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 LEAD ACTOR IN A COMEDY
This is a weak field. Louis C.K. is Louis C.K. and I'll always express admiration for what Jim Parsons does on “Big Bang Theory,” but otherwise you're looking at two Showtime stars who are favorites at least 75 percent by default and then your choice of decently regarded parts on shows very few people watched, well-regarded performances on shows that nobody watched or contenders who are only here because they won Emmys for better shows years ago. This is what happens when the stars of “Modern Family” are all “supporting” and the stars of the year's best new comedy, “Orange Is The New Black,” are all women. This is a category that either needs an infusion of good new product next year or else needs voters to actually watch Andy Daly in “Review.”
Last Year's Nominees:
Jim Parsons
Alec Baldwin
Don Cheadle
Jason Bateman
Louis C.K.
Matt LeBlanc
Attrition: Following the finale season of “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin is gone. And with “Arrested Development” back in hibernation, Jason Bateman is gone. Because of his Golden Globe win, we're all just going to assume that Andy Samberg is a lock for one of those two spaces, but that leaves one total Anything Can Happen slot that could go to just about any of the 10 other guys with slides in this gallery, but it could also just as easily go to somebody like a Jake Johnson or Jon Cryer, both of whom got relegated to the “Other Notables” slide this time around.
Here are Sepinwall's personal picks.
My predictions are below.
Your thoughts? Predictions? Analysis?