Just like last year, I’ve grown tired of all the other awards shows that come out this time of year…The Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Screen Actor’s Guild, the Producer’s Guild, the Director’s Guild, hell, Betty White’s birthday is going to be televised on NBC this week. So, naturally, it’s time for Alabama Liberal’s underrated/overrated awards, which hopes to do away with some of the group think, and shine a light on those really deserving of praise (but don’t get it).
Without further ado…[another great thing about these awards? It doesn’t take three hours to find out the winners.] Oh, and I tried my best not to pick the same winners as last year in the TV categories, but there might be some overlap, particularly in the overrated sections.
Part One: Television, Comedy
The Most Underrated Supporting Actress, Comedy (or Musical): Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock. She’s never won any of the big awards, and yet her Jenna Maroney is just as iconic as Liz Lemon or Jack Donagey.
Runner-Up: Megan Hilty, Smash. Is this show good? No. But she’s great in it.
The Most Overrated Supporting Actress, Comedy: Sofia Vergara, Modern Family…It’s not fair to keep picking on her, but it’s also not fair that she keeps getting nominated for this annoying, one-note work.
The Most Underrated Supporting Actor, Comedy: Jason Mantzoukas, The League. His Rafi character is insane in the best possible way. He takes the annoying stock character of “crazy friend” into an entirely new and fresh direction.
The Most Overrated Supporting Actor, Comedy: Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family…It’s not that he’s bad as the shrill, hysterical Cam, it’s just that he keeps winning awards, and if I have to judge Sofia Vergara’s character as annoying and one-note, whelp…
The Most Underrated Actress, Comedy: Mindy Kaling, The Mindy Project. The show itself isn’t great, but her performance in it most definitely is.
Runner-Up: Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation. She lost the Emmy to Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, the Golden Globe to Lena Dunham, and the SAG to Tina Fey…somebody give Leslie Knope her proper due already. This performance is usually nominated for all the awards but, so far, hasn’t won squat.
Most Overrated Actress, Comedy: Lena Dunham, Girls…Because Modern Family can’t sweep the Most Overrated section, and because she’s won a Golden Globe, scored universal critical praise, and even been featured on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (which called her “the voice of a generation”) and yet she plays most of her scenes with almost no variation. [Slightly annoyed but with a quiet smile + spinning into even more aggravated=most of Hannah’s reactions to everything.] Even Girl’s most passionate fans have to admit the show is more a triumph of writing than acting.
The Most Underrated Actor, Comedy: Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report. He’s been playing this buffoon for so long (and so well) that most people have that forgotten he’s acting.
Most Overrated Actor, Comedy: Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men…Don’t get me wrong, I like Jon Cryer and think he’s had to put up with a lot working on this show surrounded by ungrateful actors that don’t seem to get what a gravy train it is, but when he won the Emmy last year, my jaw dropped.
Most Underrated Comedy: Parks and Recreation. Unlike Community, Parks and Recreation sometimes gets nominated for the big awards, but it’s never won. And yet, it’s the most open, intelligent comedy currently on TV. Any show that can make small town politics hilarious is clearly doing something right.
Most Overrated Comedy: Last year, I said “any comedy on CBS.” Well, this year I’d like to limit it to just The Big Bang Theory…this show beat 30 Rock in the ratings every single week, and is the highest rated comedy on TV, but does that make it good?
Part Two: Television, Drama
Most Underrated Supporting Actress, Drama: Yvonne Strahovski, Dexter. I never drunk the Chuck Kool-Aid, so I really never knew she was much of an actress, but her turn on Dexter (as killer/love interest Hannah McKay) was surprising in the best possible way. She owned much of an otherwise weak season in a performance as vulnerable as it was frightening.
Runner-Up: Olivia Munn, The Newsroom. A lot of critics really hated The Newsroom (unfairly, I would say), but even the haters have to love Munn’s sexy but sharp economics reporter.
Most Overrated Supporting Actress, Drama: Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey…Basically playing herself and winning Emmys and Golden Globes for it.
Most Underrated Supporting Actor, Drama: The male cast of Boardwalk Empire. Such a strong lineup, I can’t pick just one. Between Michael Shannon’s deranged former fed, Jack Huston’s “two-faced” war hero, and Michael K. Williams’s bootlegger this show has the finest collection of male actors on television.
Worth a Mention: Jimmy Smits, Sons of Anarchy. As a love-struck, vulnerable pimp trying to escape the street life Smits gave his best performance in years.
Most Overrated Supporting Actor, Drama: The male cast of Downton Abbey.
Most Underrated Actress, Drama: I would actually consider “supporting” actresses like Anna Gunn and Christina Hendricks to be more in the lead category. So I would actually put them here, even though most other awards would list them as otherwise…and it wouldn’t help them anyway since they would be defeated by…
Most Overrated Actress, Drama: Claire Danes, Homeland…She’s not bad in the role. She’s just not the best out there either, and yet she keeps winning every award she’s up for.
Most Underrated Actor, Drama: Jason Isaacs, Awake. This show was so underrated most people have forgotten it was even on the air, but Isaacs (who previously blew me away on Showtime’s Brotherhood) did some incredible work. As a cop living two different lives, he was ferocious, intense, touching, and quite possibly unbalanced. This is the first broadcast drama I’ve ever seen where a performance made me feel like anything could happen in any given moment.
Most Overrated Actor, Drama: Damian Lewis, Homeland…There were moments in season 2 when I actually thought “Is Lewis TRYING to cry? Because it sure doesn’t look convincing.” He was great in season 1, but something went a little off the rails here.
Most Underrated Drama: Fringe. Five great seasons, but they’ve never been nominated for any of the major awards.
Runner-Up: Parenthood. Four great seasons, but they’ve never been nominated for any of the major awards.
Most Unfairly Hated Drama: The Newsroom.
Most Overrated Drama: Downton Abbey.
Runner-Up: Homeland…Season 1 was very strong, but something about season 2 just felt ridiculous to me. Somewhere around the mid-point the show really took a dive in quality.
Part Three: Movies
Most Underrated Supporting Actress: Ann Dowd, Compliance. Part of me just loves the story of how hard she fought to get a supporting actress nomination, but was ultimately beat out by…
Most Overrated Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver, The Silver Linings Playbook…She’s barely in this movie, and none of her scenes really pop. If Harvey Weinstein’s oscar promoting muscle wasn’t behind this film, would she really have gotten a nomination?
Most Underrated Supporting Actor: Matthew Mcconaughey, Bernie/Magic Mike/Killer Joe. It’s been a very long time since he’s been “the most” anything, but 2012 was a fantastic year for him. In equally devious, interesting performances he absolutely stole three very different films. His work in Killer Joe is the bravest I’ve ever seen from a major-league actor, and his Magic Mike strip-club promoter has a lot more layers than you see at first.
Runner-Up: Samuel L. Jackson, Django Unchained. He’s the best thing in the movie, and a far more worthy supporting actor candidate than Christoph Waltz.
Worth a Mention: Tom Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises. His Bane is the most unfairly hated performance in a movie last year. Yes, he’s no Joker, but he’s also a mesmerizing villain in his own right.
Most Overrated Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin, Argo…He gets a nomination for playing himself? I think we’ve all seen this shtick from him a few too many times, and Arkin isn’t even the best supporting performance in his own movie (that would be Bryan Cranston or John Goodman). Meanwhile, the names above get to sit at home…
Most Underrated Actress: Emayatzy Corinealdi, Middle of Nowhere. I’ll admit that I always have to look up her name when I write about this performance, but it’s worth it.
Worth a Mention: Jessica Chastian, Zero Dark Thirty. It’s hard to say that any actress who won a Golden Globe is underrated, but since it now looks like “J.Law” will win the Oscar, I thought I’d give Chastain the proper due for her great work in Zero Dark Thirty.
Most Overrated Actress: There’s really not one, but I’ll go with Helen Mirren, Hitchcock. She was nominated for Best Actress at both the SAG and Golden Globes, and it would have been a real shame if some of the more deserving contenders weren’t nominated for an Oscar because of it.
Most Underrated Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, Hope Springs. I don’t care that this is a hokey big studio romance with a feel-good ending, that only shows that you can give a great performance even in the middle of all that. Jones turned his usual performance (a dry, tough, taciturn old guy) inside out by asking “What’s it like to be married to a guy like that?” And then getting him to open up into the most unlikely of romantic actors.
Runner-Up: Dane DeHaan, Chronicle. He took us inside the soul of a killer, and made this the most sympathetic villain of 2012.
Most Overrated Actor: Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables…I’m not big on the film in general, but it stinks that Oscar voters had to choose between John Hawkes and Joaquin Phoenix for that final slot when they could have tossed out Hugh and had both of them in there.
Most Underrated Documentary: The House I Live In.
Most Overrated Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man.
Most Underrated Director: Josh Trank, Chronicle. The best first-person (or “found footage”) movie I’ve ever seen. He stages each scene with a freshness and vitality that felt nothing short of spellbinding when I saw this movie in a theater last February. I left the theater thinking “This is what J.J. Abrams wishes he could do.”
Runner-Up: Joe Carnahan, The Grey. The “Liam Neeson wolf movie” actually wound up being a powerful meditation on what it takes to survive, and whether it’s even worth it. Also featuring the most underrated cinematography of last year, and some great set pieces in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. [Plus, bonus points for that plane crash.]
AND: Andrew Dominik, Killing Them Softly. An unfairly brutalized film (it flopped at the box office and audiences apparently hated it) that Dominik fully delivered into a hypnotic, realistic crime masterpiece.
Most Overrated Director: Behn Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Even the people that love this film (and, I’ll admit, I’m not one of them) can’t argue that the direction is really what made it work. I say that because Zeitlin essentially stages “scenes” so loose they threaten to collapse right in front of you. I’ll always admire “unconventionally structured” films like this more than I’ll ever really enjoy them, and I’m glad he’s getting kudos (especially up against heavy hitters) but to nominate him over Kathryn Bigelow? Criminal.
THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO……….Cloud Atlas! I had to pick it. This thing got mild reviews, terrible box office, and yet it absolutely deserves to become a cult classic. The most ambitious, transporting, and thoughtful movie I saw last year.
Runner-Up: Promised Land. Another film that really did poorly at the box office, and never got the proper critical attention it deserved. This tale of one town’s tug-of-war over whether or not to allow natural gas drilling felt like a literary classic, and wound up being a cinematic one.
The Most Overrated Movie of the Year: Argo. It’s not that Argo is bad, but it isn’t that great either. It’s a B-grade film that is good, but not a masterpiece. You know what is? Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, either of which deserves to beat Argo for the best picture oscar, but probably won’t.
[Dishonorable Mention]: Les Miserables. The more I think about this movie, the worse it gets. It’s actually close to terrible, and an embarrassment to the best picture race.
Part Four: Books
Most Underrated Book: The Orphan Master’s Son. Just like last year’s winner for this category (the still-underrated The Submission) this book won critical praise but never really blew up into the bestseller it should have been. This harrowing tale through one man’s life in North Korea is as trippy as Alice in Wonderland, and, ultimately, a beautiful trip.
Runner-Up: Christopher Buckley’s They Eat Puppies Don’t They? This book was all but ignored last year. But if you’re a liberal terrified about the military industrial complex, maybe this hilarious, realistic book (in which a defense lobbyist tries to cook up tension with China so congress will buy into an expensive new weapon the country doesn’t need) will relax you…or maybe not, but it will fascinate.
Most Underrated Ending: Gone Girl. I know that a book THIS successful isn’t the most underrated anything, but a lot of people hate the ending. Those people are wrong.
Most Underrated Writing: People Who Eat Darkness. True crime books aren’t often noted for how well-written they are, but Richard Loyd Parry fully earns comparisons to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
Runner-Up: Every Day. Young adult books don’t receive a lot of attention for their prose, but when it comes this clean and artful, they really should.
Most Overrated Books: There are always some of these, but why focus on that? Truth is, anyone who is buying and reading books in today’s age should feel good about it.
But I love Girls!