That is, if they don't kill her off first. They probably won't, right? They haven't killed anyone of late on the show, and since it's the final season, I would think someone would have to go. Who more than the Dowager Countess, the representative of the old world in its entirety? Downton Abbey premieres its final season this Sunday in the UK.
Emmy Predictions, Part 1: Acting in a Limited Series or TV Movie
Well, it's my least favorite time of year everyone- Emmy predictions week. The Emmys are on this Sunday (already a conflict for me since it's airing live against my Seahawks game on NBC-argh!), and to make matters worse, this year the TV Academy has completely upended the voting system. That's right, if guessing the winners was a crapshoot before, now it's a total free for all. They used to vote based on submission tapes watched by panels of a dozen or so voters, now it's a straight popular vote from thousands of voters. No one has any idea how it's going to go down this year, which means there is no strategy or precedent for predictions at all. So why do it? I guess I'm just a masochist. I won't bother to give detailed analysis this year though- know that I'm guessing based on name recognition and what I think is popular with the voters due to the number of nominations a show got. That's all I got for this season, folks! We're starting with TV movie and miniseries actors.
LEAD ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE
- Timothy Hutton, American Crime
- Ricky Gervais, Derek
- Adrien Brody, Houdini
- David Oyelowo, Nightingale
- Richard Jenkins, Olive Kitteridge
- Mark Rylance, Wolf Hall
Ummm, I don't know. Possibly Richard Jenkins, since Olive Kitteridge has won a lot of precursor awards (I hated that show though). I really don't know who'd they go with otherwise, although it'd be cool if Mark Rylance won. He was pretty great in Wolf Hall.
- Winner: Richard Jenkins
- Alternate: Mark Rylance
- Dark Horse: Ricky Gervais (a big name)
LEAD ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE
- Felicity Huffman, American Crime
- Jessica Lange, American Horror Story
- Queen Latifah, Bessie
- Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Honorable Woman
- Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge
- Emma Thompson, Sweeney Todd (Live from Lincoln Center)
Frances McDormand has won everything else for this role, so it'd be foolish to bet against her now.
- Winner: Frances McDormand
- Alternate: Queen Latifah (could benefit from a popular vote)
- Dark Horse: Maggie Gyllenhaal (she won the Golden Globe)
SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE
- Richard Cabral, American Crime
- Denis O'Hare, American Horror Story
- Finn Wittrock, American Horror Story
- Michael Kenneth Williams, Bessie
- Bill Murray, Olive Kitteridge
- Damian Lewis, Wolf Hall
Yikes. This one stumps me completely. I tend to lean Bill Murray, yet he actually hasn't won anything for that role despite being nominated everywhere. I'm gonna have to take a wild stab in the dark here and go for Damian Lewis, previous Emmy winner for Homeland.
- Winner: Damian Lewis, Wolf Hall
- Alternate: BIll Murray, Olive Kitteridge
SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES/MOVIE
- Regina King, American Crime
- Sarah Paulson, American Horror Story
- Angela Bassett, American Horror Story
- Kathy Bates, American Horror Story
- Monique, Bessie
- Zoe Kazan, Olive Kitteridge
Every year people say Sarah Paulson needs to win for AHS and it doesn't happen, so maybe this is the year it does? What hurts her is being up against bigger names from the same show though. Kathy Bates won last year, although I don't know if that means anything for her chances. Angela Bassett could take it. I do think it's between the three women of AHS.
- Winner: Sarah Paulson- if two heads can't do it, nothing can.
- Alternate: Angela Bassett
- Dark Horse: Kathy Bates
That's it for today everybody. I'll be back tomorrow with the comedy acting races, but again, I'm pretty much doing this for fun, so I'm warning you not to take me as a sage predictor of anything for the wackier than usual Emmys this year.
Lady Gaga Makes a Splash in First Teaser for 'American Horror Story: Hotel'
As a devoted Gaga fan who's never seen one second of American Horror Story, I'm kinda tempted to check out at least some of this new season. How can I resist, right? She comes in at the last second in this promo, but looks appropriately freaky, I'd say.
The CW Debuts Hawkman and Hawkgirl
Even though diehard fans are delighted by the almost duplicated-from-the-comics version of the eternal duo's costumes for the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow show, I have to think this might be a case of what works in a comic book not quite translating to live action. I'm thinking mostly in terms of their headgear. You have to admit, it's probably gonna look kinda silly when this gets put on screen, don't you think?
'Game of Thrones' Cleans Up at Creative Arts Emmys
So, the Creative Arts Emmys were held tonight, where about a million technical prizes were awarded, but the big news is that Game of Thrones, the predicted winner of Drama Series at the main event next week, showed no signs of weakness at all, taking home most of the tech trophies. It's too bad the show is going to win for its weakest season, but I guess it's overdue, so I don't really have any problems with it. In other news, the guest actor winswere random as usual, and with the voting system having been completely upended this year, the acting winners across the board are going to be even more of a crapshoot than normal. I will say that Margo Martindale has absolutely no business winning for a glorified cameo on The Americans this year. And I love Martindale, but that is a JOKE, seemingly only dished out because voters are familiar with her name, after she won for Justified and was nominated in numerous categories since. And Transparent did well tonight too, but doing well with the techs doesn't always indicate support for the primetime awards- last year, Sherlock did amazing here and went on to win at the Emmys as well, while Orange is the new Black did equally well and was snubbed completely at the main event. So, Comedy Series is still up in the air but seems to be between Veep and Transparent this year...although you can't count out Modern Family either, no matter how many fewer nominations it garnered this year.
CREATIVE ARTS EMMY WINNERS
- Title Design: Manhattan
- Main Title Theme: Transparent
- Guest Actor, Drama: Reg E. Cathey, House of Cards
- Original Musics & Lyrics: "Don't Need Make Up," Inside Amy Schumer
- Guest Actress, Drama: Margo Martindale, The Americans
- TV Movie: Bessie
- Guest Actress, Comedy: Joan Cusack, Shameless
- Guest Actor, Comedy: Bradley Whitford, Transparent
- Documentary/Non-Fiction Series: The Jinx
- Informational Series or Special: Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown
- Documentary/Non-Fiction Special: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
- Variety Special: The Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special
- Variety Special Writing: Louis C.K.
- Choreography: Dancing With the Stars & So You Think You Can Dance (tie)
- Narrator: Peter Coyote for The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
- Character Voice-Over Performance: Hank Azaria, The SImpsons
- Animated Program: Over the Garden Wall
- Children's Program: Alan Alda and the Actor Within You: A Young Arts Masterclass
- Special Visual Effects: Game of Thrones
- Unstructured Reality Program: The Deadliest Catch
- Interactive Program: Last Week Tonight
- Reality Competition Host: Jane Lynch, Hollywood Game Night
Even Margo Martindale can't believe she won this award
New Trailer for 'The Flash' Season 2 Shows Off New Heroes
A bunch of characters show up in this longer promo for Season 2 of CW's The Flash, which gives us a whole bunch of action and special effects. I'm hoping this show avoids the sophomore slump of typical network shows, but after having such a strong debut year, I know that's possible. Still, with the first season being better than Arrow ever was, I'm excited for this to come back on Oct. 6th. One of my most anticipated fall shows, actually.
'Jessica Jones' Has a Premiere Date
Finally, Netflix has put out a teaser for Jessica Jones and announced a release date of November 20th, when all thirteen episodes of the first season will be out at 12:01 am, as per usual. This is the second in their Marvel superhero series, and after the big success of Daredevil, expectations are high for this, which will actually be the first female centered Marvel superhero adaptation of anything, and only the second overall, since Supergirl will premiere on CBS just a few weeks ahead of it. Looks like the girls finally made it to TV- Wonder Woman will be the first to make it to the big screen in 2017. Let's hope these are successful for that reason alone. Krysten Ritter plays the title character in this one, so I'm crossing my fingers for it.
Daisy Johnson Rises in Promo for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3
I never got around to reviewing the last season of this show, but I actually haven't dropped it, because it did improve quite a bit from its first year. It could still stand to be improved much further though, and the more it delves into the Marvel comics mythology with the inhumans stuff, the better (I think). I'm still onboard right now, but this idea that ABC thinks they can do a spinoff with the Lance Hunter and Mockingbird characters is totally dead on arrival. Adding Friday Night Lights' Adrianne Palicki last season did improve the series, but those two as a couple are about as interesting as watching paint dry. Don't do it, ABC.
REVIEW: "Hannibal" Season 3
The dearly departed Hannibal completed its third and final season last week, and what a strange, bizarre, somewhat self-indulgent season it was. Hannibal has always been an odd, surreal, occasionally maddening show for a very niche audience (if not something made only for critics who appreciate the boldness), but even this year it appeared that Bryan Fuller and co. may have crossed the line when NBC canceled it midway through the airing of its third season. But still, it managed to go out on a high note after faltering through an incredibly opaque first half, and I will always be amazed that this was a series that actually made it to air on a major network for three years.
The beginning of this last run picked up with Hannibal on the run in Europe with Bedelia du Maurier (Gillian Anderson, made a regular this season) posing as his wife/hostage. The massacre of the second season finale turned out to be not so much a massacre after all, as just about everyone Hannibal supposedly slaughtered turned out to not just survive their bloody attacks, but pretty much make it out unscathed after the requisite hospital recovery time. That's right- Will, Jack, and Alana are all okay after what happened back at Hannibal's apartment, leaving Abigail Hobbs the only fatality by Lecter's hand. But I guess we have to attribute that as intentional, since Hannibal is completely omnipotent and never does anything without knowing the consequences. He's a fortune teller and all knowing seer of everything anyone will ever do or say or think- if you can't tell, yes, I became extremely annoyed with the anointing of Hannibal as a god of all worlds. I love Mads Mikkelson but now that everyone knew his secret they all began to talk about him as if he were the beginning and end of life in all its complexes, and I found myself rolling my eyes at all that quite a bit.
Joe Anderson takes over from Michael Pitt as the revolting Mason Verger
The dialogue this season was even more ridiculous than usual. Will spend a good chunk of his time supposedly on the hunt for Hannibal in Europe but in a complete daze as he wandered from place to place, ending up in a confusing semi-relationship with someone from Hannibal's past named Chiyoh (Tao Okamoto), who qualifies as the very worst character and actor who's ever appeared on this show (not everyone can pull off the dialogue anyway, but boy did this lady struggle). Jack showed up at times to join in the search but not nearly enough, since Laurence Fishburne can't help but bring with him a sense of reality and commonplace authority, something the first seven episodes of this show really wanted nothing to do with. Instead we spent most of our time listening to circular discussions between Hannibal and Bedelia, Will and Chiyoh, and sometimes Alana Bloom and the Vergers, which was a little more entertaining because Mason Verger (last season's Michael Pitt replaced by Joe Anderson) cut such a disgusting figure that he couldn't help but draw you in in a more traditionally campy, horror style performance.
I sound pretty rough on this run of episodes and to be honest, I didn't enjoy much of it, but I can't help but admire, as always, the gorgeous and surreal quality of the art direction, cinematography and montage of bizarre, Lynchian images that always infiltrated the Hannibal universe and still made the show worth watching, even in its worst moments (the kalaidescopic lesbian sex scene between Alana and Margot Verger has got to be seen to be believed). Finally, at the end of the arc, Hannibal surrenders himself for the six episode run of the Red Dragon storyline, which kind of vaulted the show back into more conventional storytelling, just in time for anyone whose patience was wearing thin. We skip over some years and now Will is brought back into the fray to do justice to Thomas Harris's famous novel, in which only a few things were altered at all, with much of the dialogue coming directly out of Harris's pages. This was a very welcome turn of events frankly, and Fuller's rendition of Red Dragon was mostly satisfying while also staying as true as possible to the Hannibal universe that he'd created (although Hannibal himself behind bars does suddenly become much more amusing and taunting than Mikkelson had ever played him on the show before). Richard Armitage's guest turn as Francis Dolarhyde was quite powerful in its way, as he turned in a physically and emotionally wrenching performance, which ends up culminating in a slow motion, threeway fight scene between the Dragon, Lecter and Will that should be everything any of fan of this show could ever want to see.
It ends as a fitting cap on the odd love/hate relationship between Hannibal and Will, and it actually works as a series finale even if it wasn't intended to be, since Will Graham's presence is no longer needed in the Thomas Harris novels that came afterwards. Even though I got a little fed up with Hannibal this season, I did enjoy the Red Dragon arc and it's a real shame that we'll never get to see Fuller's take on Silence of the Lambs. This was a bold, striking, frustrating, beautiful and always impassioned series unlike anything else on TV- and for that I'll always hold it in the highest regard. Long live Dr. Lecter, in all his glory.
Grade: B-
Hannibal Lecter says goodbye
Diggle Gets a New Costume in Trailer for 'Arrow' Season 4
And it looks pretty terrible- the costume I mean. The trailer itself looks like a big improvement on the godawful third season of this show, thankfully. But I have never bought into the Oliver/Felicity stuff, so I'm not looking forward to too much of that. To me, Felicity was a great comic relief character that happened by accident, and then the writers became so obsessed with her that she quickly became way too much a focus of the whole show, which is always a huge mistake. Comic relief supporting characters, even scene-stealers, should never take over an entire show- you'll get sick of them fast. Not to mention the fact that Stephen Amell, cute as he is, is so inherently wooden that he has zero chemistry with any actress he's paired with (he always looks like he'd rather be vomiting than kissing somebody), so I'm just plain not a fan of this pairing. In fact, after last year I might have tuned out completely on this show, if not for the fact that I feel obligated to keep up with it for the numerous crossover stuff that happens with The Flash.
