Best TV Performances of 2015 

Though Phil Miller is little more than a slob and hornball, Forte made his apocalypse-surviving character a funny, lovable schlub whose "Why not?" attitude covers a deep loneliness and longing for his old life. The Fox comedy\'s series premiere found Forte building an intricate comedy Jenga tower of sight gags, physical humor and dead-on line readings. In summary, his talent is the reason

Shaking with feeling and wielding Amy\'s phone like a battle-ax, Chlumsky finally wheeled on the incompetent President Meyer. "You have made it impossible to do this job," she barked, angry tears creeping into her voice as she scathingly enumerated Selina\'s faults. Chlumsky\'s greatest moment came when Amy, defeated, realized that she\'d been instrumental in ensuring that there\'d never be another female president, "because we tried one, and she f—king sucked."

Anderson\'s Dre hilariously and heatedly debated the use of the N-word after his adorable moppet of a son dropped it in a performance of "Gold Digger" at his elementary talent show. By the time Dre reached the school board meeting to decide Jack\'s fate, however, Anderson dialed down his character\'s emotional temperature, allowing us to see a man who — while not entirely certain about his beliefs — was determined to make sure his kid got a second chance.

Cash somehow found the balance between blistering cruelty and spot-on comedic timing during Gretchen\'s no-holds-barred rant insulting her closest pals — then later, she quietly, tearfully confessed to BFF Lindsay that her "brain is broken" by clinical depression.

Though he played Danny on a deeply internal level, Mendelsohn was a marvel at revealing a lifetime of misery in the subtlest of ways, as if every awful thing in Danny’s past, present and future was right there in his eyes, reflected back at everyone around him.

Whether tormenting Jerome\'s blind father, Cicero, with cheap humor ("Long time, no see!"), hamming it up in magician drag to entertain the guests at Lee\'s charity gala or getting pissed off when the audience wasn\'t appreciative of the terrifying show ("Well, clap!"), Monaghan was so good in his final episode of the Fox drama that it\'s hard to imagine the series ever finding a better (actual) Joker.

As Wu delivered a lovely (and technically proficient!) karaoke performance of "I Will Always Love You," dedicated to Jessica\'s new pal, Honey, the actress sweetly (and hysterically) communicated an endearing truth about her character: that she just wants to be liked.

Gustin\'s tearjerking performance as an uncertain hero with the weight of the world — and its many alternate timelines — on his shoulders made this a truly unforgettable hour of television. We barely held it together during Barry\'s just-in-case farewell to Joe ("Goodbye, Dad!"), as well as his long-overdue goodbye to his dying mother, which basically eviscerated what was left of our fragile composure. With each reassuring word, spoken through Gustin\'s tears, it was like we were the ones suffering from a fatal stab to the heart.

After weeks of bringing a sweetness and naivete to his self-absorbed Rogelio, Camil brought tears to our eyes in a moving father-daughter moment as Jane called Rogelio "Dad" for the first time.

When Floyd sat down to present a "respectable" counteroffer to Kansas City, Smart took revelatory dialogue and crafted a compelling picture of one tough mother, before showing Floyd\'s softer side later as she cradled her son Dodd\'s head.

As much as acting can be about words and how they are spoken, Carter demonstrated the power of a furled brow or pursed lips. Take her pivotal breakfast scene, where Ava\'s face barely concealed high anxiety while she engaged in what otherwise was a bucolic moment with Boyd. Seconds later, when Boyd slipped a diamond back on her finger, Carter showed us a woman pained by the memory of how joyous the original engagement was, seeing as now any future had a pall cast upon it by so many things, including her obligation as Raylan\'s CI.

at its weirdest, Theroux miraculously grounded the episode in reality by playing his deceased character\'s incredulity at the bizarreness of his purgatory and keeping a laser focus on the sanity-or-madness, life-or-death stakes of his situation.

His last line of morphine snorted, the brilliant mind of Malek\'s Elliot began to melt down, allowing paranoia of passersby and worse to set in. As Elliot went through his motel room detox, Malek employed the usual sweaty twitchiness associated with such a scenario. It was when Elliot started dissociating (further?) from reality, hallucinating the episode\'s next several acts, that his portrayer took his work to a new level, daring us to not look away when the addict (seemingly) took a grim new plunge with his habit.

As Hector tried to convince a prospective employer that he was more than just a walking rap sheet, Cabral brought to the surface months of pent-up anger, exhaustion and guilt — a raw, honest performance that had us sharing in Hector\'s hard-fought victory when he got the job moments later.

Jamie\'s rape by Black Jack Randall in the finale was a nasty, graphic, terrifying violation rendered heartbreakingly honest by Heughan\'s performance. The fearless actor shifted Jamie from defiant to resigned to seemingly removed from the proceedings, until Randall decided to sully Jamie\'s soul, as well. As a disoriented and gravely injured Jamie realized that he\'d inadvertently experienced a moment of pleasure at his rapist\'s hand, Heughan infused one facial expression with enough regret and sorrow to last several lifetimes.

Between Rachel\'s fake-down (that\'s a fake breakdown) over Adam, her attempted manipulation of Anna and her haunting exchange of "I love you"s with Quinn, Appleby delivered a stunning portrayal of a woman at her wit\'s end.

Thanks to the cocktail of fear, anxiety and unadulterated pain in Foster\'s voice, we felt every ounce of Liza\'s pain as she came clean to 26-year-old boyfriend Josh about being a 40-year-old divorcee. We could actually see the weight being lifted off Liza\'s shoulders, which made her masterful takedown of Martha Plimpton\'s blackmailing co-worker just a few scenes later even more impressive.

From the Fox smash\'s opening 60 minutes, Henson\'s keen sense of when to tap into her character\'s humor, toughness and vulnerability (sometimes all at once) made Cookie Lyon the blazing sun around which the addictive

universe revolved. Cookie may have been penniless and powerless as she reentered society and returned to the record label she helped build, but Henson\'s strength and other-worldly magnetism made us buy her character\'s unflinching confidence — and created one of TV\'s most instantly indelible characters in the process.

Farmiga put Norma\'s stunning duality on display as Romero tried to convince her that she had to give up an incriminating flash drive — a scene that allowed the actress to reveal her character\'s outrage, desperation and endearingly inappropriate sense of humor along with her sense of justice.

Davis\' work covered the gamut from terror to rage, from uncontrollable doubt to undoubtable control, as Annalise covered up Asher\'s murder of ADA Emily Sinclair. In one stunning scene that lasted a nearly wordless 45 seconds, Davis allowed us to see her character absorbing the sheer horror of an unheard phone call — and then just as suddenly, arriving at some finite realization. Later, when she begged her students to shoot her, her command of the room was so definitive, we almost couldn\'t believe any of them would say "No!"