Mike is a regular recapper of Days of our Lives for Soap Central. He has been a fan of Days of our Lives for nearly 20 years, but he also watches The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and General Hospital on a regular basis. This is his fourth year as an official Emmy predictor for soapcentral.com.
Previous Predictions
2013: 4 for 8
2012: 3 for 8
2011: 4 for 8
In any case, I think this is probably going to be a battle between Days of our Lives and Y&R, and I expect Days of our Lives to emerge victorious for the second year in a row -- something I never thought I would be able to say, given the way Days of our Lives has been shut out of the Emmys in the past.
Who will win: Days of our Lives
Who should win: Days of our Lives
Jason Thompson's reel just didn't do much for me, and voters who weren't familiar with the story probably didn't really understand what was going on until they were nearly halfway through the reel. With Y&R dominating this category, I just don't see any way for Thompson to stand a chance of winning the award.
Christian LeBlanc's reel was a bit too over-the-top for my taste, and I feel like Billy J. Miller's reel probably didn't resonate the way it was meant to with voters who weren't familiar with the story, since they might not have realized that Billy Abbott was unwittingly carrying on a conversation with his daughter's killer in the first half of the reel.
For me, this is between Doug Davidson and Peter Bergman. I liked both reels, but in Davidson's reel, the camera is focused on Jamie during a good portion of Paul's monologue in the first half of the reel, and I fear that might hurt him a bit. The reel also suffers slightly from the fact that Paul moves around a lot throughout it, interacting with many different characters. Bergman's reel feels more fluid, and my only real concern with it is that voters who aren't familiar with the show might be confused and taken out of the scene when a man just randomly appears at the end to talk to Jack, as if he had been there all along. Fans of the show understand that the character -- Jack's father, John -- is a ghost, but will uninitiated voters?
Still, despite that small concern, I'm giving the edge to Bergman.
Who will win: Peter Bergman (Jack Abbott, Y&R)
Who should win: Peter Bergman
Heather Tom's reel drew me in from the beginning, but there's a lot of hypocrisy on display from her character that makes it hard for me to sympathize with her, so it doesn't really pack the emotional punch that it could have if Katie hadn't been pushing for Brooke and Bill to get together all along.
Arianne Zucker submitted a good reel, and she always delivers a good performance, but, again, what's going on doesn't really become completely obvious to anyone who isn't already familiar with the story until after the five-minute mark. Also, while this isn't really relevant (or shouldn't be, anyway), I have to admit that, in retrospect, it's hard to take Nicole seriously in this reel, since she keeps insisting that she'll never forgive Eric, and I know that she actually ended up forgiving him fairly soon afterward. That fact weakened the scenes for me when I viewed them for the second time in order to make these predictions, but it probably won't affect voters.
Eileen Davidson is the woman to beat here, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, I could say the same thing about Kristen that I said about Katie above, but, unlike Katie, Kristen is a villain -- I'm not supposed to sympathize with her, and she's allowed to be hypocritical because she's not meant to be the heroine or the scorned woman. But Davidson makes me sympathize with Kristen, anyway, and that's the mark of a great actress. Davidson was on fire in 2013 and looked like she was having the time of her life, and it shows in her reel.
Who will win: Eileen Davidson (Kristen DiMera, DAYS)
Who should win: Eileen Davidson
Steve Burton and Dominic Zamprogna each submitted good reels, but I don't think either was strong enough to secure a win this year. Also, as with some of the other reels this year, I think Zamprogna's reel might have confused voters who weren't familiar with the story, especially since two different Connies were being talked about in the reel, and that's never really made clear to people who don't watch General Hospital regularly.
This feels like a fight between Scott Clifton and Eric Martsolf to me, and while Clifton's reel was good, I'm giving the edge to Martsolf. His reel was riveting and fairly self-contained, and it wouldn't have taken any voter long to figure out everything that they needed to know about what was going on in the scenes, regardless of their level of familiarity with Days of our Lives.
Who will win: Eric Martsolf (Brady Black, DAYS)
Who should win: Eric Martsolf (Brady Black, DAYS)
I can't necessarily say anything bad about Jane Elliot's reel, and I know she's a fan favorite, but it just didn't draw me in like it should have. Frankly, I wasn't that interested in what was going on until the second-to-last scene. I just don't think this can compete with the meatiness of Y&R's storyline about the senseless death of a child.
That leaves us with Amelia Heinle and Elizabeth Hendrickson, and, honestly, I think it's a bit of a toss-up, but I'm going with Hendrickson based on the strength of that opening reaction to Delia's death (which we could see but not hear). Also, Heinle's reel suffers from the same fate as Egan's reel -- the same scenes were seen in Billy J. Miller's reel -- albeit only in the second half.
Who will win: Elizabeth Hendrickson (Chloe Mitchell, Y&R)
Who should win: Elizabeth Hendrickson or Amelia Heinle
If anyone is going to beat Massey this year, it will probably be Bryan Craig, but I just don't think that's possible. I do think Massey had stronger episodes that he could have submitted -- longer ones, mainly -- but what he ended up submitting should still be enough to secure the three-peat.
Who will win: Chandler Massey (Will Horton, DAYS)
Who should win: Chandler Massey
As an aside, Linsey Godfrey's reel is quite possibly the weirdest one I've ever seen.
Who will win: Hunter Haley King (Sumemr Newman, Y&R)
Who should win: Hunter Haley King or Kelley Missal
Who will win: Days of our Lives
Who will win: The Young and the Restless
