Last week, we named Rebecca Budig "Performer" for her standout work as Greenlee mourned Roger's death. Here we go again, giving the nod to an AMCer whose character has lost a parent. Same old , same old? Hardly.

Josh Duhamel, you see, doesn't do same old, same old. And there was nothing standard about his performance when Leo paid his final respects to mama Vanessa, only to discover that there was nothing final about her so-called death.

Leo's grief had three stages, in the first, acceptance, Duhamel committed totally to Leo's pain. Torso hunched, tears flowing, he shuffled across Vanessa's hospital room, mesmerized by her flatlined heart monitor. Then, he sat by her side, clasping her hand, voice breaking under the weight of his guilt as he said, "I guess I got what I was wishing for. You're finally out of my life." Heartbreaking.

Then, without warning, we were thrust into stage two: denial. Leo leaned over to the plant a good-bye kiss on Vanessa's forehead. His face was centimeters from hers when the "corpse's" eyes popped wide open - and Duhamel made Leo's flabbergasted reaction a full-bodied exercise in comic timing: He cried out in shock, bolted across the room, hopped from foot to foot and alternately used his hands to shield his eyes and to force them open to gape at the incontrovertible fact of his mother's resurrection. Hilarious.

Finally, there was stage three: bemused resignation. Leo emerged from Vanessa's room, shot brother David an "Oh, she's good" look, and broke into hysterical laughter. Shaking his head and jabbing his thumb in Vanessa's direction, he spoke this line: "She's baaack." Priceless.

You know AMC Creator Agnes Nixon's famous adage, "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait"? Well, Mr. Duhamel, two outta three ain't bad.