Alan Cumming, "The Good Wife"

Nomination Status: Two-time nominee for this role, so he shouldn't be ruled out. But GEEZ are some people gonna be annoyed if he takes a slot from a lot of these candidates.

In His Favor: It's telling that even though Cumming was nominated in this category last year and nominated in the Guest Actor field in 2010, he's basically an afterthought on this list. And Josh Charles, who was also nominated last year, falls all the way down to Other Notable Candidates. But Cumming does have two nominations and Eli Gold remains my favorite character on "Good Wife," so... Anything could happen.

Working Against Him: The writers struggled with Eli this season and tried to shoehorn the character into environments and plotlines that weren't necessarily advantageous to the character or the show as a whole. I don't think they gave him enough, Emmy-wise, but that sounds a little Katherine Heigl of me.