Will TV’s Best Actress Get The Big Fancy Award For Best TV Actressing?

As “Doctor Who” went into the crapper this season (barely redeemed by a pretty good season finale) and “Game of Thrones” marched boldly on into mayhem and… wow, that was terrible: so where was the nerd’s heart to turn this spring?

For a rather tiny number of us, our lonely geek minds took to “Orphan Black,” a BBC America show that had its first season finale this weekend. How tiny a number? Well, episode eight of the ten-episode season had 170,000 viewers in the 18–49 demo. (The population of Jackson, Mississippi or Fort Lauderdale, Florida!)

Our tiny loyal contingent is enough to bring the show back for a second season, which is wonderful. But now we want more.

“Orphan Black” is about an English orphan, who is white. (Well?) In episode one, she comes back to… the non-English city in which the story takes place (an unnamed bizarre hybrid of New York and Toronto, where the currency clearly isn’t dollars but the NYPD definitely patrols), and discovers she has a twin! No wait, she’s a triplet! Uh oh, there’s… quite a few of her.

She’s played by Tatiana Maslany. Who? Yes. She’s Canadian. That’s not important right now. What is important is that she plays seven actual characters in the course of the show, which is about unraveling this mystery of clones cl-clone-clone-clones. And then sometimes she plays those characters playing each other. Which is insane to watch. Insane! The show shot from October through February, and she got about one day off, sometimes playing three roles in a single day.

Let’s hear from Professional TV Critics!

• “What dazzled me most about ‘Orphan Black’ this season was Maslany’s performance. If I had an Emmy ballot, she’d be on the Best Actress list, or at least three of the Best Supporting Actress spots. Or both. She never phoned in any of her clones,” says Jeff Jensen of EW.

• “It’s a great performance not just because you can tell each character from each other, but because several of the characters are so compelling that Maslany would be a knockout even if she was only playing one of them,” wrote Alan Sepinwall of HitFix.

• “Maslany is giving one of TV’s two or three best performances, a daring tightrope walk between being over-the-top and gimmicky and incredibly naturalistic while playing seven or eight different characters, at least four of them ‘regulars,’” wrote some dude at Grantland.

Etc. “An acting tour de force,” wrote Variety yesterday.

IT GOES ON. “Many professional men say lady is really good,” so it must be true! (No but seriously!)

And then, despite this TELEVISUAL MAGICKING, Claire Danes will get the Emmy for best actressing for most plastic face-moving. Or Julianna Marguiles, or whoever; Connie Britton’s hair, or that fun lady who is secretly Russian who is married on TV to that incredibly hot dude. Why is that guy so hot? He’s Welsh, did you know that?

Anyway. That would be unfair. The age of the big networks is over! We expect our American awards shows to honor the truly best, not just the “oh that TV lady was nice to me in the Ralph’s” or “Oh we have the same agent” or “my nanny loves that show.” We deserve more from our Los Angeles taste makers and awards voters. We demand the recognition of the actually groundbreaking. Claire Danes WILL BE FINE, she’s been through worse.

by Awl Sponsors

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Do people still get worked up over Vampire Weekend? There seemed to be a lot of Internet angst and aggravation accorded to their first two records, but hopefully everyone has come around to the idea that there are any number of more important things to be exasperated about. Anyway, their new video “features some major indie star power… the Ivy League rockers manage to run off an impressive list of dinner guests that includes Sky Ferreira, Santigold, both members of Chromeo, Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth and The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser.” If you can identify all of those people then you have almost certainly found someone better to be bugged by than this band.

“Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers”

Awl pal Matthew J. X. Malady makes the good point that waiting in line is what makes America great — even as we invent more and more “perks” that allow the well-off to line-hop at every opportunity. Our near future, sorry to say, is a two- or three-line class system. He does not even address TSA Pre-Check, which allows the elite to not only bypass the airport security line but actually get into their own line. (And keep our shoes on!) That’s where America is going. (See you there? No, not you, poor person, I meant the well-dressed fellow next to you.)

“Similar to Restaurant Week, Delivery Week is a two-week celebration of the best delivery restaurants. Seamless customers get to enjoy great dining for a great deal.”
 — Oh, man, it is already Delivery Week and I haven’t made plans yet for what I’m going to watch while I sit on my ass and sample the prix fixe specialties delivered to my door. Also, this is another thing the aliens will point to when they try to figure out what happened to the civilization which once dominated this planet.

Frank Lautenberg, who held both of New Jersey’s Senate seats, has died at the age of 89. Back at the beginning of the year when Newark mayor Cory Booker moved to muscle Lautenberg out of the Senate, Jersey politics savant Steve Kornacki wrote this reflection on Lautenberg’s career, which is worth a read.

• “Nikki Finke has been fired from the blog she founded, Deadline Hollywood, and will be leaving the company as soon as this week.”

• “As you may be aware, Sharon Waxman at TheWrap has just published a libelous, false, and defamatory story on her blog, in which she claims amongst other things that PMC has fired Nikki Finke from Deadline.”

• “According to people close to Finke, her PMC contract has a window, opening this month, that allows her to leave Deadline.”

• “Right now I am not going to discuss my Deadline Hollywood contract or my relationship with my boss Jay Penske. Why? Because I don’t have to.”

“This is New York: We all like things our own way. We all think we’re the best. I love New York City — every inch of it, even Staten Island, but I prefer to live in Manhattan. So, what? My friends love Brooklyn. Great! I think it’s time we shelve this antiquated story line about which borough is better and leave it for the Knicks and the Nets to decide. Live where you want. Do what you want. Be nice to people.”
 — What’s more irritating about all your friends who have moved to Brooklyn, the way they expect you to give up an hour of your life to the F train so that you can come visit them and eat overpriced Italian food that is only notable for the fact that it is being served in a borough where a mere two generations ago a collection of angry old ladies in black would have dumped you in their garbage river for attempting to sell the cuisine of poverty at that ludicrous price point or the way we’re all supposed to pretend that people who have moved to Brooklyn haven’t given up, that they can’t handle the intensity of Manhattan any more and would rather live in a less crowded space where you get more room for your money and everyone isn’t on top of you all the time and the pulse of existence is better suited for the gentle souls who would prefer to take things a little bit more slowly and avoid all the aggravation and nonstop craziness with which those of us who make the effort to stay in town contend? Like, terrific, good for you, move where you’re happy, but don’t expect me to participate in your little charade that you’re still living in New York, okay? You go to your adorable rummage sale in Fort Greene and then get your fancy $13 cocktail on Smith Street and pat yourself on the back: you may live in a suburb, but you live in the best suburb there is, because it is the closest to the greatest city in the world, and that’s something to be proud of. Anyway, here are some further thoughts.

Stay home! Darn some socks. Make your bed. Brush your cats. It’s one of those summer Mondays.