4 Biggest Emmy Surprises That Shouldn't Have Been A Surprise

There are three things that are guaranteed in life: Death, Taxes, and Award Snubs. No matter how much an award show gets right, they will always get something wrong. Always. That same holds true for the 2014 Primetime Emmy's. They of course got things wrong. Many, many things wrong. Don't believe me, check out my 5 Biggest Emmy Snubs. Just ask any Tatiana Maslany fans. However, many of the fan's vitriol was misplaced. If they just had the correct expectations, then they would have expected the "snub", and then they wouldn't be so angry. Life is all about expectations. Here are some of the things Emmy fans should have expected and the 4 Biggest Emmy Surprises That Shouldn't Have Been A Surprise.

Downton Abbey Remains Strong

Hitfix's Daniel Feinberg does some amazing work predicting both the Emmy nominations as well as the winners. He incredibly predicted that Homeland would win Outstanding Drama Series and that Damien Lewis would beat out Bryan Cranston for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series three years ago. But I didn't understand why he was continually discounting Downton Abbey. He didn't think the PBS show was going to earn any nominations in the Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, or Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series categories. I asked him why (I think on Twitter?) and he said the decrease in quality of the show's last season combined with an incredibly deep field means no Downton Abbey this year. GoldDerby also agreed with Fienberg. I, however, disagreed. I predicted Hugh Bonneville, Jim Carter, Michelle Dockery, Maggie Smith, Joanne Froggatt, and the show itself would all earn nominations. The only one I was wrong about was Bonneville. The conventional wisdom was that only Smith (and maybe Froggatt, maybe) would earn a nomination. I even wrote on Twitter the day before the nominations were released that Downton Abbey's downfall was severely overstated. I was right. While this may have frustrated everybody (including me, as much as I love being right, Downton Abbey is a terrible show), it was obvious that the British show was going to remain strong. Do you know why? Emmy voters are lazy and are nothing but creatures of habit. The Emmy's have gotten a lot better recently nominating quality over everything, even if that means nominating a fringe candidate, but they are still human. I'd bet you dollars to donuts that most Emmy voters didn't get around to watching the last season of Downton Abbey, but still voted for it based upon its reputation and past seasons. That's just the way the Emmy's role.

Why Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black Wasn't Nominated For An Emmy

The short answer: There's just too much great television to watch right now and Orphan Black is a small show on a barely watched network, that Emmy voters just didn't have time to get around to watching the show; therefore, Emmy voters just haven't seen Tatiana Maslany's performance(s).

The long answer? Well, here we go.

We live in an incredible age of television. 20 years ago it was just NBC, CBS, and ABC fighting it out. There wasn't a whole lot of television for Emmy voters to watch. Life was simple. Then FOX and HBO starting coming along and producing amazing television. In the model of HBO's success, Showtime, Starz, FX, and AMC starting producing original content that was so great that Emmy voters started to take notice. We now live in an era where networks you'd never heard of like Orphan Black's BBC America are springing up as well as non-television networks like Netflix and Amazon Prime are creating original content. There's just so much damn original and great television series', that it's extremely difficult for an average Emmy voter to take time out of their busy day (remember, Emmy voters are NOT T.V. critics, and they do have day jobs) to watch a niche show like Orphan Black.

2014 Emmy Predictions and Hopefuls: Best Actress

Recently, the Emmy's released every person and show eligible in all of their categories for the 2014 Primetime Emmy's for their nomination ballot. This post is dedicated to everything related to Outstanding Lead Actress in both the comedy and drama series categories. It will be both who I think will actually earn a nomination as well as who I think deserves to earn a nomination. However, there is one main ground rule- I have to go off of the actual Emmy nomination ballot. Which means that if the actress isn't actually eligible to earn a nomination in real life, she's not eligible to be mentioned in this post. Makes sense, doesn't it? Let's begin!

DRAMA

WHO I THINK WILL GET AN EMMY NOMINATION:

- Claire Danes (Homeland)

- Connie Britton (Nashville)

- Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men)
- Kerry Washington (Scandal)

- Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex)

- Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey)

2014 Emmy Questions: Orphan Black

Click here for the introduction to The Cover 3's "2014 Emmy Questions" series

COLD, HARD LOCK NOMINATIONS: N/A

STRONG, EDUCATION GUESS NOMINATIONS: N/A

Full disclaimer: I have only seen one episode of Orphan Black, the pilot, and I was not a fan. However, I will not let my bias come into play here, as this post is an objective discussion about who will get nominated and win. In fact, most of the shows I like don't win and shows I don't like do win. Plus, with Orphan Black, there really is only one important question that needs to be asked:

QUESTION ONE: Will Tatiana Maslany get an Emmy nomination?