CarterMatt Awards 2016: Are Klaus & Caroline, Oliver & Felicity, Alex & Meredith, or Carol & Daryl ‘Ship of the Year?

While yesterday in the CarterMatt Awards we spoke about couples in the world of television who are already together and are hoping to potentially stay strong moving into the next year. For today, we’re talking about couples that many people out there want to see take some of those first steps — or take them again, in some cases. The category is called ‘Ship of the Year, and the sole purpose here is identifying some of the people who we personally feel are the best couples who are not currently together. They can be people who have broken up, people who have hinted at wanting a relationship, or people just in-demand by fans. There’s no real criteria here beyond that they could not have been an item at the time in which we started this category on December 13, 2016.

One other note: This is the first category of the year where we’ve had six nominees, mostly because we couldn’t narrow down the list further. (Basically, consider this a tie vote between members of the staff.)

‘Ship of the Year – The Nominees

Alex and Meredith, “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC) – Should “Malex” be a thing? It’s one of the most-discussed topics out there when it comes to “Grey’s Anatomy,” and it’s made all the more complicated given that it seems like the show’s still going in the trajectory of Alex and Jo as endgame. Still, you can easily make a case for Meredith and Alex being a compelling romance, given that they were such good friends for so long that maybe this incidentally started them down the road to something greater. While this doesn’t always happen in life, there are also plenty of examples of it turning out to be the case.

Carol and Daryl, “The Walking Dead” (AMC) – There are a lot of different things that need to be done in order for this relationship to happen. For one, the two have to actually meet up again, being that they’ve been apart from each other for a rather long period of time now. Still, there is something about the two of them that makes us feel like they could be apart for years, and then come back to each other and have almost the same exact connection. It’s a sweetness, and that’s rare in a world that is so visceral and violent.

Klaus and Caroline, “The Vampire Diaries” / “The Originals” (The CW) – Is this the most popular crossover romance on TV? We certainly feel that it, given that the two haven’t spent much time together over the past couple of years, but at the same time, there is still such a passion and an intrigue there to keep fans of the couple guessing. We consider much of the appeal here to come out of an opposites-attract sort of phenomenon. The two may both be vampires, but their philosophies on the world at times couldn’t be more different.

Liz and Reddington, “The Blacklist” (NBC) – We’re nominating this one with the assumption that what Reddington said to Alexander Kirk in the winter finale is not true, largely because there’s been very little reason to believe almost anything the man says. This ‘ship is one of the most popular online out of any that we’re mentioning here, but the love for it probably stems from the fact that these are two people with such a unique push and pull, and despite his habit of continually spawning danger, Red still does have an inherent need to protect his “Lizzie” at all costs.

Oliver and Felicity, “Arrow” (The CW) – At one point, it looked like these two were getting set to go down the aisle together — it’s been a rough year for Olicity. Maybe they’re a microcosm for 2016 as a whole? They started out engaged, and ended up with Oliver accidentally killing her new boyfriend. Still, it doesn’t seem like she specifically blames him for what happened, and there is always a chance that they could eventually work things out down the road. It’s going to take a lot of work, but they’ve gone through a lot already together. What’s another struggle or hurdle?

Stiles and Lydia, “Teen Wolf” (MTV) – There were certainly hopes for the two of them to have a little bit of a romantic future earlier this season, or at least before the Ghost Riders sent Dylan O’Brien’s character off to his own world. Now, we’re left largely to wonder precisely what could be in the event that he comes back; they’ve always had that same sort of friendship quality that we’ve seen with Meredith and Alex, but the main difference here is that there have been some clear feelings from Stiles’ side of things over the years.

Photo: NBC