I feel the Emmys decided It was time to fill GOT with nominations. Emilia IS the show. Obviously, talent was not being judged. Daenerys is the symbol of the show, so It made sense (to the Emmys) to give her the nomination. Can you tell what was her episode? Because if anything, at least It should be 3x04 aka. A Dragon is not a Slave.
… yes, I kinda agree, and I kinda disagree.
I think yes, they wanted to award the show with some acting nominations. But that brings the following considerations:
Talent and good acting should be number one when giving someone a nomination. After all the awards are supposed to reward acting, not popularity, not the “show’s faces”, or character preference. It’s supposed to be the acting.
Clarke is not nominated for talent or acting. Even if I were not to compare her acting to other actresses of the show, her own, is average at best, and really bad more often than not. So, I agree with you on that, the nomination reflects popularity, character’s or actress’, not talent or acting.
And so that kinda puts a big stain the the awards’ credibility. It’s a popularity contest, not a talent contest. Yes, I don’t think people, or myself, were oblivious about this, but this is so “in our faces” that it’s laughable and ridiculous.
Michelle Fairley perhaps didn’t have as much screen time this season, as needed to get a nomination. This was the big issue during the submissions, that I knew it was going to come out. Now, does that warrant a nomination for someone who has enough screen time, but no acting skills? My answer is no. If they wanted to nominate someone from the show, Clarke is the least deserving actress in the total 5 that were submitted. Having enough screen time and popularity should not be an indicator to nominate someone. If that’s the case, Anna Paquin is being robbed season after season in True Blood, if that’s the case, every CW actor, is getting robbed season after season. Fairley didn’t have enough screen time, and that’s on fucking D&D. I can understand that not giving her the chance for the nomination, but the talent speaks for itself. And let’s add here, that they decided to nominate D&D for Rains of Castamere, yet not Fairley. And it’s her acting, the core of the episode, the meaning, and the power of the scene in particular. Without her, it would have been an episode in which once more people get killed, in a game of thrones fashion. She’s the scene. So, till some point, her acting was not something you could overlook, or was imperceptive. Anyway, Fairley’s chances got diminished by minimum screen time (let’s go with this premise for now, but you’ll see I will disprove it in a minute, and show what really mattered here) and lack of good support (from the network and the producers).
Back to Clarke. It’s clear that Clarke’s nom has to do with publicity + network support. Make no mistake, HBO is pushing this like crazy. That’s the reason they submit her name and Harington since season 1. And that’s why I’ve been repeating it over and over again, that they are adamant in making these guys happen. They are eager to make them strong names in the show. But the thing is, they are not strong actors to receive and deserve nominations, and recognition. So, HBO’s job and their marketing department has to be extra difficult, and they have to promote and $$$upport the shit out of them. Problems they would have solved by hiring talented actors, who can be the faces of the show, and the recognizable and praised names for it.
I go back to talent, cause talent should be the reason someone is getting a nomination. I know the Emmys have a track record for repeating nominations, even though the actors don’t deserve it. Peter Dinklage is a proof of that. And it’s his third nom that makes more noise in my head of all of this, since you can clearly see they just wanted to recognize the show, but they didn’t want to recognize it for actual talent, otherwise, they could have chosen other actors in the category.
Truth to be told, I did not like either of the 3 male actors submitted. Harington for obvious reasons, Dinklage for a subpar performance, and NCW because he did good for 2 episodes, 1 in particular, but for the rest, he was just fine. And this is when you see how stupid Dinklage’s nomination is. NCW reached the mark with his screen time, and popularity (he was campaigning for it, especially for the Critic’s Choice), and yet, he did not get his spot, not because he didn’t deserve it more than Dinklage, but because the Emmys prefer a more familiar face, a recurrent “winner” and nominee, and a more popular actor, face of the show. So you see, this proves that, screen time meant nothing to them, they just went with the easiest and laziest choices, because they want viewership and GOT fans watching the award show, rather than to give credit to the actual deserving actors. This proves Fairley didn’t need the screen time to get nominated, this proves she had enough, but she isn’t as popular as Clarke, period.
From the actresses’ submissions: I like Fairley, and she was the only one deserving of the nomination. I liked Dormer’s performance this season, and she definitely could win the recognition, if she backs it up with popularity in future seasons. But for this one, it wasn’t enough, imo. A simple detail I found in the WIC.net forums: Dormer submitted herself, since HBO only submitted Clarke, Headey and Fairley. Lena Headey was not even given a chance this season. She’s 3rd or 2nd billing on the show, yet, Clarke got a nomination over her. I would have understood it a little bit, even if I hadn’t agreed, if she would’ve been nominated, instead of Clarke. Still not a fan of her acting. Sibel Kekilli submitted herself as well. I don’t think she stood a chance, but I liked certain parts of her performance this season. And who can blame her for trying, when Clarke was being submitted, right? In fact, she might be more deserving than her.
To close this up, I think this is just lazy nominations. HBO is putting big bucks on it, and the matter of fact is that, the show, and its acting (the one submitted) it’s not worth of praise. Basically this is the Emmys giving HBO what it does not deserve in terms of this show. HBO has great prestige, for acting, and quality of their shows (we could surely argue about this, but I’ll leave it at that), and this is the Emmys thinking the quality of their other productions is translatable to this show. It’s not. And I bet, barely a few of the judges watch the show, or even know what it is about. This idea gets reinforced in my head, when I think each of the actors submitted had one episode as their “feature”, and that after seeing all of them, there’s no way you can overlook some, or recognize others when there’s clearly no reason for it. I mean, how they can watch Michelle’s scene and go “meh”, and then go to Clarke’s and say “omg”. No way, right? Unless, they too are fooled by dragons and large scale production. Then I expected better from them. And not only that, but when we think that, they have to evaluate the entire body of work of the actor in the season, and let’s say that’s when Fairley gets overlooked but how does that explain NCW’s snubb, since he was present in most of this season; and how does Dinklage’s nom get any support, when the performance was overall subpar, with maybe a scene or two in which he was able to rekindle and bring back old Tyrion; and how that explains Clarke’s nom, when you can clearly see the dead eyes, and her doing nothing, not moving a muscle on her face during the whole season, and finally topping her scenes with her staring at the camera. It really makes no sense, other than, publicity $$$$tunt.
All of this laziness seems like they took the submissions list, and nominated the first name in the category for GOT. All of this seems like we need viewership, all of this seems like, who cares for talent, when we can have more people engaged in it with popular characters and or actors. This is a big trend the award shows are supporting, this is the reason why McFarlane and his stupid jokes happened last year in the Oscars, and this is why many new actresses/actors have a place they don’t deserve, when there’s actually pretty good actors out there, in their age range, that do deserve it.
Anyway, sorry for my rant. I just have a lot to say about this, but again, yes, I agree with you, yet I don’t think we should be saying that in a nonchalant way. Because it happens, doesn’t mean it should be that way. (not saying that you are doing this anyway).
And yes, episode 4 is her “feature”. Though I read “Rains” was, since she was first billing, but I’m positive about episode 4.
Thanks, sorry for the rant.
