Outlander – Emmy Watch: Final Sam Heughan, Caitriona Balfe assessment

On Tuesday, July 28, the moment is finally going to be here — the nominees for the 2020 Primetime Emmys are going to be announced! That ceremony will be broadcast at 11:30 a.m. Eastern time (8:30 a.m. Pacific time), and like everything else in this health crisis, it will be scaled back. We expect the Emmys themselves to also look and feel very much different than any that we’ve seen over the years. As a matter of fact, we don’t really expect any major awards show to be held in-person until a vaccine is successfully administered.

Anyway, for the sake of this article we want to take one final look at Outlander and its actors (most notably Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe) now that the campaign season has been over for a little while. Are we getting a sense that the needle is moving anywhere in their favor?

As we’ve said all along, the first thing to remember here is that this is by far the weirdest Emmy campaign season ever. Because of the lack of traditional events, we could see more surprises across the board in all categories. As for whether or not this helps a show like Outlander, we’re inclined to think yes … but not so much that we consider it a lock in any major category. As a matter of fact, we still won’t be shocked (sadly) if it gets snubbed again across the board.

Out of all of the categories, we still think that Balfe has the best shot — we’d put her odds at around 35% of a nomination. She’s not getting the placement on a lot of potential ballots we’ve heard about, but with the expanding of certain fields and her gut-wrenching performance in the season 5 finale, she is a good sleeper pick for a nod. Her biggest obstacle is the number of extremely big-name actresses eligible this time including Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, and Zendaya alongside critical favorites like Elisabeth Moss, Olivia Colman, and Laura Linney. That’s without even mentioning Jodie Comer/Sandra Oh or Viola Davis for the final season of How to Get Away with Murder.

For Sam, meanwhile, we’d place the odds more at about 10-15%. While Sam and Caitriona would be on our nomination ballot, the buzz just doesn’t seem to be there fully among actual voters. Right now the Drama Actor category seems to be leaning mostly to the stars of Succession plus Bob Odenkirk from Better Call Saul, Pose star Billy Porter, Sterling K. Brown from This Is Us, and others. It’s another crowded category this year for sure.

The odds for Outlander as a Drama Series are probably similar to Sam’s. The show’s worthy — as a matter of fact, we’d wager that it’s far stronger than some of the contenders this year. While Big Little Lies and The Morning Show featured great performances, we’d say that the individual parts of both are greater than the overall package.

Anyway, that’s where we view things right now … we’ll see what happens come Tuesday.

Do you want to see Outlander, Sam Heughan, and Caitriona Balfe get Emmy nominations?

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(Photo: Starz.)