Supporting Actress in a Drama

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama

Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet)

Lost

We first met Elizabeth Mitchell’s Juliet at the beginning of season three, as she became Jack’s all-purpose wrangler if you will. She brought him sandwiches, she played him Bob Dylan-style video tapes in an attempt to seize control, and she assisted in surgeries despite only being a fertility specialist. Throughout that six-episode mini-arc, this was all we knew about Juliet. Mitchell’s portrayal was certainly strong, but the character was just another Other as far as we could tell. However, with “Not in Portland” (The first episode back from hiatus), Juliet was thrust into the centre of the Others’ history, and Mitchell was up to the task. Throughout the remainder of the season, she became an intricate and powerful part of this ensemble, and at season’s end she was still as complicated and engaging as ever. Much like Michael Emerson, Mitchell had an incredibly tough task ahead of her. And, like Emerson, she stepped up to the plate with a performance worthy of Emmy consideration.

Juliet could have been a fairly mediocre character in the wrong hands. She has been used as a disruptive influence in the relationship between Jack and Kate, and became “the other woman” to the castaways as well when Jack brought her back to camp following their adventures. And yet, Mitchell always managed to create a character that we outwardly liked, even when they were doing somewhat evil things. When we learned that she was still working for Ben as she took Sun to the medical hatch, we as viewers wanted it to be false, wanted there to be some kind of explanation. Mitchell’s portrayal made us want to like her, something that could have been difficult considering who the Others are.

This season of Lost was all about humanizing the Others, providing them a perspective on this island. Without performance like Mitchell’s, I think the Others might have remained faceless villains, incapable of becoming part of the show’s mythology. Juliet became someone we outwardly liked through a complex back story, a relatable situation trapped between two sides, and by never completely showing her cards. The show asked a lot of Mitchell, and she stepped up every single time. I was never bored with Juliet, and I’m not sure I will ever be. Elizabeth Mitchell is now an integral part of Lost’s ensemble, and her ability to weave Juliet into the show’s complicated storyline is Emmy worthy.

Episode Selection: “One of Us” (Aired April 11^th, 2007)

Juliet’s second episode worth of back story, One of Us is a tumultuous journey through her time on the island, coinciding with her present struggle to become part of the culture at the beach. It is a fantastic portrayal from Mitchell that gives her a wide range of scenes that would pull any Emmy voter into her direction. She has so many that I had an incredibly tough time picking just one. Her nervousness before she heads to the island? Her breakdown after yet another woman dies during childbirth? Her smackdown of Sayid and Sawyer as she gather the medical equipment? All of them are noteworthy, but the one I must showcase is where she confronts Ben about his tumour. He had promised to cure her sister of cancer, and yet he has it himself: Juliet is unpleased, and Mitchell’s portrayal is honest and just fantastic. This is an acting tour de force, and it cannot be ignored.

YouTube – “One of Us”

Autumn Reeser (Taylor)

The O.C.

I’m basically going really far out on a limb here, but there is a definite theme with today’s selections and Autumn Reeser fits right in. Introduced as a stuck up villain for Mischa Barton’s Marissa who hooked up with the evil Dean Hess (It was embrassing for all involved), Taylor was a character left as almost purely one-dimensional…but then something happened. As the third season progressed, she began to change; her mother was seen as a tyrant, and she began to pursue a friendship with Seth, Summer and the gang. As the show progressed into its 4^th season, now Marissa free, Autumn Reeser was made a regular cast member. And, as a result, she became the scene stealer the show was clearly looking for. She was smart, funny, insanely charming, and she managed to make a relationship between Taylor and Ben McKenzie’s Ryan work far better than it should have. Basically, Autumn Reeser was one of the main reasons for The O.C.’s creative resurgence, and even though it’s a long shot and I once found her insufferable, I am going to put her under consideration for an Emmy Award.

The challenge for any new regular cast member, even one who was recurring before, is integrating into the existing cast. This, it seems, was Reeser’s calling. She managed to have memorable scenes with pretty much every single character. She had fantastic banter with Kirsten and Sandy, unconventional girl talk with Summer, the usual humour from Seth, and, of course, an actual relationship with Ryan. There was even some fantastic Julie/Taylor moments in there as well. And every single time, she stole the scene: when Taylor was in a scene, chances are she was the focal point.

And yet, Reeser always gave her a certain vulnerable side, never quite becoming entirely the neurotic mess Taylor usually is. On a show that often fell apart, Taylor was always consistent in her actions, and I think that any Emmy voters who see an episode of The O.C. for Emmy consideration will see her as a shining beacon of hope amongst teen soapiness. Even as an admitted fan of the show this season, I know that she has little chance of standing out. But, she basically knocked every scene out of the park, and in terms of supporting performances I can’t help but consider her seriously. A lot of things saved The O.C. this year, but Autumn Reeser deserves a large portion of the credit.

Episode Selection: “The Sleeping Beauty” (Aired November 30^th, 2007)

This episode isn’t actually her Emmy submission, as she decided to submit one of the more dramatic performances from the utterly awful story arc with her French husband showing up. However, this early season episode proved to me that this reboot of the show could work, and basically make the Taylor/Ryan relationship believable in one fell swoop. She has funny scenes with the Cohens, with Kaitlin Cooper, and of course with Ryan. She is funny, engaging, heartbroken, nervous…it’s a tour de force performance, and isn’t all caught up in annoying French husbands like she is in The French Connection. She manages, here, to be an emotional connection for the audience. The fact that she makes a contrived relationship work in this manner is deserving of Emmy attention, simple as that.

YouTube – “The Sleeping Beauty”

Julie Benz (Rita)

Dexter

Showtime’s Dexter is a fascinating character study, a drama that blurs the line between procedural and serial while investigating more its characters than its crimes. At the centre of that conflict, no doubt, is Dexter Morgan himself, but I have to hope that Emmy voters will be able to realize how important the supporting cast is to this series. Each of them portray a similarly damaged individual, just in different ways: there are no characters without some level of emotional distress, and they deserve to be considered. However, the nature of this series is that there is limited room, and decisions must be made. As a result, we shall consider Julie Benz, who portrays the emotionally damaged Rita. Attacked by her husband, raising her kids on her own, her relationship with Dexter is one of the show’s most important elements. As Rita’s own insecurities begin to evaporate, Dexter’s resurface. Benz matches the fabulous Michael C. Hall scene for scene, and the result is a powerful supporting performance worthy of Emmy consideration.

From the show’s very first episode, Rita’s character was clear: Dexter dated her because she was afraid of intimacy, having been assaulted by her husband. Benz brought to Rita a sense of insecurity that felt just as it needed to. She loves Dexter because he’s great with the kids, dependable, and an all-around good guy. She knows nothing of his vigilante justice, and that is what makes her character so powerful: she reacts to Dexter purely as a human being. But Dexter isn’t human, he’s damaged, and Rita is just an extension of that in his mind. This creates a gap: she believes them to be in one place, when inevitably he believes them to be in another.

As they came together throughout the season, eventually reaching much better terms, Benz remained the consummate supporting actress. Rita needed to be someone we can see Dexter loving, who we could see loving Dexter, and who we could see as someone damaged and yet trying to fight back. Benz managed to create someone who could be loved by a murderer, who could love a man who for some time could not show love, and who could be damaged at her core but hide it from her children. When she breaks down, it seems like she is shedding layers that she will pile right back on as soon as the discussion is over. Not enough people have seen Benz’s performance, perhaps, but more people need to be made aware: Dexter was one of the best new shows of the season, and Julie Benz was an integral part of the series’ dynamic.

Episode Selection: “Truth Be Told” (Aired December 10^th, 2006)

While Dexter’s finale ended the season-long Ice Truck Killer mystery, it didn’t have room for a resolution for Rita. As a result, Truth Be Told was really the final hurrah for Rita within the season. And, for the most part, the episode provided her with a lot of dramatic movement: faced with a druggie ex-husband being framed by Dexter (Quite excessively, too), she has to balance her new relationship, her old one, and being a parent amidst it all. Unfortunately, I can’t use YouTube to show you that performance, but just imagine that it was powerful and vulnerable. It’s a good choice because there’s a torrent of frustration: her anger with Dexter never turns into a full-fledged fight, but their relationship is different from their happier moments. For the sake of something, here is one of those happier moments.

YouTube – “Rita and Dexter”

Kelly Bishop (Emily Gilmore)

Gilmore Girls

This year, for the first time, Gilmore Girls is submitting in the drama category. This decision will certainly benefit the series, I believe, as it more directly represents the show as a whole. However, at the same time, it will also directly benefit who is arguably the series’ most important supporting player. Kelly Bishop has portrayed the Gilmore matriarch for seven seasons with a sense of grace, but she was rarely given a chance to be “comic” by popular standards. Sure, Emily Gilmore can be hysterical, but it makes more sense for her to be considered as a dramatic performance. As a result, as the series shifts over, so too do Bishop’s chances of finally getting her due. In the show’s final season, Kelly Bishop portrayed Emily Gilmore as a powerful wife, mother and grandmother in a way that was always real despite her wealth and status. As a dramatic performance, Bishop deserves to be considered for an Emmy Award.

This past season has been an opportunity for Emily to come to terms with her own life, as opposed to that of her daughter. Her life changed when her husband suffered a heart attack, and all of a sudden she was alone in many things. That sense of loneliness sent the always on the edge Emily over the cliff, in a sense. Faced with a new reality, a change in her routine, it required a lot of dramatic range from Bishop. At that age, where retirement and everything else kicks in, people are faced with a change of lifestyle, and Bishop portrayed it with a subtlety and vulnerability that was in line with Emily’s past actions.

Perhaps most importantly, however, was that Emily’s journey felt complete. After seven seasons of tense relations with her daughter, the season ended with her attempting to ensure that her connection with Lorelai would continue even as Rory is graduating. Their strained relationship was always important to the core dynamic, and to see it resolved in the finale was perhaps the most important moment from my personal perspective. What Bishop always brought to the role was a sense that Emily held a grudge, but that she also very much loved and cherished her relationship with her family. In her finale season, Bishop lived up to that history and delivered a performance worthy of Emmy consideration.

Episode Selection: “I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia” (Aired February 6^th, 2007)

A moment of crisis is always rife with drama: in this case, Emily is faced with her husband’s heart attack and struggles in the hospital to pull together. Her reaction is real, honest, and Bishop portrays her anguish with just the right amount of denial. While I think she had better performances, this is the one where she was placed in a tougher position. Remorse, anger, it’s all there. It wasn’t perhaps the most subtle of her performances, but I think it is certainly the one that might get a good amount of Emmy related attention.

YouTube – “I’d Rather Be In Philadelphia”

Patricia Wettig (Holly Harper)

Brothers & Sisters

Fans of FOX’s Prison Break will know Patricia Wettig from her stint as (Vice-)President Reynolds on the show’s first season before she mysteriously disappeared in its second, returning only for a brief cameo. Well, for those fans who might not be so interested in primetime family dramas and who skipped ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, it was the reason why she was absent. With her husband Ken Olin (A prolific director/producer on Alias) producing the ABC series, Wettig was drawn away from her presidential role for one somewhat different. And, while I’m sure it mucked things up over at Prison Break, Wettig made the right decision in the end. In Holly Harper, Wettig has a character with emotional depth beyond her introduction. Beginning as a volatile plot device from the Walker family’s departed patriarch’s past, Holly has since developed into an honest-to-goodness part of this ensemble cast. While some of the other supporting performances were perhaps more showy (Mainly Rachel Griffith’s turn), Wettig brought to Holly a sense of loss and independence worthy of Emmy contention.

Holly Harper was the other woman, the one that Nora Walker knew existed and yet didn’t believe was ever a real problem. The key theme of the season was Nora dealing with her husband’s past haunting her even after his death, and Holly was a big part of this. As she became an inheritor, and as she bought herself into the family business, Holly was a thorn in Nora’s side in a real fashion. However, Holly was rarely out to get Nora in the beginning. Wettig brought to the role a sense that she was willing to be civil, willing to be honest, willing to let things slide. Then, of course, things hit the roof and Nora couldn’t take it anymore.

Their tension was palpable, and it drove the show forward. As Holly battled with Sarah and Nora, she was often somewhat vindictive and it would be easy for Wettig to fall into that pattern. However, once Holly’s daughter Rebecca entered the picture, Wettig was given a more emotional side. We began to see the life she led without having to relate to this family, the life as the other woman with a daughter and a life to live. It is easy to immediately condemn the other woman, but I found myself warming to Holly by season’s end. Wettig brought to the role a sense of honesty, a knowledge of her sins and yet an acknowledgement of needing to move on from it. From beginning to end in her series run, Patricia Wettig embodied Holly Harper in a way that she could never have achieved with Prison Break’s cold-hearted president. Not only did Wettig make perhaps the best career move of the year, but she also delivered a performance worthy of Emmy consideration.

Episode Selection: “Grapes of Wrath” (Aired May 6^th, 2007)

Holly is at her most vicious here, reeling from the news that her daughter has moved in with the Walkers and the tension between her and Nora is most certainly at a fever pitch. Wettig has a lot of fun seducing Nora’s date for the weekend, her creepy writing teacher, but the real kicker comes from an end of episode food fight that is both funny and yet evolves into something much more substantial. Holly breaks down after the fight, realizing that she still misses William (Nora’s husband, her lover). That breakdown is the first time I really looked at Wettig for this award, and I think it convinced me she deserved it. It puts into context Holly’s actions, Holly’s inability to move on, just as it did Nora’s inability to move on before she put William behind her at some point earlier. Actually, Holly’s actually better at moving on than Nora is. And Wettig makes this very clear, matching Sally Field line for line and delivering an Emmy-worthy performance.

YouTube – “Grapes of Wrath”

Adrianne Palicki (Tyra)

Friday Night Lights

In a sea of supporting actress candidates, selecting Adrianne Palicki for Friday Night Lights was difficult. Much of my praise for Zach Gilford last week actually doesn’t apply to Palicki at all: his performance is about subtlety and teenage anxiety, whereas Tyra Collette is brash and acts far closer to Palicki’s real age of 24. However, what I realized as the season went on is that Tyra is a character with a great deal of depth beyond her apparent surroundings. While early season storylines had her sleeping with young oil executives (Which was sketchy for a 17-year old and never quite fit), she developed into a much stronger character as the season wore on. She may have been that bad girl who was on the wrong side of the tracks, but by midseason she was the girl who acted tough because her life was falling apart around her. While she might not excel at playing a teenager, Adrianne Palicki excelled at playing a girl who faced trouble with her head held high until she just couldn’t handle it anymore. And that performance is worthy of Emmy attention.

Tyra is the requisite bad girl, in direct contrast to Minka Kelly’s sugar sweet Lyla Garrity. She’s the bad influence on the coach’s daughter Julie, the love interest for resident bad boy Tim Riggins, the object of the nerdy Landry’s desires, and the special project for Guidance Counselor Tami Taylor. However, somehow Palicki managed to make each of these relationships incredibly compelling. Her scenes with Julie were playful, being just subversive enough without being deplorable. Her relationship with Riggins is complicated, with her feelings being varied and wavering at a realistic pace. Her scenes with Landry provided some great comedy late in the season, and working with Tami showed the bad girl side of Tyra breaking down.

And yet, I think the scene that I most enjoyed was Tyra heading into Jason Street’s hospital room with a bottle of liquor and shooting the shit while getting plastered. She was there to make a statement, screw with Lyla’s head, and yet she never quite took it to the level of outright “I’m going to screw your boyfriend”. She was this bad girl, so capable of being so, and yet she had some sense of a moral guideline. That moral guideline became even more clear as her academic future and her strained relationship with her mother became clear, including her battles with her boyfriends. Suddenly, her early season actions gained context they did not have before, and the result was that Palicki’s performance seemed that much better in hindsight. She is no household name, but Palicki crafted a character in a way that is worthy of Emmy consideration.

Episode Selection: “Mud Bowl” (Aired March 28^th, 2007)

I don’t want to call this episode Emmy bait, because that takes away from Adrianne’s strong performance…but it was Emmy bait. Waiting for Landry at a fast food joint in the pouring rain, Tyra encounters a rather creepy male. As Landry is late, Tyra gets up to leave and is followed by the man who attempts to rape her. She fights him off with a cigarette lighter, and falls into Landry’s arms as he arrives. Palicki’s performance in the episode is incredibly powerful in what could have been a tough storyline to pull off, and she’s also great in the rest of the episode as she warms up to Landry and all of his charm. To see this “bad girl” devolve into a mess following this traumatic situation was one of those moments where you realized how real Friday Night Lights was, and Palicki’s portrayal of Tyra is what makes that possible in this episode. But since that scene can’t be watched, here’s a scene of Tyra interacting with Matt and Landry.

YouTube – “Mix Tape”

Hayden Panettiere (Claire)

Heroes

When I previewed Heroes’ pilot back in August, I had the following to say about Hayden Panettiere’s performance as Claire: “The texas cheerleader is perhaps the most grating of the characters, although there is still nothing inherently negative there.” I don’t really know what that even means to be honest with you, but I do know that my opinion of Claire turned around drastically as the series went along. Perhaps more than any other character, Claire allowed us a glimpse at someone coming to term with their powers in a real way, without the grand world-saving idylls of people like Peter or Nathan. While her story started as her against her father, it was clear as time moved forward that he was simply protecting her…and then it all made sense. As part of this ensemble cast, Hayden Panettiere got to be the only actress to understand her powers not through some sort of contrived plot device, but through natural progression and understanding as the season wore on. I might not have been squarely in her court in the beginning, but I am now willing to submit Hayden Panettiere for Emmy consideration.

There is something instantly appealing about Claire, even if I found her grating in the beginning. A young girl realizing she has powers, she is forced to face the perils of high school while also hiding her true self from all those around her. This period provided some good material for Hayden: her on the autopsy table was a moment to remember, and her friendship with Zack was certainly one of the show’s most convincing outside of Hiro and Ando. However, that period of Claire’s life was really just the life she knew; as she struggled to figure out her relationship with her parents, she became curious. As she became officially part of the Petrelli clan after meeting her fire-starting mother, suddenly she was faced with a different dilemma: now that she knew who her real family was, where did her true allegiance lie?

And that is where the character came to a real high point. Now an integral part of the series mythology not just due to the ‘Save the Cheerleader, Save the World’ talk, Claire was forced to choose a side between her new family (Led by her triumphant hero Peter) or to remain loyal to her father as she knew him, Noah Bennet. As Claire’s story came into full view, it was clear that Panettiere was up to the task. Claire’s discovery of her true past, and of her true future, were compelling almost entirely because Panettiere never allowed the role to completely overcome her. Whereas other actresses might have been unable to handle the transition gracefully, I came to believe Claire’s transformation from high school cheerleader to world-saving heroine because it never jumped to extremes or gave into its gimmick (I’m looking at you, Ali Larter). While Heroes’ cast is certainly diverse, none of the other supporting actresses can claim as solid a season as Hayden Panettiere, and it’s why she is most likely to gain Emmy attention.

Episode Selection: “Company Man” (Aired February 25^th, 2007)

Remember last week where I discussed how this is the episode for which Jack Coleman (Mr. Bennet, Claire’s father) should be considered for an Emmy? Well, I have to say the same for Panettiere, who holds her own in this episode that gives her what I believe is her most genuine hero moment of the entire series. With her father in jeopardy, Claire shifts into full-on hero mode by going out of her way to help her father and save them all from a nuclear meltdown. By establishing her love for her adopted father, even in the wake of his betrayal of her, Claire was given just as much depth in this episode as her father. Panettiere waltzes through it all with a sense of childhood playfulness in the flashbacks and genuine heroism in the present, without playing things too harshly in the process. It is a strong performance, and one that is likely to garner her Emmy attention once her dramatic conclusion arrives at the end of the episode.

YouTube – “Company Man”