Predicting the 2014 Emmy Winners: Best Direction

DRAMA

THE NOMINEES:

* Cary Joji Fukunaga "Who Goes There" (True Detective)
* Carl Franklin "Chapter 14" (House of Cards)

* David Evans "Episode 1" (Downton Abbey)

* Neil Marshall "The Watchers on The Wall" (Game of Thrones)

* Tim Van Patten "Farewell Daddy Blues" (Boardwalk Empire)

* Vince Gilligan "Felina" (Breaking Bad)

SURPRISED HE'S NOT NOMINATED: Rian Johnson "Ozymandias" (Breaking Bad)

SHOULD BE NOMINATED: RIAN JOHNSON FOR "OZY-FUCKING-MANDIAS"

James Whitmore Jr. for "Hitting The Fan" & Josh Charles for "Tying The Knot" would also be acceptable choices to be considered snubs if The Good Wife were smart and made each director eligible. However, CBS made a grave mistake, and there's a reason the show didn't earn a nomination here. That just leaves Rian Johnson as the biggest Emmy snub of 2014. 

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ACTUAL NOMINEES:

Predicting the 2014 Emmy Winners: Best Writing

DRAMA

THE NOMINEES:

* Beau Willimon "Chapter 14" (House of Cards)
* David Benioff & D.B. Weiss "The Children" (Game of Thrones)

* Moira Walley-Beckett "Ozymandias" (Breaking Bad)

* Nic Pizzolatto "The Secret Fate of All Life" (True Detective)

* Vince Gilligan "Felina" (Breaking Bad)

SURPRISED HE'S NOT NOMINATED: Matthew Weiner "Waterloo" (Mad Men)

SHOULD BE NOMINATED: Semi Chellas & Matthew Weiner "The Strategy" (Mad Men)

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ACTUAL NOMINEES:

Predicting The 2014 Emmy Winners: Best Guest Actor

DRAMA

THE NOMINEES:

* Beau Bridges (Masters of Sex)
* Dylan Baker (The Good Wife)
* Joe Morton (Scandal)
* Paul Giamatti (Downton Abbey)
* Reg E. Cathy (House of Cards)
* Robert Morse (Mad Men)

SURPRISE HE'S NOT NOMINATED: Harry Hamlin (Mad Men)

SHOULD BE NOMINATED: Robert Forster (Breaking Bad)

Although, for some reason, Forster and/or Breaking Bad didn't make the actor eligible to be nominated in this category, so I'll change my answer to Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones)

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ACTUAL NOMINEES:

Predicting the 2014 Emmy Winners: Best Guest Actress

DRAMA

THE NOMINEES:

* Allison Janney (Masters of Sex)
* Diana Riggs (Game of Thrones)
* Jane Fonda (The Newsroom)
* Kate Burton (Scandal)
* Kate Mara (House of Cards)
* Margo Martindale (The Americans)

SURPRISE SHE'S NOT NOMINATED: Carrie Preston (The Good Preston)

Not only does The Good Wife dominate these guest actor categories (Preston is the reigning champion of this category!), but I don't know how you can watch Preston's Elsbeth Tascioni and not immediately fall in love. I love her upbeat, perky attitude contrasted with her vicious attorney skills. Plus, her reaction to being called a "dirty, stinking Jew" by a man in a bear costume on the streets of New York is priceless.

SHOULD BE NOMINATED: Patricia Arquette (Boardwalk Empire)

Arquette's Sally Wheet was Nucky's connection both to the Miami port and to being a normal human being. In an up and down season for Boardwalk Empire, Arquette was one of the highlights.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ACTUAL NOMINEES:

The Overrated Dez Bryant

People's love for Dez Bryant is just astounding to me. My friends can't stop raving about him. Yahoo! has Bryant ranked as the 3rd best wide receiver over both Chicago guys and A.J. Green. ESPN is a little better and has Bryant ranked 4th. Even still, Bryant at best needs to be 5th maximum. So for all of my Dez Bryant bashing  that I'm going to do in this post, I still have him as a top wide receiver, but he needs to be lower in both people's Wide Receiver and ADP ranks.

I think everyone can agree that Calvin Johnson and Demaryius Thomas needs to be ahead of Dez Bryant. Megatron is the consensus #1 wide out because he's the best wide receiver in the game and Thomas has just been so consistent over the past two years while playing in the best system in the league. But the next few wide receivers is where it gets dicey.

5 Emmy Battles We're Looking Forward To Watching

True Detective vs. Breaking Bad

Easily, the most compelling battle of the Emmy ceremonies will be the final season of AMC's Breaking Bad vs. the rookie season of the HBO mini-series True Detective. In my humble opinion, Breaking Bad is the greatest television show that has ever existed, and it took Emmy voters (as well as actual fans of the show) a little while to get on board. After four great seasons of Emmy failure, Breaking Bad finally won Outstanding Drama Series in its fifth attempt. After AMC aired the final 8 episodes of the show, it seemed inevitable that Breaking Bad would repeat at the 2014 Emmy's. But then True Detective came along and declared itself eligible in the drama categories as opposed to the mini-series categories. I think the two shows will legitimately go head-to-head in four major categories: Outstanding Writing ("The Secret Fate of All Life" vs. "Felina"), Outstanding Direction ("Who Goes There" vs. "Felina"), Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Matthew McConaughey vs. Bryan Cranston), and Outstanding Drama Series. History tells us that True Detective is going to come out on top because great rookie shows have had great success in the past, but there's just no precedence for Breaking Bad finally winning its fifth eligible season either. I think we live in an age will voters will honestly vote based upon which one they legitimately liked more. But that's a coin flip. 

Taylor Schilling vs. Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Rookie Taylor Schilling from Orange Is The New Black is competing against the heavyweight Julia Louis-Dreyfus from Veep in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category, and I think Schilling is going to come out on top. There is a lot of precedent at the Emmy's for a great rookie show to dominate the main categories. Most recently, Homeland did it when it beat out incumbent Mad Men for Outstanding Drama Series and Damien Lewis beat out Bryan Cranston and Jon Hamm for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series back in 2012. Further, it's also extremely difficult to win an acting Emmy three times in a row. Both Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Claire Danes from Homeland are eligible to do that in 2014, and the odds of BOTH of them doing it are very slim. It's possible that Danes loses and Louis-Dreyfus wins, but my gut instinct tells me otherwise. On the other side, Taylor Schilling did incredible work for Orange Is The New Black. While her character Piper Chapman may not always be likable, that doesn't mean Schilling is doing bad work. On the contrary, that means she's doing an excellent job. I think 2014 is the year of Orange Is The New Black, and I believe that Emmy voters are just as big of OITNB fans as the rest of us are.

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.