Reminder: For our annual Emmy contenders coverage, Sepinwall does his personal preferences, while I handicap mostly in terms of likelihood of landing nominations. As usual, the first six slides in each gallery are my nomination predictions. The next eight or nine slides are the actors and shows most likely to sneak in, based on precedent, quality or something nebulous. And then at the end of each gallery, I tend to throw in a couple oddballs who have no chance at all of being nominated, but who I think deserve to be a part of the conversation, or might accidentally become part of the conversation, just because.
Our next category:
OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Like “Breaking Bad” itself, Anna Gunn arrived on the Emmy podium a year ahead of schedule last September. It's not that I didn't think Gunn deserved to win last year, but I figured she had one year of being deserving-but-snubbed and then she'd take advantage of this year's seemingly inevitable “Breaking Bad” sweep. With Gunn already in place as defending champion and boasting “Ozymandias” as an inevitable submission episode, does anybody else really stand a chance?
Probably not. It helps Gunn's cause that there aren't any no-brainer newcomers in this category, though a strong performance from “True Detective” should make Michelle Monaghan a real contender.
Last Year's Nominees:
Anna Gunn
Morena Baccarin
Christine Baranski
Maggie Smith
Emilia Clarke
Christina Hendricks
Attrition: Technically, all six nominees from last year are eligible for this year. However, I'm treating Morena Baccarin like she's no longer eligible, because… Seriously? But once you take Baccarin out of the field, you're looking at only three or four legitimate candidates to pick up nominations, even if several of these ladies didn't have their best material to work with last year. Voters will have to decide if, for example, Emilia Clarke and Christina Hendricks deserve nominations because they're Emilia Clarke and Christina Hendricks, or if they're intrepid enough to go deeper down the ballot to discover somebody like a Bellamy Young or, much more easily, a Betsy Brandt.
Here are Sepinwall's personal picks.
My predictions are below.
Your thoughts? Predictions? Analysis?