2015 Emmys: Is Jon Hamm, Bob Odenkirk, Kyle Chandler deserving Best Actor winner?

With the Emmy Awards coming up on Sunday, September 20, we want to do our part to prepare your for them now! This series of articles will continue across the next month, and we hope that by the very end, you find yourself getting your own personal ballot together and ready for one of our favorite awards shows of the year. (Granted, we’re somewhat biased since we follow the events of TV literally 365 days of the year.)

Today, the focus of our CarterMatt Emmy series is Best Actor in a Drama Series, which we think is an interesting category this year in that of the people nominated (yes, we’re bummed about the lack of Sam Heughan, Clive Owen, Lee Pace, and others), there should be a pretty clear favorite. The issue here is that we’ve thought this before and been duped by the Emmys twelve ways to Sunday.

The nominees

Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul” (AMC)

Jeff Daniels, “The Newsroom” (HBO)

Jon Hamm, “Mad Men” (AMC)

Kevin Spacey, “House of Cards” (Netflix)

Kyle Chandler, “Bloodline” (Netflix)

Liev Schreiber, “Ray Donovan” (Showtime)

Who should win – This should be the time for Jon Hamm. We think that this category has been somewhat more competitive in the past, and while we can see you making a case here for either Odenkirk or Spacey, they’re going to have other opportunities to win this and Jon was just as good if not better this year. He’s understated at times, but it takes remarkable skill to plan a man like Don Draper, who carries with him such an extreme amount of self-loathing and at times subdued restraint.

Who will win – Also Hamm. The Emmys are well aware of the fact that the man has never won, and we don’t see them doing to him what they did with Steve Carell and “The Office.” Maybe we see Spacey or Schreiber having a shot, but we don’t think enough voters are familiar with “Bloodline” and while we love “The Newsroom,” its six-episode final season aired a good nine months ago.

Photo: AMC