[In Week Three of Cultural Learnings’ 59th Annual Emmy Awards Nominations Preview, we’re looking at possible contenders for the Lead Actor awards in both drama and comedy. Today, we present our sixth set of candidates. For complete listings for the Supporting candidates from the past two weeks, check out our For Your Consideration index]
Lead Actor in a Comedy Series
Steve Carell (Michael Scott)
The Office
I don’t really know what to say about Steve Carell that hasn’t already been said. The fact that he didn’t win this award last year was a travesty, as his loss to Tony Shalhoub should have never happened. I wrote about Rainn Wilson two weeks ago that The Office really wouldn’t work without him, and I stand by that statement…but Dwight wouldn’t really work without Michael, and I don’t think that much of the show’s comedy would be as funny if the uncool, trying to be cool boss wasn’t around. What makes Carell so great in this role is his ability to throw everything into his comic performance, but then be able to bring it all back together to appear as a real human being. Without that quality, Carell would be a loose cannon on a show where all firearms must be precision weapons designed to entertain. However, although often giving the appearance of being entirely unstable, Michael Scott is a human being first and foremost, capable of love and loss and friendship and emotions. And with a deft comic hand and a sense of who his character really is, Steve Carell delivers a consistently Emmy worthy performance.
This season has allowed Carell a lot of movement within Michael’s character. He continued to go through relationship drama, struggled to relate to his co-workers as per usual, and had to deal with a convict and a gay man in his office (He didn’t do so well with either of them). And I have to commend him for managing to go through all of this (especially “Gay Witch Hunt”, which I found more disturbing than funny) while maintaining some level of sanity within Michael’s character. At the end of the season as he finds himself caring for a rapidly falling apart Jan and wondering how he got stuck in this mess, we relate to him and his situation. Carell can go through from hapless to empathetic in about two second flat, and he did so admirably throughout the season. While he doesn’t always get the same types of “gags” as Dwight or Jim, I think that his comedy is all in the setup. And this season saw a wide range of setups, and Carell’s performance within them is worthy of Emmy consideration.
Episode Selection: “Business School” (Aired February 15th, 2007)
I’m skipping forward to this section quicker than I might usually because I want to explain that this is where Carell lost the Emmy last year. His submitted episode, where he burnt his food on his George Foreman grill, was Michael at his most annoying. There was no heart, no caring within his character. This wasn’t Michael as an innocent, it was Michael as an ungracious jerk. So, this season he needed an episode that showcased that.
And he bloody well found it. Business School is a great episode for Carell because he is forced to face reality straight in the face, and his emotional side is showcased in the action’s coda. As he speaks to Ryan’s business class, he realizes that people believe he is irrelevant, that he has no future. He finds himself being attacked, and responds with throwing candy bars and ripping apart textbooks. But he is visibly angry at the end, frustrated with his place in his job. And then, at episode’s end, he visits Pam’s art show and proudly hangs the photo of their office up on the wall. It is poignant, it is funny, and it is great television. This is the episode that could win him an Emmy.
YouTube – “Business School”
And another of the episode’s coda, which wasn’t set to Edward Scissorhands or mashed with it in real life, but it makes it even more dramatic.
Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Matthew Fox (Jack)
Lost
Matthew Fox has the rather unfortunate reputation as being someone who fans of Lost don’t really care about. Locke is the badass, Hurley’s the comic relief, Ben is the villain, Sawyer’s the rebel, and Jack is just kind of there. It didn’t help that this season we had to sit through one of the series’ most pointless backstories, a muddled mess of crazy tattoos and other such things from Jack’s past. “Stranger in a Strange Land”, and all of this talk of Jack lacking a hook needs to be put to rest, however. What makes Matthew Fox’s performance so strong as Jack is that, believe it or not, he’s all lies. He was on this island as a man damaged by his past, but he had to become a hero. Becoming a hero basically neutered Jack as a character, which is why there are very few who claim him as their favourite. However, there needs to be recognition for those who step up and who are conflicted heroes struggling to keep it together. Jack Shepherd is one of those characters, and Matthew Fox’s portrayal of him is worthy of Emmy consideration.
This season was really the one where Jack was forced to question who or what he believes in. Captured by The Others and forced to collaborate with them, he began to come to terms with his tenure on the island and his true purpose. Leaving himself behind while allowing Kate and Sawyer to escape, Jack worked within the Others in an attempt to go back to the outside world. When that went up in flames, Jack was suddenly back in his old role as leader…and struggling. He didn’t trust Kate, after her lust-filled cage stay with Sawyer, but his trust of Juliet was questionable. The people in the camp didn’t trust him, and yet they still went to him for some level of guidance. Jack was a stranger, in a sense, to these people, as his time away made room for other leaders and other symbols of guidance. What Fox brought to the role was, ironically, a sense of leadership that was bestowed as opposed to gained. He became a de facto leader in season one, and now people are starting to wonder who died and made him king…and he’s reacting. And that reaction, which brought the entire story together, is what makes Matthew Fox an Emmy contender.
Episode Selection: “Through the Looking Glass” (Aired May 23rd, 2007)
Now, parts of this episode feature overacting on Fox’s part, especially within the convention-breaking flashforward. However, and this is a big however, this episode is more important for the meaning behind the flash forward, which Fox plays extremely well in conjunction with his island actions. On the island, Jack is leading a group of castaways to a radio tower in hopes of getting them rescued, finally living up to his promise to these people. All the while, his leadership is being questioned (Leaving people behind to shoot dynamite, as an example), and he feels that he has something to prove. For him, he wants to get these people off this island so that he won’t have to bear their weight on his shoulders.
And yet, in his flash forward, we realize that he got off the island…but that weight didn’t disappear. Something that happens is still carried on, destroying him from the inside; something about Jack is off, and the real tragedy is that he could have stopped it. When Ben warns him of Naomi’s true purpose, of the boat coming not being a friendly vessel, Jack’s response is to pound the crap out of him. That moment of tragedy, of fighting for what he believes is right while damning himself and all of the people he’s trying to save, is just perfectly acted by Fox, and it provides a brilliant cap to his season-long story arc that Emmy voters should take notice of. He’s submitted another episode as far as we know (Season Premiere “A Tale of Two Cities”), but he should have darn well switched to this one.
YouTube – “Through the Looking Glass”
Cultural Learnings 
I completely agree with you about Steve Carell and why he lost the Emmy for the George Foreman grill episode. Funny as it may be, like you said, it’s missing an essential part of Michael, the one that makes you feel for him even though most of the time you want to slap him over the head.
I agree with the episode selection as well. As if to illustrate my (well, our) earlier point, Michael being the only one who went to Pam’s show is exactly what balances out his… other, less appealing traits and the viewers need to see both to fully appreciate him.
Re: Lost.
I’m sad to hear Matthew Fox didn’t submit the finale because he was incredible and the scene you linked to was the highlight of the season. The intensity of Jack in that confrontation with Henry and the aftermath where he’s eaten alive by the guilt of having to let his friends die is just mindblowing. He nailed it.
What I don’t agree with is that Jack is dull or that lost fans don’t like him. He can be annoying and abrasive and he’s always going to piss off diehard fans of other characters. But the internet is a horse of a different color as they say. Jack is THE most interesting character for me, along with Locke, and the one I can relate to (not along with Locke 🙂 but they fascinate me in equal measure). I proudly claim him as my favorite because as you said, the quiet ones deserve recognition but also because the bubbly, funny, sligtly off the charts dramatic ones might be entertaining but a lot of the time I can’t look at them as anything else but characters. Fictional. Drawn to jump through hoops for an audience. Jack feels real to me.
Thank you for an interesting read and here’s to both of theses actors getting the recognition they deserve. 🙂
Lazlo,
For the record, I don’t personally think that about Jack. However, you’re right in that it’s more of an internet consensus issue than it is a personal taste one. I just think that because of a lack of badass qualities and some whining at certain points Jack often gets left off “favourite character” lists perhaps unfairly.
Fox has currently submitted the season premiere, “A Tale of Two Cities”. Which is, you know, good, but it certainly isn’t as good as the finale. There is still no word as to whether he switched the episode before the May 31st deadline, but here’s hoping.
I’m one of those Lost fans who absolutely can not stand the character of Jack or the actor who plays him. It was a good performance in the finale, but it doesn’t outweigh an entire season that he phoned it in. The guy LEFT Kate and Sayid behind to die on his misbegotten self rescue mission. How he retained any hero cred after that is a mystery. They could have taken this character someplace interesting this year, but until they showed him as the addict he becomes in the future, they never did.
Gino, I actually think that Jack’s lack of action makes him an interesting hero, and resulted in some of the good inter-Castaway conflict towards the end of the season. By the finale, he knew he had to prove himself, and as a result we got a great performance. The problem was that, in order to get there, Jack had to make some tough decisions that rendered his character both unlikable and kind of boring.
And I think that Fox deserves credit for bringing back Jack’s fire in the finale. Does it make up for the whole season? Of course not. But I think it’s worth something.
Sorry Myles can’t agree. That sounds like the basic Jack fan argument: sure, he’s boring and dull, but isn’t he great at it?
He gave up two people to die while he saved his own butt. There’s no coming back from that. The way the show just ignored it and acted like there was still something worth admiring in this guy made him seem permanently counterfeit in my eyes. They should have gone for a different direction instead of trying to polish up his fake hero paint. It’s just a badly written character and played by an actor whose appeal seems to be eluding the majority of Lost fans these days. From all accounts, he’s a major prick in real life as well, so I’d hate to see him get any honors for that reason alone. This cast is top heavy with HUGE acting talent. This guy is at the bottom of the barrel. You have to ask yourself – what other show has a “hero” so uniformly despised as this one? Gotta be a reason for that.
Ehhh, sorry Gino. While I know what you’re saying, I think that Jack’s decision to abandon Kate and Sayid wasn’t one of abandonment but one of hope: he had resigned himself to a belief that his way of contributing was to cooperate with The Others and find a way to return for them. I don’t think that is nearly as illogical as you think it is. It is certainly frustrating that they forgave him so quickly, but I don’t think it damns his character or the actor himself.
Find a way to return for them? What were the odds? A trillion to one? And in the meantime the people that were already beating Sayid’s head in would likely have finished them all off. It was cowardly and self serving, and the only reason it wasn’t questioned was because the character has been written with hero paint, not textures or layers. The audience doesn’t question the cardboard hero they’ve been given, and neither does the actor. I liked his work as a junkie in the flash forwards, but on Island he was the same blustering, bombastic, whining jerk who not only hasn’t earned the hero cred, but really deserved to be called out for his failures. Most people I know just groan when he shows up on screen. Just a terrible, terrible character and an insipid, unlikable actor to play him.
…okay, Gino, I don’t want to beat a dead horse but being a bad hero doesn’t make Matthew Fox a bad actor, or Jack a bad person. He may have deserved to be called out (Trust me, he probably did), but part of this whole scenario is that Jack never asked to be a hero. Everything fell on him, and he tried to carry the rest of them on his shoulders. At times that became too much for him, and I think that someone like Sayid would understand that.
And the finale made it very clear the different between those two sides of Jack’s character: one is the painted hero, if you will, feeling like these people are his responsibility. Then, we see that in the future he regrets his decisions, his helplessness, his inability to be that hero once again. He goes from a person who is struggling being a hero, to a person who is struggling to become one again. It’s poetry, damnit! (That was a sarcastic damnit. I just think that the producers and Fox deserve a bit more credit for the character’s journey).
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I’m a year late to this story but your take on Jack and Matthew, Myles, is spot on. He should have submitted TTLG without question. Tale of Two Cities had nowhere near the display of his skill as the finale did. That scene between Jack and Ben is in my opinion Matthew’s most powerfully portrayed scene in the series. Hopefully, Matthew will not be overlooked this year as he has had an excellent season in entirety.
I’m also a year late with my comments but I totally agree with your assessment of Matthew Fox. The man seems to commits body and soul to his work which does serve for criticism (i.e. ‘Jackfaces’) but ironically enables him to give performances so wonderfully potent that I am often left scratching my head as to why he has yet to be awarded seriously for some of his work. I’ve yet to see anybody on TV (let alone on Lost) give as fine a performance as he managed to give in the S3 finale. I loved his showdown with Ben and his visceral reaction to the supposed shootings of Jin and co. But it’s his very last scene which still haunts, one year on:
“because I want it to crash Kate….I don’t care about anybody else on board. Every little bump we hit or turbulence…I actually close my eyes and I *pray* that I can get back.”
It’s just beautifully tragic and Fox sells the tragedy superbly.
I am quite astounded at the level of online hate for the character. I didn’t realise it was quite so bad. It does seem to have become a vicious pastime for some and I do get the impression that most stems from Jack’s pre-eminence over the other so-called”cool cats” (by and large Sawyer fans) but it’s never bothered me and I hope it doesn’t bother the actor who has done well with the material he’s been given. I think the writers know what they are doing with Jack’s reconstruction and am very interested to see how it all bodes for the final chapters.
I don’t understand how anyone prefers Hurley (the most irritating character on the island), Sawyer or Locke to Jack. Jack is the best thing about Lost. This “cardboard” assessment rings hollow to me- you claim he’s just a boring hero, but then take him to task when he doesn’t make the boring hero decisions?
If anyone deserves to be “called out” as a fraud, it’s Locke. Many, many times have I wished Jack would pound Locke into the dirt. I enjoy his character and his role as a foil, but I can identify with Jack on a personal level that doesn’t exist for me with any other character on the Island. Matthew Fox has turned in a special performance that is riveting in its intensity and turmoil from the very first episode.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s Jack and then everyone else and you’re welcome to everyone else.
“….and you’re welcome to everyone else.”
Josh! LMAO!
I agree. It’s strange how I’ve become almost protective of the character in light of the hate!
I think he’s one of the most interesting and awesomely acted characters on prime time TV!
I don’t really care whether Jack is a hero or not. I simply found him to be an interesting character and a lot more complex than most leading men in hour long television shows. Matthew Fox took a character that was set up to be a hero and instead revealed a complex and very flawed man who was forced to embark on a long, emotional journey to discover a lot about himself – both the good and the bad.
That’s why I believe that Fox should have won that Emmy a long time ago.