Clockwise from left: Damian Lewis in Homeland, Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk Empire, Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead, Jon Hamm in Mad Men, and Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad. (Ed Johnson)

On Sunday night, as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were making history as the first two women to successfully elbow out a male host for the Golden Globes, audiences took in an unprecedented display of girl power. With Lena Dunham winning for Best Actress in a Comedy, Girls taking Best Comedy, and Julianne Moore winning for Game Change, we trumpeted a new era ... one in which women could not only captivate an audience but do so with an unlikable protagonist. (Hannah Horvath is no Tony Soprano, but she can be plenty unappealing at times.)

Many of the night’s other nominees, including the stars of Veep and Nashville, fit into the same category, as did the un-nominated (but still there in spirit) Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie, Laura Linney in The Big C and Laura Dern in the criminally under-watched Enlightened, which premiered its second season this week. This last is perhaps the best example of these hard-to-watch heroines, with Ms. Dern playing the most delusional, self-righteous and self-martyring female antihero ever to traipse through premium cable.

It was a great night for rude, crude, progressive women. Unfortunately, it was an even better night for Bad Men.

In 2007, when Mad Men won the Globes for both Best Drama and Best Actor, AMC’s new prime-time show featuring gin-swilling 1960s philanderer Don Draper as its protagonist was still considered edgy for a non-premium cable show. Today, networks feature increasingly despicable, morally complex and utterly doomed characters, and the awards tend to follow. In the last several years, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has seen fit to nominate a serial killer (Dexter), a U.S. Marine-turned-Islamic terrorist (Sgt. Nicholas Brody in Homeland), several corrupt politicians (Enoch “Nucky” Thompson from Boardwalk Empire and Boss’s Tom Kane) and the world’s most dangerous high school science teacher (Breaking Bad’s Walter White) in its Best Drama and Best Actor categories.

This year, four of these ne’er-do-wells crowded the Best Actor box, with accolades for Homeland’s Damian Lewis, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and Boardwalk’s Steve Buscemi. The only exception to the rule: the disgruntled-but-ultimately righteous Will McAvoy from The Newsroom. God save us when an Aaron Sorkin antihero is the closest we get to a good guy.

The rest are endemic of a new trend in millennial TV protagonists—men who are, if not quite villains, then at least Bad Men. At best, our guy is an immoral misanthrope and a latent misogynist. At worst, he’s a sociopath, one who may or may not be running an international drug cartel. Or a terrorist ring. If you’re lucky, he’s merely a serial killer who kills other killers. And the scary thing is: we relate to them. We empathize. And if they don’t already hate their wives and children, not to worry—we do. How can we not, what with the missus harping about domestic nonsense when there is a meth empire to run or a presidential front-runner to assassinate?

It’s not just awards-season accolades that reflect the shift away from shows about good guys: Homeland, Breaking Bad and Dexter beat their top ratings last season. The Walking Dead surprised even its biggest fans by shattering basic cable numbers with its season-three premiere, which saw an audience of 10.9 million total viewers, the “biggest telecast for any drama series in basic cable history,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

It’s not hard to see what attracts today’s audience to these characters. For the first time in our history, the majority of men will not be able to surpass their fathers in wealth or status. With the recession, record job losses and lack of affordable health care, the Great Emasculation is well underway. Thus our need for men who at least take a stand, for good or ill, men whose nihilism often stems from psychic trauma. Men who, if not kind or ethical, survive and even flourish under dismal conditions. They might not be heroes, but we respect them.

Unlike, say, their horrible wives.

Take, for instance, Jessica Brody, the wife on Homeland played by Morena Baccarin. Not only did she cheat on Sgt. Brody during his eight years in captivity and after he returned, she pestered him for “the truth” throughout season one, only to freak out about his embrace of Islam and finally kick him to the curb. Meanwhile, Brody tried—he really did—to be a good husband and father even as he plotted his terror attack. If only Jessica hadn’t been so nosy, if only his daughter Dana had shown him a little bit more respect, maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to run off with a bipolar C.I.A. agent.

Which isn’t to say that the protagonists of these shows ever voice any misogynistic tendencies. They don’t have to. It’s the programs themselves that turn the viewers against long-suffering wives, female colleagues and blameless children. A recent Huffington Post article on the 21 Worst Characters on television included the love interests on The Walking Dead, Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire. These shows, along with Breaking Bad and Homeland, all portray nosy, ineffectual matriarchs who are simultaneously ice-cold bitches, helpless victims and puritanical enforcers. We resent these women for the usual reasons women are often resented: because they are nosy, because they aren’t affectionate enough, because can’t keep their husbands from straying, because they are not always perfect mothers. Of course, they are driven to the brink by their husbands’ actions. But in a world that glorifies amorality, women are the spoilsports. They might be “good” (at least in relation to their husbands), but that makes them worse than bad. It makes them sneaky, shrewish and thoroughly unsympathetic victims.

Walter White is a Bad Men:

But Skylar is kind of worse:

Even worse, they are whores.

For instance, even though both Jessica Brody and Lori Grimes had the moral loophole of thinking their husbands were dead, we can’t help but resent them for carrying on with their husbands’ best friends. Betty Draper and Skyler White are also guilty of the cardinal female sin of infidelity, which is much harder to swallow, somehow, then when their fellows stray. (Poor Walter White has been at least sexually faithful to his wife, only to have her retaliate for his drug dealing by having an affair with her boss.)

Despite the flagrant violence of these shows, the Bad Men still tend to put “family first,” long after they give up every other social convention. And if they lash out occasionally (Draper’s constant bordering-on-abusive-relationships with his paramours, including both his current and former wives) or engage in stalker-level harassment (Walter White breaking into the house of his separated wife and refusing to leave), we sympathize.

In December, a 26-year-old Long Island man named Jared Gurman got into a fight with his girlfriend of three and a half years. They were arguing about The Walking Dead. Mr. Gurman—who described himself on Facebook as “an underappreciated person,” who felt that he should be “making more money at work”—took out a .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and shot his girlfriend in the back. She ended up with fractured ribs and a punctured lung and diaphragm, all for calling Mr. Gurman’s theory about the zombie apocalypse “ridiculous.” Fans of the show might recognize a certain irony: despite a plethora of semi-automatics and reasons to put one to his wife’s head, Rick Grimes never took a shot at his wife.

What a mensch!

Golden Globe nom-toppers. (Various)

Not too many surprises this year in the nominations, announced today, for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. This year, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will be making history as the first female duo to host the ceremony, held on Jan. 13., but other than that, it's all Lincoln (seven nominations), Argo (five) and Django Unchained (ditto).

In television, we're looking at dramas like Game Change (five), Homeland (four, including one for "The Bear" Patinkin), Downton Abbey and, yikes ... how did The Newsroom (two) manage to get on there? That's more nominations than Mad Men (one) received! Comedies remained from last year: Girls, 30 Rock and Modern Family topped the chart. HBO shot to the top of the chart with 17 nominations total, and in a distant second place came Showtime, with seven.

Read the full list below:

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Les Misérables
Moonrise Kingdom
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Silver Linings Playbook

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Richard Gere, Arbitrage
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables
Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Bill Murray, Hyde Park on the Hudson

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Maggie Smith, Quartet
Meryl Streep, Hope Springs

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Alan Arkin, Argo
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy

Best Director

Ben Affleck, Argo
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty
Tony Kushner, Lincoln
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Quentin Taratino, Django Unchained
Chris Terrio, Argo

Find out which star's daughter is Miss Golden Globe

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Austria)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
The Intouchables (France
Kon-Tiki (Norway)
Rust and Bone  (France)

Best Animated Feature Film

Brave
Frankenweenie
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians
Wreck-It Ralph

Best Original Song, Motion Picture

"For You," Act of Valor, Monty Powell & Keith Urban
"Not Running Anymore," Stand Up Guys, Jon Bon Jovi
"Safe and Sound," The Hunger Games, Taylor Swift. John Paul White, Joy Williams & T Bone Burnett
"Skyfall," Skyfall, Adele & Paul Epworth
"Suddenly," Les Misérables, Claude-Michel Schonberg & Alain Boublil

Best Original Score, Motion Picture

Mychael Danna, Life of Pi
Alexandre Desplat, Argo
Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas
John Williams, Lincoln

Best TV Movie or Miniseries

Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields & McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

Best TV Series, Drama

Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best TV Series, Comedy

The Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best Actor in a TV Series, Drama

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Actor, TV Series Comedy

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Louis CK, Louie
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama

Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife

Best Actress in a TV Series, Comedy

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway & Gellhorn

Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Julianne Moore, Game Change
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway & Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story: Asylum
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie

Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie

Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Cecile B. DeMille Award

Jodie Foster

You don't want Rick Grimes as your boyfriend. (AMC)

Have you noticed that in the last several years, most of the "brilliant" TV shows on AMC, Showtime and HBO star these dangerous, psychopathic anti-heroes? From Dexter to Don Draper, Nick Brody to Rick Grimes, Walter White to the ultimate don, Tony Soprano, one gets the sense that while the rest of American culture is taking one step forward on progressive women's rights issues, our beloved TV shows are moving us two steps back.

And what's weird is how we love these horrible men. "I'm such a Carrie" no longer refers to the ultimate Bradshaw, but the bipolar Claire Danes on Homeland ... the kind of gal who falls in love with a terrorist, despite the fact that he ends up subjecting her to electro-shock therapy treatments after they have sex. And they are still in love, or something! How sexy is that, ladies?

But wait, it gets worse...

From Newsday.com:

A Williston Park man who police say shot his girlfriend in the back with a rifle after a heated argument over the television show “The Walking Dead” was ordered jailed without bail at his arraignment Tuesday.

Jared Gurman, 26, of 516 Marcellus Rd., is being held on a charge of attempted murder after the shooting at about 2:40 a.m. Monday at his apartment.

A single round from a .22 caliber rifle pierced the victim’s lung and diaphragm and shattered her ribs, police said.

It's a funny thing, too: a quick glance at the weapons used in The Walking Dead shows a lot of .22 caliber rifles ...

Dish gets back their troubled heroes (AMC)

Which begs the question: Why now?

The new deal, according to The New York Post, has Dish paying AMC Networks and Cablevision $700 million in cash (to be stored in Walter White-styled locker), and in return, AMC will let Dish show their programming.

When the threat of Dish cutting off service first came to our attention, they were getting awful close to the 11th hour mark for the premiere of the season of Mad Men.

"Don't worry, this has happened before," a colleague said, referring to Dish's continuing war-time negotiations with Cablevision. But this one was different: the premiere came and went, and Dish refused to play ball, despite the fact that in the past year, AMC Network had split from Cablevision and was now a privately owned company run by Josh Sapan.

But Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead (along with Mad Men) are the three major staples of AMC's brand network. So why fold for the zombie show instead of the one getting all the Emmys?

It's pretty simple: while Breaking Bad is critically acclaimed, its ratings high for the series premiere brought them 2.9 million viewers. For The Walking Dead season three premiere, the record for the network was shattered with an astonishing 10 million tuning into the opening. Once Dish saw how many potential eyes they could be losing, reaching a deal with AMC was a no-BRAINS!-er.

Mark Margolis as Hector "Tio" Salamanca on Breaking Bad

“So you want to talk about Breaking Balls?”

Actor Mark Margolis was sitting in a streetside table at Josephine, the French café near his Tribeca apartment. The actor, who has an olive complexion and a fringe of white hair, is in constant motion: cracking jokes, doing impressions, and giving a running commentary on passers-by. After greeting a local by name, he turned back to us and smirked: “All these guys in the neighborhood wear the same thing: greased hair, white pressed pants ... they all look like they’re about to take a meeting with John Gotti.” (These goodfellas have a tendency to ask the actor if he’s “woikin,” which irks Mr. Margolis. “I want to ask them, ‘Are you woikin?’”)

Mr. Margolis’s volubility might surprise anyone who recognizes the 72-year-old actor for his work on Breaking Bad. On the hit AMC series, he played Hector “Tio” Salamanca, a character who is paralyzed and unable to speak (save the odd flashback), communicating solely via a small brass service bell.
Ding ding ding!

Making his first appearance in the second season of the show—back when Walter White (Bryan Cranston) was still ostensibly a good guy caught in a bad situation—Salamanca was introduced as the incapacitated uncle of ruthless meth kingpin Tuco. Ask not for whom his bell tolled! Prior to Tuco’s bloody demise, Salamanaca’s little chime became a surprisingly effective plot device: He used it to thwart Walter and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) when they tried to poison his nephew, then granted them a reprieve by declining to identify Pinkman to the police. (Tio would rather die than snitch.)

Subsequent seasons revealed Salamanca as more than just a geezer put out to pasture: As the former enforcer to Mexican crime boss Don Eladio, he still had enough sway to call in a few favors to avenge his nephew’s death. (Not that the process wasn’t laborious; when the hired guns showed up, Salamanaca needs to go through a whole Diving Bell and the Butterfly routine with letters on a Ouija board to let them know who to whack.)

Mr. Margolis was asked to describe the series. “It’s a show about a guy with lung cancer,” he said. “It’s a comedy.”

It was the finale of Season 4 that made Hector Salamanca a star: his suicide mission to destroy soft-spoken fried-chicken mogul-slash-drug kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Salamanca’s last stand might have been a figurative one, but no one will forget those final explosive dings, or the character’s furiously writhing face, now a popular meme. The intensity of that scene alone—which again, is played without the actor speaking a word—might have been enough on its own to earn Mr. Margolis his nomination for Best Guest Actor at this year’s Emmys.

Mark is “one of the sweetest, funniest gentlemen I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad’s creator, told The Observer. “Also, he’s one of the finest actors alive, regardless of whether the role requires him to speak or remain silent in a wheelchair, ringing a bell.”

“Mark has a distinct pedigree in the acting world and a respected reputation,” noted Mr. Cranston, “but his contribution on Breaking Bad came down to keeping it simple. And in our business, simple is hard. To convey a full range of emotion without saying a word, speaks volumes.”

In addition to his various TV roles, Mr. Margolis’ has appeared in every Darren Aronofsky film since taking a role as a math professor in the director’s breakout indie flick, Pi. You can spot him in brief flashes: As a ballet patron in Black Swan, a pawn shop owner in Requiem for a Dream, managing the trailer park that Mickey Rourke called home in The Wrestler. In The Fountain, Mr. Aronofsky created a role especially for Mr. Margolis: a “stoned priest.”

For Mr. Aronofosky’s upcoming biblical adaptation, Noah, starring Russell Crowe, Mr. Margolis traveled to Iceland to shoot several scenes; upon returning, Mr. Aronofsky tweeted, “Please give this legend an Emmy,” with a photo of the actor attached. He followed it up the next day: “to clarify: mark margolis an actor from my films is nom for his first Emmy. a veteran and legend an has never won anything. so help him win.”

Margolis as Salamanca with Giancarlo Esposito's Gus Fring

Mr. Margolis’ might be fighting for recognition, but he is recognizable ... sometimes to his detriment. Over the course of his half-century career, the actor has been cast in standout roles that attract a certain type of fan: Besides playing a Mexican gangster and a South American assassin in Scarface, he is most recognizable for having portrayed the HIV-positive Italian mob boss Antonio Nappa in HBO’s Oz.

“A lot of the people that stop you—well, they’re not nuts, exactly. They’re more like super fans,” Mr. Margolis said ruefully. “They think that I’m some sort of rich guy, that everyone in the movies is making the kind of money Angelina Jolie is making. They don’t realize that most of my life has been a struggle. Maybe the last 15, 20 years have been okay, I’ve been able to make a living.”

Once or twice, there has been a situation—when the actor failed to adequately acknowledge the “street thugs” who recognized him for his more badass characters, especially his turn in Scarface as a henchman in Alejandro Sosa’s Bolivian crime syndicate.
“I used to get these young guys on the subway coming up to me,” Mr. Margolis said. “They’d say, ‘You know that car scene with Pacino ... why weren’t you getting the drop on him before he shot you?”’

“I always tell them, ‘Because there was a script.’” Mr. Margolis rolled his eyes. He’s over it. As for that infamous Pacino car scene—the one in which Tony Montana tells Mr. Margolis’ character, “No wife, no kids!” before shooting him in the head—the actor has a couple of fond memories.

“The thing about Al was that you didn’t know when he was going to start being Tony. We’d be sitting in the car, and he’d just start in about how ugly all of us were—how between the four of us, we’d be able to make one good-looking guy.”

Despite playing a Mexican gangster, Mr. Margolis doesn’t speak Spanish, and has been called out on several message boards for his incorrect grammar in a certain flashback sequence. Still, he preferred that type of nit-picky criticism to the kind he received from some members of the Italian-American community for playing Nappa. “They’d always say, ‘Why is this heeb playing the Godfather?’”

Mr. Margolis’ came by his talent through serious training. After graduating from Temple University, he moved to the city and fell into a job with as a personal assistant to Stella Adler. “She was a god in the classroom, but out on the street she didn’t know which way was uptown!” he recalled. He would take the famous acting teacher to shop at Bloomingdale’s, help her carry her groceries home from the store, and check coats whenever she threw a party. “I had a real fixation with her. I was 19 years old and she was 60. That’s what a turn-on she was.”

He later took a class with Lee Strasberg, though he was soon bored by the Actor’s Studio director’s “tiny personality.”

He is married to Jacqueline Margolis, also an actor, and his son Morgan has appeared in small roles on shows like Dexter, CSI, Walker: Texas Ranger, and the Knight Rider reboot. The younger Margolis put acting on hold after the birth of his second child to focus on a more lucrative endeavor: he’s now the president and CEO of Knitting Factory Entertainment.

According to Mr. Margolis, his son was the one who came up with idea of moving the original Knitting Factory venue from Houston Street to Brooklyn in 2008.

“He’s an amazing kid,” Mr. Margolis said, shaking his head. “He’s so fucking smart. I don’t know where he got it from. When he was a baby in the ’60s, he was spending his time in vans with hippies, riding with us all over New Mexico, Arizona, you name it. If he was crying, we would blow pot smoke in his face to help him fall asleep. It’s amazing he can function at all.

“Of course, you could never do that now,” Mr. Margolis added, somewhat nostalgically. “They’d call child services. But I’m told I was a good dad.”

The Emmy Award nomination was Mr. Margolis’ first. He was up against some heavy competition, including Michael J. Fox as a conniving litigator in The Good Wife. (Mr. Fox and Mr. Margolis appeared together in the 1993 film Where the River Flows North. “It was a beautiful movie, but sad too, because Michael had just been diagnosed,” he recalled.)

It’s a testament to Mr. Margolis that he is not only perfectly convincing as a frustratingly incapacitated character, but that he manages to radiate so much hostility without being able to speak or move. With only the slightest facial tic—like the twitching pout of the lips in last season’s finale—you could feel the hatred Salamanca bears towards the rest of the characters as clearly as if he said the words out loud.

When asked about the nuances of his role, Mr. Margolis claimed that he took most of his cues from his mother-in-law, Shirley, a follies dancer who had suffered a stroke and remained in a nursing home in Florida. “She used to do this little thing with her mouth,” Mr. Margolis said, imitating the tobacco-chewing motion he used on the show. “She’d do that whenever she saw us come into a room.”

But how does one even get into the mindset of a dangerous drug cartel member who also happens to be an elderly stroke victim?
“You don’t play villains like they are villains,” said Mr. Margolis, who was recently seen on the stage in a upstate New York production based on the life of Bernie Madoff. (He was Madoff, naturally.) “You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.”

Although Mr. Margolis didn’t get his Emmy—in the Creative Arts Emmys announced Sunday, he lost to Justified’s Jeremy Davies—it seems we may not have seen the end of Salamanca: “I think they’re bringing me back for a dream sequence next season,” he said.

• 30 Rock
• The Big Bang Theory
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Louie
• New Girl
• Modern Family

Sorry, guys: Girls skews a little young for this crowd. All of the shows on this list are essentially perma-nominees at this point, but for Louie, which is so well-regarded among the establishment that its nomination seems likely, and New Girl, which is youngish but is sort-of, kind-of an actual hit on broadcast TV (unlike possible nominees like Parks and Recreation).

Best Drama

• Breaking Bad
• Downton Abbey
• Game of Thrones
• The Good Wife
• Homeland
• Mad Men

The Good Wife sneaks in just so broadcast TV is represented somehow; the rest are the five TV shows (yes, Downton is a series now, not a miniseries) that combined critical acclaim with your co-workers asking if you were caught up yet. (Poor, not-quite-loved Boardwalk Empire.)

Best Actress, Comedy

• Laura Dern, Enlightened
• Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
• Lena Dunham, Girls
• Tina Fey, 30 Rock
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
• Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

We stand by our prediction!

Best Actor, Comedy

• Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
• Louis C.K., Louie
• Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men
• Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory
• Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Now that perpetual bridesmaid Steve Carell is no longer on TV, there's a spot open, and perhaps it'll go to the guy who helped keep Two and a Half Men on the air, if in attenuated form. Mr. Cryer's already won an Emmy as a supporting actor, anyhow.

Best Actress, Drama

• Claire Danes, Homeland
• Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
• Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
• Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey
• Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
• Jessica Paré, Mad Men

Lots of turnover in this category! But presumably Ms. Hargitay will remain, constant, impassive, immovable.
Best Actor, Drama

• Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
• Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
• Kelsey Grammer, Boss
• Hugh Laurie, House
• Damian Lewis, Homeland
• Jon Hamm, Mad Men

With the exception of Hugh Laurie (whose show just ended), this is a party of all the ill-behaved men of cable TV.

Breaking Bad (AMC)

The battle of the networks vs. cable providers reached a boiling point last night, when some 14 million viewers subscribed to DISH Networks were unable to watch the fifth season premiere of AMC's highly popular, uplifting show about overcoming cancer with meth labs, Breaking Bad.

Whether negotiations between DISH and AMC broke down because of a breach of contract (says AMC) or because the network was charging too much for its service (says Dish), the outcome is hurtful to both parties. The ratings for Breaking Bad will be skewed negatively in the short term, since Nielsen only counts people who watch Walt and Jesse make meth during their original time-slot.

Meanwhile, AMC is enticing viewers away from DISH Networks with some pretty clever tactics.

AMC announced Friday that in order not to punish their fan base for having the wrong cable provider, they would be streaming the first episode online to DISH patrons. But don't expect that tantalizing offer to last. From the press release:

 "In response to DISH’s recent drop of AMC to gain leverage in an unrelated lawsuit, the network will provide DISH customers access to the highly anticipated return of the Emmy® Award-winning drama “Breaking Bad” on Sunday, July 15, at 10PM EST. AMC is offering a special live stream of “Breaking Bad’s” season five premiere to all DISH subscribers on amctv.com. Beginning at 3 PM ET on Friday, July 13, DISH subscribers can register for access to the live stream at www.amctv.com/breakingbad4dish.

Every cable, phone and satellite company other than DISH carries AMC and its popular programming, including "Breaking Bad," "The Walking Dead," and "Mad Men," in their basic package. AMC wants its loyal DISH viewers to experience the excitement of the "Breaking Bad" premiere at the same time as their friends and neighbors, and we want to give DISH customers an extra week to switch providers so they can enjoy the rest of the season."

Unfortunately for DISH customers, they only have that one week grace period to find a new provider: next week's episode won't be streamed, leaving viewers scrambling to find a friend who has Time Warner Cable or DirecTV. Of course, that friend might want to make a trade, seeing as they will be missing channels of their own.

DISH meanwhile, is giving out free Rokus to angry customers, another sign that providers are less willing to acquiesce to the demands of popular networks, which want to increase the rate they charge for transmission. From the perspective of the distributors, they might lose a couple of subscribers, but it's better than letting Viacom or AMC squeeze them dry.

Of course, these free perks now are nice, but who will end up paying for these blackout sessions? Why you will, of course, since once the negotiations are resolved (and they will be), you'll just be charged more to watch shows about zombies, meth, and advertising executives going through existential crises.

Required Reading: "Attention Cable and Satellite Subscribers: This Network is Being Dropped Because Your Provider is Being a
Giant Douche."

Time Warner, Dish Network, and DirecTv: the summer of their discontent

Several of us watching Jersey Shore reruns  last night suffered a rude shock when DirecTv rudely cut off our programming at midnight. Of course, we had been warned--a vague phone call earlier in the day, a hushed, automated voice telling us to call back our service provider, which we didn't because we thought they were going to try to upgrade us again-- but DirecTv's  inability to negotiate with Viacom portends a summer of bad news, television-wise.

No matter who you pick to serve up your TV, it looks like you'll be getting screwed. Here's how it breaks down.

1. DirecTv:  Because of Viacom's demands of a 30 percent increase from the provider, which would equal roughly a billion dollars, networks like Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon are currently unavailable for viewing. Viacom is hitting back hard with viral advertisements:

2. Time Warner: Well, at least you'll be able to watch the Olympics. Hearst-- which owns several local syndicate channels including six ABC affiliates, four NBC stations, one CW station, and a CBS affiliate--are duking it out over retransmission consent fees (Hearst is asking for a 300 percent increase). Monday morning, the stations switched to other local affiliates.

What does that mean for you? Well, if you're in the zones where these are affected (Honolulu, Portland, Kansas City, Lincoln, Neb., Boston, and Pittsburgh), you're going to have to with a lack of Telemundo (among other networks). Still, the Olympics will be covered...Time Warner promises.

3. Dish Networks: Due to expensive rates and low ratings, Dish dropped AMC Networks--which include IFC and Sundance--at the 11th hour like they've threatened to so many times before (sorry, fans of Breaking Bad!). But wait! Dish is offering a consolation prize to its subscribers...Free Rokus! Of course, that won't help us find out what Walt and Jesse are up to this Sunday, but you can always purchase the episode on Amazon Instant Video...though you'll have to eat that cost yourself.

Modern Family will win Best Comedy Series

Glee got all the Emmy love with a series show high 19 nominations -- The Pacific led all nominees with 24 -- but Modern Family was no slouch either. The ABC show seems almost manufactured in a lab with the way it combines the modern conceits of current series with the familiar tropes of classic sitcoms. That warm feeling of nostalgia is why voters will choose Family over fellow flashy newcomer Glee. Besides: Would anyone even call Glee a "comedy series?"

Jon Hamm will win Best Actor in a Drama

All Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston does is win Emmys. But this year, it just feels like there might be a sea change for no other reason than its time for someone else to win. His biggest competiton is likely Jon Hamm and don't be surprised when the dapper Don Draper takes home the trophy. Hamm has the Emmy "heat" -- he also got another nomination as Comedy Guest Star for his hilarious turn on 30 Rock -- and he's clearly worthy because of his performance. Lost fans hoping for a Matthew Fox win because the series wrapped up in the spring, however, shouldn't hold their breath. Don't forget: James Gandolfini didn't win for the final season of The Sopranos. Like Fox-y will?

Amy Poehler will win Best Actress in a Comedy

The beloved Parks and Recreation could only muster two nominations -- one for star Amy Poehler and one for best theme song. And while it does have a great theme song, expect Poehler to take home the one Parks trophy that will matter. There is history here: America Ferrara, Tina Fey and last year's winner, Toni Collette, were first time nominees on rookie-ish shows who won (Parks and Rec had a six-episode season one), and in all cases their victories seemed like a "shock." If Poehler were to win, people would certainly be surprised, but her work on Parks and Recreation -- turning her character from a one-note Michael Scott clone into a layered, well-meaning and original human being -- deserves as many accolades as possible.

Chris Colfer will win Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy

One of the biggest surprises during Thursday's nominations was Chris Colfer being selected for Glee. The young star -- who has no previous television credits -- is a scene stealer on the show as the newly out-of-the-closet Kurt Hummel. That's all well and good, but that Colfer can also flash Emmy voters his scenes from the Glee episode "Theatricality" -- which centered on Kurt and his dad coming to terms with their relationship -- is the cherry on top of what feels like an obvious win. Apologies Neil Patrick Harris: You're great. You just aren't Kurt.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien will win Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series

If you were an Emmy voter and had the chance to put Conan O'Brien on NBC one last time -- the Emmys are on NBC this year -- wouldn't you do everything in your power to make it happen, even if Conan wasn't the most deserving nominee? Thought so.

Of course, that implies that the old HBO is no longer relevant, which between True Blood, the Martin Scorsese-approved Boardwalk Empire and a second season of Bored to Death couldn't be further from the truth. The fact is, with Starz becoming a major player in television drama, with HBO continuing its run of excellence, with AMC building on Mad Men and Breaking Bad and with basic cablers like TNT, TBS and USA all hiring huge talents to work at their alphabet soup networks, cable seems to be headed to an even bigger renaissance than it has experienced in the last ten years. And cable has been on a constant upswing! Which begs the question: Seriously, why watch networks anymore?

NBC gets mocked all the time for its poor ratings and programming, but with numbers down across the board — spoiler alert: ABC isn't much better than NBC in many spots — this feels like another living wake moment for the Big Four. Look no further than the summer programming: AMC is revving up a fourth season of Mad Men; ABC is airing Scoundrels. And you wonder why cable gets all the good ideas? Underbelly could be The Scoundrels — early casting wish: Tom Wilkinson as the family patriarch — but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt, cast and crew unseen, simply because of where its airing.