Emmy FYC: Matt Czuchry for Supporting Actor, Drama

Team Experience is sharing their personal Emmy dream picks daily each afternoon. Here's Andrew Kendall...

Even for ardent fans of The Good Wife, I suspect that Czuchry's name is not the first they'd consider when pitching an FYC for the show. Matt Czuchry, like his character Cary Agos on the show, has been oft-ignored. But Czuchry’s inimitable ability to serve up emotion through a glance has always made the character work more than it might in lesser handers. put to good use. This season with former series regular, Josh Charles, off the show, Czuchry stepped up as the next important male with an arc which immediately thrust him into the forefront:

Cary Agos goes to jail... 

But Czuchry does not just earn this FYC for  (finally) having a very strong season arc. The success of his work in season 6 was the way its built on moments since the show's inception. Consider the very first shot of Czuchry on the show. It's so dissonant with the Cary we've come to know, especially this past season. [More after the jump]

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Cara Seymour on Playing Sister Harriet in "The Knick"

Cara Seymour (Adaptation, American Psycho, The Savages) is Guest Blogging all day today! - Editor
 

-by Cara Seymour

Getting to work on "The Knick" has been one of the greatest experiences of my career. I screamed with joy when I got the part and I'm not a big screamer of joy.  Amazing director, talented and really fun cast and all round impeccable team of super talented people in every department.  I'm madly appreciative of this.

Michael Begler, Jack Amiel and Steve Katz wrote this extraordinary character of Sister Harriet - she leapt off the page. But I wanted to know more about nuns in 1900 when The Knick takes place, so I ordered nun books.

"Through the Narrow Gate,"  by Karen Armstrong was an unflinching account of her life as a nun in a convent pre Vatican II -- read every word of that!

Didn't read them all from cover to cover. Not quite that crazy!

(more on The Knick after the jump)

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FYC: "Jane the Virgin" For Best Comedy Series

Team Experience shares their preferred picks in top Emmy categories as voters ready their ballots. Here's Denny...

Jane the Virgin shouldn't work. But it does, in every way, in every episode. Based on a Venezuelan telenovela, the show tells the story of Jane (luminous Golden Globe winner Gina Rodriguez), a straight-A college student working at a posh Miami hotel as she completes her degree in Education, who gets accidentally artificially inseminated.

Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman pulled off a miracle with Jane's first season. There is not a single bad episode. NOT. ONE. And that feat is even more impressive when you consider what a high-wire act each episode of Jane is: Each episode juggles an ever-expanding cast of major characters, multiple flashbacks, in-show telenovelas, fantasy and/or dream sequences, one character (Jane's abuela Alba) who speaks exclusively in subtitled Spanish, and a third-person omniscent narrator who has become a character in his own right.

Oh yeah, and onscreen text, including the only onscreen twitter hashtags that are not only usable but laugh-loud funny. AND real-world issues that surround the show's beautifully-written Latina/o characters

All of this may sound like too much, but somehow it isn't. There's a lightness of touch here missing from most TV comedies - heck, most TV shows PERIOD. The show is able to earn copious amounts of tears while still remaining one of the funniest shows on TV, thanks in equal part to the remarkably assured writing, the tremendous performances (#emmyforrogelio), and the smart direction on display.

While it's true that Emmy hasn't noticed anything on The CW before, honoring Jane the Virgin with a nomination for Best Comedy Series would not only add diversity to the usually lily-white category, it would add credibility. It would show that Emmy voters not only care about quality, but that they don't care where they find it.

P.S. Two brilliant FYC ads if you haven't seen them after the jump...

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FYC: "The Americans" For Best Drama Series

Team Experience is sharing their personal Emmy dream picks daily around noon. Here's Lynn Lee...

Even after three brilliant seasons, FX's “The Americans” remains criminally ignored by both the Emmys and the viewing public, and I for the life of me can’t figure out why.  Set in Reagan-era D.C., the series about undercover KGB agents posing as the ideal American family-next-door works like gangbusters as a pure espionage thriller, brimming with nailbiting old-school spycraft, graphic close-quarters fight sequences, titillating sex scenes, doomed romances, double agents, and an endless supply of amazing costumes and wigs. 

But it’s even more effective as a psychological portrait of relationships in which truth and lies, work and love, family and country, are inextricably intertwined.  At the center of this web are super agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, both spectacular), whose fake marriage has only recently evolved into a real attachment.  It’s this bond that moves us to root for them even as they do terrible things for a cause that we know will end up on the wrong side of history.  It also, however, complicates their already-complicated attitudes towards their mission. 

Season 3 ratchets this emotional tension up to an even higher level and takes the show into some of the darkest territory it's ever explored, as Philip and Elizabeth are forced not only to push their moral boundaries to the breaking point but to confront the growing suspicions of their teenage daughter, Paige.  That’s a storyline that could have gone wrong in so many ways, yet “The Americans” succeeds where a show like “Homeland” failed, in making Paige not an annoying distraction but a particularly poignant embodiment of the show’s central dilemma: can you sustain the trust that’s required to keep a family, a marriage, any meaningful relationship, together when the very foundation is built on lies?  

Related
The Americans is not quite entirely ignored. It recently won Best Drama Series at the "Critics Choice Awards" after 12 nominations (3rd consecutive for drama series). It has won no other prizes from that group. 

Previously on our FYC series
Lisa Kudrow, Best Actress | Jon Hamm, Best Actor | 20+ Contenders in Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

FYC: Jon Hamm for Best Lead Actor in a Drama

Team Experience share their personal Emmy dream picks daily at Noon. Here's Deborah on everyone's favorite ad man...

Emmy voters, you assholes, now is your chance to make it right! 

You have nominated Jon Hamm seven times for his work on Mad Men. Seven times. It’s like you’ve got the hiccups and then, when the actual award-giving comes around, you’re all holding your breath. Stop it!

Okay, so, irritation out of the way, let’s talk about the work this extraordinary actor has done on this show. 

First of all, Mad Men is not an ensemble show. There’s an amazing cast doing supporting work, yes. Kiernan Shipka, January Jones, Vincent Kartheiser, Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, and especially Elisabeth Moss all deserve acknowledgement. Nonetheless, its Hamm’s Don Draper who carries the show, and the nuance of his performance is what delivers the show to greatness, matching the lofty ambitions of its writing with flawless execution. 

There are moments when the writers of Mad Men have simply stripped out the dialogue, and allowed Hamm’s face to do all the heavy lifting—to go from serene to angry to defeated in a few seconds. To break down and then build back up. There are times when no words are spoken, because words are for lesser actors. (That's especially true in the series' finale which should be fresh in your memory.)

Now, listen, Emmys. You’ve denied Hamm the award when he delivered the Season 3's The Gypsy and the Hobo, the complete breakdown of his façade, as Betty Draper confronted her husband with the evidence that he was another man. You’ve denied it to him when he delivered The Suitcase, the season 4 episode widely considered Mad Men’s finest hour, a two-hander in which Don falls apart, bit-by-bit, as he and Peggy Olson (Moss) tear apart their complex relationship in one long, grueling, drunken night. 

But how about now? How about an award for the series finale, Person to Person, when he learns that Betty has cancer, and silently, eloquently, lets her know he loves her? How about an award for Field Trip, as Don waits to hear about getting his job back, starting with absolute confidence, believing he is already hired, and bit-by-bit, hour by hour, becomes more nervous and more humble, all without any dialogue directly addressing the fact. Or just, you know, give it to him for kissing Peggy on top of her head as they dance in Season The Strategy.

There are many great actors on television today. I’m not saying other people aren’t worthy. I’m saying no one can do what Jon Hamm does. No one is more complex, more plastic, more impressive. Maybe someone out there is equally good, but no one is better, and seven years is too damn long to wait.