Saturday, August 28, 2010

Poll Results - What Show SHOULD win the Emmy as Outstanding Drama Series?


Our final Emmy Poll, and I wanted to get it out no so I can do a round-up of the Poll Results tomorrow. We had ten votes cast which is down from fourteen last year, but is at least up from the eight votes we had last week for the Comedy category. In a tie for fourth with no votes are AMC's Breaking Bad, Showtime's Dexter and HBO's True Blood. In third place, with two votes (20%) is last year's winner in this category, AMC's Mad Men. In second place, with three votes (30%) is the CBS drama The Good Wife. The winner in this category however, with five votes (50%) is ABC's Lost, which ended earlier this year.

There is one thing that rather surprises me about voting in this category, and that is that True Blood didn't get more – as in any – votes. I've never seen the show, though there are several episodes from earlier seasons on the DVR thanks to Space: The Imagination Station here in Canada (new episodes air on HBO Canada but the specialty channels do buy older season of shows that air on HBO... and Showtime if I'm not mistaken), but I expected that as with many of these cult type shows, it would have a rabid following that swarms a site that mentions there show. It wouldn't be the first time that happened here, notably in the Actress in a Drama category back in 2007 when there was a sudden surge of votes in a 36 hour periods, all but one for Patricia Arquette in Medium. But this time around my readers showed no love at all for the vampires and their lovers. Breaking Bad is another show that doesn't get much love around here. It's an excellent show but I wonder if most of the support for the show is channelled through Brian Cranston's truly outstanding portrayal of the good man who is turning bad as he sinks into the world of drug manufacturing and distribution. Dexter is another show which I think that, if it is honoured at all in this year's awards, will be honoured with an Emmy for its star rather than with a win for the series as a whole.

Turning to the shows that received votes in this poll, I'm going to dismiss The Good Wife in the category, and probably unfairly I am going to give the same reason that I did for Breaking Bad and Dexter. The Good Wife has an outstanding cast and looks at something that we are seeing increasingly in recent years, the politician's wife who has to stand by her husband when his personal indiscretions erupt into the public arena. That said, I think that if Juliana Margulies wins the Emmy as Outstanding Actress in a Drama there are, probably unfairly, going to be those who see it as the show's reward particularly if Christine Baranski picks up the Emmy in the Supporting Actress category.

Turning to the other two shows, I'm going to say that personally I think Mad Men will get it again this year, and I think it should (I don't vote in these polls; if I did Mad Men would get my vote). While the central figure in Mad Men is the conflicted Don Draper, played by John Hamm, there are plenty of stand-out characters and the show has a lot of depth. I guess I just love it. And I really don't care too much for Lost. That's a personal prejudice however. I stopped watching the show after the way the network suits and the producers handled the third season. It had an arrogant quality to it. Can't blame the show for that but you can blame the network executives and the showrunners. That said of course, I think it is highly likely that the show could challenge Mad Men this season. Not only did the show leave the air this season, but the truth is that it left the air on a high note unlike this year's other high profile Drama that ended this season, 24. I'm convinced that it is going to come down to Mad Men and Lost and I absolutely would not be surprised to see Lost win it.

Toby provided our only comment this time around: "I'm a "Lostaway" at heart and they really tried to answer as many questions as they could (an impossible task!) while at the same time providing something a little different in the storyline. (A shame that a BBC series beat them to the same conclusion by two days.) But it was appointment TV, one in which it held my interest so well that I wouldn't allow my family or friends to call me during the hour...." That's high praise from just about anyone, and I can see how, if someone made it over that "hump" in the third season, the show would become appointment Television. My problem is that I didn't make it over that hump and because of it I was never really able to catch-up (not I confess that I really had any great desire to). If I'm going to fault the series on that it is that if that third season had been done better, or maybe more responsibly, I'd have hung around abd become as engrossed with it as you obviously were.

No new polls for a few days, though I should be able to do a "what shows will be cancelled first" type poll that won't become irrelevant when a show is dropped before the poll ends. Tomorrow I'll be summing up the poll results for this year's Emmys and giving my own opinions as to which shows will win, no matter whether I think they should. Then tomorrow night I will not be liveblogging the Emmy's because I don't feel like running back and forth between the TV and the desktop computer. Instead I'll post a summary after the business is over.

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