My Personal Red Carpet

So the 2009 Emmy nominations came out today, with Lost earning 6 nominations, including Best Drama, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Emerson), and Best Writing (The Incident). While this might not be my favorite season of the show (it might end up being my favorite someday, who knows?), I was still happy to see it getting some respect even as it dove head-first into science fiction.

But six nominations still seemed like too few. Josh Holloway was great this year as Sawyer, and since "LaFleur" was one of the episodes submitted to the academy, I thought he was in a pretty good position for a nod. Former Supporting Actor winner Terry O'Quinn also turned in a great performance this year, not only as Locke in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", but also as Fake-Locke later in the season. O'Quinn deserves credit for keeping the usual wit and charm of the character while adding a swagger and arrogance to leave the audience feeling as if something was a little off about the Box Man. Some people felt like anything short of a win for Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet would be a travesty, but I've always thought she was overrated and never really connected with the character. If any of the female castmembers deserved, it would have been Evangeline Lilly. She brought it to a new level this season.

Anyway, all that Emmy talk got me thinking about my favorite acting performances of the series. This super-talented cast never disappoints, but there are certain moments, episodes, and character arcs that stand above even the usual level of excellence. My top 5-

5. Matthew Fox, "Man of Science, Man of Faith" through "Orientation"
I just watched these a few weeks ago, so there might be some bias here, and it might be cheating grouping three episodes together, but they told one complete story so I'm standing by it. Fox does a great job of displaying the inner turmoil in Jack as he confronts what Locke describes as destiny. I love when he tells Sarah, "I'm gonna fix you," right before the operation, then snaps out of it with a sense of embarrassment for getting so personal with a patient. I love when he yells at Desmond "You don't even know what you're running from!" as he chases him through the jungle, and"I married her!" when he asks what happened after that night in the stadium. Top notch stuff.

4. Michael Emerson as Henry Gale
I could make a list of my favorite Ben Linus quotes and moments, but that could take days. I'm going with the his undercover work as hot air balloon enthusiast and punching bag Henry Gale. For a character who has been shrouded in mystery for over 3 seasons now, this was Ben's coming out party in terms of deception and ambiguity. "You guys got any milk" was the icing on the cake. Emerson better win the Supporting Actor award this year. If you can turn Ben Linus into an object of pity, you've done some good work.

3. Terry O'Quinn in Deus Ex Machina
To me and plenty of others, this is the defining John Locke episode. It showed us that Locke's almost-pathological need for acceptance and love from a father figure (either Cooper or the Island) drives him to be trusting, even gullible, to a fault, and O'Quinn absolutely nails it. The scenes where he's crying outside Cooper's house and when he's pounding on the hatch yelling "why did you do this to me?" make the room feel a little dusty every time. Bonus points for the great fake hair he's sporting throughout. Pulling. It. Off.

2. Josh Holloway in "The Brig", Killing Anthony Cooper
Maybe one of my favorite scenes in the history of the show. Watching Sawyer take out 30 years of pain with that chain around Cooper's neck was hard for me to watch the first time. I was in the camp that Sawyer had already moved on, that he didn't need to kill Cooper, and that getting back to killing was the worst thing for him. When he puked in the creek after doing the deed, I felt vindicated. Now, it's obvious to everyone that that moment pretty much closed the door on his horrible past, so it makes that scene all the more satisfying for me. Kudos to Holloway on this one. I've always felt he was an underapprecaited on this show. I stumbled across him in "Sabretooth" last night on AMC, but I'll pretend that never happened.

1. Matthew Fox in "Through the Looking Glass"
The best episode of the series needed a truly astounding performance out of it's leading man to lift it into the television pantheon of greatness. Fox delivered. On the island, he was the determined, stubborn, uncompromising leader that I've loved since 815 crashed. Off the island, he was broken, rudderless and pathetic as a drug addict wandering through the death of his one-time-rival-turned-spiritual-role-model, Locke. What range! Who said Matthew Fox only has one move? He's no Derek Zoolander!

So many great scenes for Jack in this one. The pained look on his face and the subsequent beat-down of Ben after those three gunshots ring out over the walkie-talkie just kills me. The determination as he tells Tom over that same walkie that he's going to get all his people off the island - all of them - inspires me. The anguish in his voice as he tell Kate that he's sick of lying makes me sick. And the sense of relief and triumph he exudes as he makes the call to the freighter in defiance of Ben and Locke is the stuff for history books. There's no topping this one. If there was a "Best Performance on Film All-Time" award, this would get it.

Honorable mentions-
Evangeline Lilly in "What Kate Did", Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje in "The Cost of Living", Henry Ian Cusick in "Live Together, Die Alone", Emerson in "Cabin Fever", O'Quinn in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham", Fox in "Do No Harm" and the flashforwards in "Something Nice Back Home", Emerson in "Dead is Dead".