Emmys 2016: Will Aziz Ansari, Anthony Anderson, or Thomas Middleditch win Comedy Actor?

While we’ve said that the comedy TV landscape has remained strong for a rather long period of time, the Emmy category for Actor in a Comedy Series has not always been the strongest the past few years. Part of that has been due to many of the best comedies, whether it be “Veep” or “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” being female-fronted. Also, you have shows like “Modern Family” where everyone submits as Supporting.

This year, however, we are willing to say that there is a significant return to form. All of the nominees in the category are really fantastic, and to go along with that, there are some other deserving people who didn’t quite make it. To us, that’s a real testament to the strength of the category.

Check out our full take on the category below, and be sure to vote for your favorite below! We’ll be back the morning of the Emmys on Sunday to give you the full results from our readers.

The nominees

Anthony Anderson, “black-ish” (ABC)

Aziz Ansari, “Master of None” (Netflix)

Will Forte, “The Last Man on Earth” (Fox)

William H. Macy, “Shameless” (Showtime)

Thomas Middleditch, “Silicon Valley” (HBO)

Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent” (Amazon)

Analyzing the field – Of this group, you can start by crossing out Macy, since we don’t think he has a huge chance this year — and we also still find “Shameless” a questionably comedy at best. We do think that everyone else has a small chance, but Forte probably is too much of an underdog at present.

Who should win – There are a few great candidates here, but we’re going to go with Ansari for presenting one of the best takes on a working New York actor out there, one that combined humor with realism and a perspective that we don’t often get a chance to see. “Master of None” was one of the most refreshing series of the past year, and we still don’t think it gets enough attention.

Who will win – After a year serving as one of TV’s funniest and most-timely series, Anderson could be poised to deservedly get gold on Sunday night. Given that he is #2 on our personal ballot ahead of Middleditch (who is consistently great but sometimes underrated because he doesn’t get the craziest of material on his show), we certainly would not be mad with this result.