Lena Dunham, "Girls"

Nomination Status: This year's Louis CK!

In Her Favor: You may have read something about "Girls" this spring. And if you did, you may have read that Lena Dunham wrote, directed and produced an awful lot of the episodes, in addition to starring. Dunham had too many top-notch collaborators to be quite the female equivalent of Louis CK, but I think Emmy voters will appreciate what she did in "Girls" for many of the same reasons. It's possible that a Lead Actress nomination could be the best and simplest venue in which to recognize "Girls" and Dunham, though if it turns out that Emmy voters love "Girls" and give it a slew of nominations, Dunham will cruise into the acting field, rather than sneaking in, like I'm suggesting with her placement here. Oh and it also benefits Dunham that everybody who worked on "Girls" has a famous father or mother who's also an Emmy voter. [Nepotism jokes are funny. Wait. Not really.] On a tangential note, it would be incredibly interesting if Dunham, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler all managed to pick up Emmy nods for writing, acting and producing this year.

Working Against Her: You may have read some negative things about "Girls" this spring. That probably won't matter too much. Polarizing isn't bad when it comes to awards. You'd rather 50 percent of the people LOVE you and 50 percent HATE you than 100 percent think you're OK. I was also going to mention that "Girls" doesn't have such a big audience, but if you accept HBO's figures that 4+ million people watched each episode through some means or another, that's not so different from an NBC comedy and it's more than watch "Louie." So... Yeah. Lena Dunham doesn't sound like such a risk.