Last weekend, the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) doled out its awards for the fifth annual Critics' Choice Television Awards. Read on below for analysis of the winners in drama, comedy and longform categories.
DRAMA: The Americans triumphs; Better Call Saul makes a big showing; new performances are the flavor of the year
Best Drama Series: The Americans
Best Actor: Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul
Best Actress: Taraji P. Henson for Empire
Best Supporting Actor: Jonathan Banks for Better Call Saul
Best Supporting Actress: Lorraine Toussaint for Orange Is the New Black
Best Guest Performer: Sam Elliot for Justified
Though BTJA heavily embraced the “new” down the line in the acting categories, it was third-year veteran The Americans that triumphed with Best Drama Series.
It’s hardly a surprise. With Breaking Bad out of the way, Mad Men (bizarrely) out of contention and other nice hits like Rectify, The Leftovers and Bloodline just that -- niche -- The Americans was the obvious pick. In its third season, the Cold War spy drama has emerged as the overwhelming consensus choice among critics as the best dramatic series of the moment. (We agree.) While its win here was expected, its impact is more difficult to determine. Can this visibility help its Emmy chances? One can hope. At the very least, it has critics in its corner like few other bubble shows do.
Then again, one of those bubble series is Better Call Saul, which unexpectedly led all dramas with a pair of Critics’ Choice victories despite not even being nominated for Best Drama. Jonathan Banks, who long gave a beloved performance on Breaking Bad, has, let’s be frank, triumphed here for a single episode: the Mike-centric “Five-O.” It’s a curious win over Bloodline standout Ben Mendelsohn and Justified villain Walton Goggins, among others -- I assumed those two were way out-front. Certainly the longstanding love for Banks (and Mike) paid off here, the perfect venue to reward a performance of continued adoration. Bob Odenkirk winning Best Actor is an even bigger surprise, but in retrospect it’s easy to see how he managed it. Without a Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm (or, to use this year’s comedy winner as a better example, Jeffrey Tambor) to eat up the votes, there was a lot of room to play. My personal pick, and who I thought had the best shot, was Matthew Rhys, but he gives a subtler performance that’s become familiar by year three. Aden Young is tremendous in Rectify, and Timothy Olyphant was looking good for the warmly-embraced final Justified season, but you could go down the list -- this is a stacked category filled with worthy choices. The BTJA likes new, and they like different: Odenkirk showing a completely different side of himself in Saul evidently allowed him to stand out in a crowd of actors on shows that voters were more familiar with.
There was no sense in betting against Taraji P. Henson of Empire, who gives a performance as impactful and impressive as it is outrageously entertaining. From moment one, she’s been a favorite with critics and audiences, and her edging out Viola Davis here is not especially surprising. That duel should continue on to the Emmys, a great change of pace for a category that’s been unusually white, even by the Television Academy’s standards. It’s also gratifying to see the BTJA lob for Lorraine Toussaint, who was monstrously good in Orange Is the New Black but will have a difficult time cracking a tight Emmy field. This is a vital first step. This particular award was between her and Carrie Coon, who’d sustained immense acclaim for her devastating Leftovers performance. But Toussaint absolutely earned this, and it’s nice to see Orange walk away with some hardware despite the category swap. (Finally, despite earning the most nominations, Justified guest player Sam Elliot netted its only win.)
Of all of the acting winners, only Toussaint and Elliot won for returning shows -- and yet, even they were only season-long players. Essentially, each acting category was won by an actor giving a hitherto unseen performance. On the one hand, that’s antithetical to the power and speciality of longform television acting -- the ability to develop a character over an indefinite stretch of time. It explicitly speaks to the organization’s favoring of new and fresh, a debatable strategy that at the very least is directly contrary to the redundant tendencies of the Television Academy. But it also speaks to the utter strength of The Americans, a traditionally-released (that is, week to week) third-year drama that’s not especially flashy or groundbreaking. It’s just that good, and even in the hands of a group quite clearly biased towards the spick-and-span, it was able to win the most coveted prize.
COMEDY: Silicon Valley pulls off a major upset; Transparent wins two acting trophies; flimsy timeline clouds results
Best Comedy Series: Silicon Valley
Best Actor: Jeffrey Tambor for Transparent
Best Actress: Amy Schumer for Inside Amy Schumer
Best Supporting Actor: T.J. Miller for Silicon Valley
Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney for Mom
Best Guest Performer: Bradley Whitford for Transparent
Because the BTJA votes on its winners in late May, several shows are forced to compete with unfinished seasons. This can be a hindrance to a show like Mad Men, since Matthew Weiner really showed his stuff in the final season’s second half, which at the time of nomination voting had not been witnessed. But in the case of this year’s comedy categories, the strength of several currently-airing series brought about wins that likely wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.
Silicon Valley’s second season has been a dramatic improvement over its first, which is to say that it’s gone from good to great. It’s tightened its focus, with ensemble dynamics nicely worked-out and humor as dense as it is consistent. Or, put another way, it’s at a high point right now. Best Comedy Series was widely expected to be Transparent’s, and it probably should have been. But it’s difficult to defeat a series whose competing season is airing just as the voting is occurring. (Transparent launched all at once in September.) Considering the relatively quiet talk surrounding Silicon Valley -- at least in regards to Transparent or, say, Jane the Virgin -- the relationship between the win (as well as T.J. Miller’s in Supporting Actor) and the fact that its season is still going strong is near-irrefutable. It’s a far better choice than Modern Family, and I’d argue that SIlicon is operating around the level of Veep right now. (That’s a big compliment.) But the value of the award is more difficult to judge, given the circumstances.
Amy Schumer won Best Actress, as I predicted for exactly the reasons outlined above. It’s hard to think of a comic who’s hotter right now -- her show remains balls-out funny and magnificently confrontational, and she’s proven great range as a sketch performer. But her win is undeniably tied to her sky-high popularity. While this is not inherently a bad thing, this season of Inside Amy Schumer isn’t even halfway done, and if voting took place in a month or two when the season had ended and the deafening buzz had settled, would she have won this award? It’s not nearly as likely. She beat Julia Louis-Dreyfus -- also headed into her Veep season’s home-stretch -- and Gina Rodriguez, who generated wide acclaim for her full season performance in Jane the Virgin. This is a relatively minor award, but as a supposed representative of critical taste, it’s disheartening to see popularity and media attention (and visibility) factor into the awards to the degree that it has. Aren’t critics supposed to be above that?
Of course, Jeffrey Tambor won Best Actor in a walk, and one hopes that despite the more nuanced (that is, not slapstick) nature of his performance, he can do so on Emmy night as well. And for Transparent’s second award -- despite not winning the big prize, it’s the only comedy to win two categories -- Bradley Whitford emerged victorious in a diverse guest performer field. (I had Susie Essman pegged, thinking they’d want to throw some love Broad City’s way.) Allison Janney, meanwhile has maintained her perfect Mom streak, which again was widely-expected since Chuck Lorre’s serio-sitcom was well-liked-enough this time around to score a Comedy Series nomination.
For all of the disgruntled analysis, this is a pretty terrific set of winners. Both Silicon and Schumer are more than deserving, to say nothing of Tambor’s gargantuan achievement, Janney’s continued excellence and Miller’s scene-stealing brilliance. But these wins reflect a more general frustration with how these awards panned out -- the timeline also all but forced Louie, a multi-Critics’ Choice winner, out of contention -- and prove the disadvantages of voting so early. Put simply, expectations on a group like the BTJA are higher than on the Television Academy. Reactionary voting is inevitable in any system. But here, it’s causing an easily-avoidable bias.
And yet, there’s the essential caveat to consider: if the Emmys come up with a list of winners this creative (and earned), you won’t hear a peep out of this writer.
LONGFORM: Olive Kitteridge dominates; David Oyelowo picks up Best Actor; acclaimed miniseries Wolf Hall and The Honorable Woman shut out
Best Limited Series: Olive Kitteridge
Best TV Movie: Bessie
Best Actor: David Oyelowo, Nightingale
Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge
Best Supporting Actor: Bill Murray, Olive Kitteridge
Best Supporting Actress: Sarah Paulson, American Horror Story: Freak Show
Despite stiff competition this time around, HBO’s sprawling miniseries Olive Kitteridge continues to dominate the awards circuit. The Lisa Cholodenko-directed four-hour production was our favorite TV show of last year, as it intimately blended literary depth with cinematic finesse, and swept the industry guild awards, winning WGA, PGA, DGA and SAG. Now, despite the recent premieres of the socially prescient ABC anthology American Crime and the critically beloved PBS mini Wolf Hall, Olive finds itself on top once again.
While Best Limited Series was a competitive category stuffed with worthy candidates, the same cannot be said for Best TV Movie. Mixed reviews for HBO’s one-man show Nightingale didn’t prevent David Oyelowo’s tour-de-force performance from snagging Best Actor from rival contenders Richard Jenkins (Olive Kitteridge) and Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall). But its idiosyncratic form and HBO pedigree hinted at the only film that could potentially take down Bessie -- a prospect that ultimately couldn’t come to fruition. Neither Andrew nor I were especially high on Dee Rees’ uneven period piece, but there’s plenty of great stuff to find in it (especially the performances), and among its competitors, it was probably the best choice. If anything, Bessie’s clean victory points to the unnecessary separation of limited series and TV movie categories -- the latter is consistently too thin to stand on its own.
It’s not often you can say that Best Actress - Longform is a better category than the Oscars’ equivalent, and yet the performances (and actors) represented here genuinely surpass what the Academy has recognized of late in aggregate. Between McDormand’s caustic brilliance in Olive Kitteridge, Queen Latifah’s astonishing embodiment of Bessie Smith, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s revelatory and complex performance in The Honorable Woman, and Felicity Huffman’s scintillating internalization of grief in American Crime, the category showcases TV’s newfound ability to hand incredible roles to actresses worthy of them. More specifically, it proves that in this specific arena, the small-screen is easily outdoing the cineplex. A few months ago, Manohla Dargis argued for the New York Times that the Best Actress Oscar belonged to McDormand for her TV role. Yet the Olive Kitteridge star winning out among these actors seems even more impressive than hypothetically beating out last year’s Oscar five. In the supporting category, meanwhile, Sarah Paulson’s continued demonstration of range in the American Horror Story franchise was deemed good enough for yet another award -- overall, it’s hard to say enough about the quality of the performances recognized here. (Though Bill Murray winning Supporting Actor for Olive Kitteridge was undoubtedly more a case of name-checking than anything else.)
While the BTJA spread the wealth in the Drama and Comedy categories, Olive’s dominance here prevented any recognition for such acclaimed productions as American Crime, Wolf Hall and most notably the terrific Hugo Blick geopolitical thriller The Honorable Woman. In this case, the honor really was in the nomination for Best Limited Series. This is a diverse set of tremendously-realized productions, but when all is said and done, Olive Kitteridge’s accomplishment (rightly) continues to dwarf everything in its path. Here’s to hoping that this trend continues on Emmy night.
More Awards:
Critics Choice TV 2015: Nominations Analysis
Emmy Nomination Predictions