Margo Martindale, "Justified"

Nomination Status: Admired character actress caps off a breakthrough year with her first Emmy nomination.

In Her Favor: Casting Martindale as this past season's "Justified" Big Bad was a piece of inspiration matched only by the execution from the veteran actress and the show's writers. Mags Bennett has taken her place in the pantheon of small screen adversaries and Martindale elevated the performance of all around her every time she came on screen. Emmy voters can be a stick-in-the-mud group, but half of them have probably worked with Martindale over the years, making voters uniquely positioned to realize how great she was.

Working Against Her: While she's a familiar face, Martindale isn't a big name and FX has had recent difficulties getting nominations even for performances so outstanding you'd have thought ignoring them would be a crime (see Katey Sagal last year).