girls, more deserving than ever, while that show’s best actor, Adam Driver, returns to the supporting category after missing out last year. Shameless held onto the last slot in Supporting Actor, with Jeremy Allen White replaced by Cameron Monaghan, a much weaker actor who was nonetheless handed the season’s meatiest material. (Last year’s winner, Andre Braugher, was snubbed, as was last year’s Best Actor winner Jim Parsons.) Finally, two Supporting Actress champs return to compete again: Allison Janney, of the newly-minted comedy series nominee Mom, and Eden Sher, young starlet of The Middle.
The group still failed to recognize HBO’s brilliant Getting On (its star, Laurie Metcalf, earned a conciliatory nomination as Guest Performer for her Big Bang Theory performance), and I also would have liked to see some recognition for great seasons of FXX’s uber-veteran It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and HBO’s dearly-departed Looking. (Both series have earned acting nominations in the past.) Overall, however, this is a commendable slate. The Emmys will no doubt nominate the stale pair of Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory, the former the frontrunner to win for a sixth consecutive year. TV is a tricky business, especially in comedy where the quality stuff is so segmented, and the audiences often so small. So to have shows like Broad City and You’re the Worst compete in the big category is a great thing, even as at the end of the day, it’s this year’s giants -- Transparent, Veep and Silicon Valley -- that eat up most of the mainstream talk.
Predicted winners:
SERIES: Transparent
ACTOR: Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent
ACTRESS: Amy Schumer, Inside Amy Schumer
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Allison Janney, Mom
GUEST PERFORMER: Susie Essman, Broad City
Drama: Justified goes out on top; The Americans, The Good Wife stay steady; Mad Men gets handed a nasty shutout
Best Comedy Series nominees
Homeland (Showtime)
Justified (FX)
The final season of Justified leads the pack with five nominations, while the final season of Mad Men has been completely shut-out. I’m not sure what kind of logic would explain that prediction, say, three years ago. With the BTJA alone, Mad Men is a Drama Series winner, not to mention a recipient of several acting trophies. Justified, though a critical darling throughout its run, has been the kind of under-the-radar, peaked-too-soon series that one wouldn’t expect to hold on so well.
But here we are. I’m thrilled to see the recognition for Justified, even if, from a cognitive standpoint, I have a feeling its farewell hug came at the expense of one for Mad Men. Timothy Olyphant returns to Best Actor, and Walton Goggins to Supporting Actor. But there’s more. Joelle Carter, who got better every year on Justified, earns her first major award nomination in Supporting Actress, and Sam Elliot, who I’m told was a real scene-stealer in this final Justified year, competes in Guest Performer. I’m not convinced that Olyphant is a better actor than Jon Hamm, but then again, I’m really not convinced that Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam is. Yes, even Sons of Anarchy snagged two spots for its final season, with Goggins a double-nominee yet again for his brilliant recurring role as a transgender criminal on the violent biker drama. Parenthood scored a pair (Craig T. Nelson and Mae Whitman in supporting categories) for its swan song as well. It’s really quite strange that each of these shows, never at the level of Mad Men’s acclaim, all got a fair amount of love -- and Mad Men got zilch.
The drama nominees are, in the aggregate, an unusual bunch. Despite individual acting nominations, the psychologically-rigorous and cinematically-realized duo of Rectify on Sundance and The Leftovers on HBO couldn’t crack it. Same goes for Netflix’s slow-burn -- both narratively and with viewers -- Bloodline, as well as last year’s Showtime breakout Masters of Sex and AMC’s elegant spinoff Better Call Saul. Rectify competes in Best Actor (Aden Young); Bloodline in Supporting Actor (Ben Mendelsohn); Masters in Guest Performance (Julianne Nicholson, to which I say yes); Saul in both male categories (Bob Odenkirk in lead and Jonathan Banks in supporting); and Leftovers in both supporting categories (the great Christopher Eccleston and, even more deservedly, Carrie Coon). All of these shows deserved a little bit more. It’s strange that Masters’ two lead actors were snubbed for doing even better work than their nominated season one performances. Rectify has the best supporting cast on television. Bloodline has supremely-deserving work from Kyle Chandler and Linda Cardellini, among others. The Leftovers has Ann Dowd, who to me gave a mandatory performance to recognize. And Better Call Saul? Well, the BTJA doesn’t have an award for cinematography, so I guess they covered their bases there.
But this is a very disparate field. For the second year in a row, Game of Thrones scored a Best Drama Series nomination… and nothing else. Empire also snuck in on mass popularity, even if a Best Actress nod for Taraji P. Henson was (rightly) a given. Orange Is the New Black lost a couple of nominations in the transition from comedy to drama (but held onto Series), but if anyone were to be nominated for going dark on that show, I’m glad it was season-long supporting star Lorraine Toussaint. I’m even unsatisfied with the healthy four nominations earned by The Americans, which while expectedly recognized for leading stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell (as well as unbeatable guest star Lois Smith) was snubbed for its brightest spot in its mammoth season of TV: Alison Wright, who puts a brilliantly, blackly comic spin on Poor Martha week-in and week-out.
Beyond that, I’m not sure that this slate is as strong as it should be. The Good Wife has had a volatile sixth season, really not at the level of its fifth season or even the peaks of its fourth. Yet the show is as strong as ever with four nods. I don’t dispute the continued excellence of Julianna Margulies, and Linda Lavin’s deadpan guest turn is a fine addition to that category. But Christine Baranski has had very little to work with this year -- mostly left spewing liberal talking points -- and that she got in ahead of Wright, or Cardellini, or even Lena Headey on Game of Thrones doesn’t sit quite right. I’m pretty shocked that Homeland has made the comeback that it has, and what’s even more puzzling is the absence of Claire Danes despite it. (Mandy Patinkin, conversely, is nominated for Supporting Actor.) With adventurous new fare like Bloodline, the great run Mad Men has had, the inventiveness of Better Call Saul and so many others -- Leftovers and, for God’s sake, Rectify -- this list of Drama Series nominees is a tad underwhelming, even if all of those aforementioned shows (save Matthew Weiner’s work) did get recognition in one way or the other. (I also would like to stress that Empire, much as I liked it, is definitely not better than Mad Men, Rectify, The Leftovers, Better Call Saul or Bloodline. But Taraji for the win!)
Of course, many shows did get their due, and not just that half-dozen or so I mentioned above. Bates Motel is once more represented in both lead acting categories; while I fell out of the show, Freddie Highmore and especially the incomparable Vera Farmiga do spellbinding work. Viola Davis is predictably a Best Actress nominee for How to Get Away with Murder (Cicely Tyson, who guested as her mother, is also a nominee); less expected but equally wonderful is the recognition of Penny Dreadful’s Eva Green in the category. Even Vikings got a nod, with Katheryn Winnick’s standout supporting turn scooping up enough votes.
Other than Mad Men, the only notable shows to get completely snubbed were House of Cards, for which last year Robin Wright found room, and The Affair, an initial hit with critics that won two Golden Globes and is now really faded in terms of buzz and interest. I also expected either Andre Holland or Clive Knick to figure in for The Knick, and while definitely a longshot, thought Daredevil might be able to pick up steam. Freshmen in general had a tougher time in drama than comedy, with Empire the only new inclusion in the top category and no new series getting more than a pair of nominations.
Most surprising about this slate, though, is the dominance of FX, with three shows in the category netting a combined 11 nominations. That’s far and away the dominant force here. And it looks to me like Justified and The Americans will be battling it out. The latter is considered the best show on TV at the moment -- and, no doubt, critics would vote for it as a sticking to Emmy voters -- but Justified outdid it in areas where I wouldn’t have expected, and it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Predicted winners:
SERIES: The Americans
ACTOR: Matthew Rhys, The Americans
ACTRESS: Taraji P. Henson, Empire
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ben Mendelsohn, Bloodline (with Walton Goggins a very close second)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Carrie Coon, The Leftovers
GUEST PERFORMER: Lois Smith, The Americans