And The Winner Is...
As thee TV queen, I have to give my thoughts on this year’s Emmy race before the nominations. With over 500 scripted TV shows airing every year across streaming, broadcast and cable, it’s impossible for one human being to watch even a fraction of the television content out there. I found myself a bit uninterested in the Emmy conversation this year on the simple account that I didn’t watch a lot of the heavy hitter contenders this year. I spent most of 2021 watching 30 minute comedies/dramedies more than anything else, but as always I have thoughts and opinions!!
Undramatic
The hour-long drama is considered the most prestigious format in television. No one wants to admit it, but people don’t take comedy seriously as a genre and this is apparent especially with entertainment awards. You can just see for yourself the lack of recognition The Oscars give comedic movies or The Golden Globes which insultingly group comedies with musicals, as if they’re comparable genres.
The Emmys at least honor comedy with separate categories but they always air their awards first and end the ceremony with the drama categories, as if The Outstanding Drama Series is the equivalent to Best Show Ever. Even then, a lot of the Outstanding Comedy Series contenders tend to run heavy on the dramatic side of the word dramedy, shutting out more light hearted and traditional sitcom fare. Read more on my thoughts on 30 min shows here.
So what happens when hour-long dramas start getting bad?
Prestige dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and more defined what is known as The Golden Age of Television. These shows made the Emmy race especially competitive but lately the pickings have looked paltry compared to yesteryear. If you look through the nominations, it’s filled with stuff that the general critical consensus is that they’re fine to good but not amazing, and certainly don’t have the rapturous acclaim that past shows used to receive. Killing Eve, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian, Bridgerton, Pose etc., all popular shows with one or two above average elements but most TV-philes agree that an Emmy nomination for best drama feels a bit of a stretch.
It feels like they’re just filler spots for only the two drama juggernauts out right now, Succession and The Crown, which both swept almost every category in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Even the Director’s Guild of America hilariously didn’t bother acknowledging other shows and nominated five episodes of Succession for their awards last year.
In contrast, the amount of acclaimed limited and comedy series has exploded lately, making the race extremely exciting that even the Emmys switched the ceremony order to have Outstanding Limited Series as the last category, not drama as usual.
Luckily a trio of new dramas, Severance, Pachinko and Yellowjackets, aired in recent months that have received the sort of acclaim and attention that seems fitting for an Emmy nomination.
The field still feels very thin and Succession will win everything anyway, but I’m glad the race is livened up a bit anyway from previous years. The Crown and Succession have still never competed in the same year and I for one am hoping 20223’s Emmys will give us that excitement for once.
Bloodbath
On the flipside, the comedy categories at the Emmys feels stacked to the wazoo. 2022 especially feels overloaded because several usual Emmy favorites came off of hiatus at the exact same time to create a perfect storm in the race.
Atlanta, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, Russian Doll, Ted Lasso, Hacks, What We Do in the Shadows, Insecure, The Flight Attendant, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Cobra Kai, Black-ish and Emily in Paris are all previous nominees, back in the exact same year competing for the coveted trophy. Thirteen previous nominees is already a lot to narrow down to eight nominees, but we cannot forget that several new acclaimed comedy shows aired as well like Only Murders in the Building, Reservation Dogs and Abbott Elementary that are all trying to stake their claim.
I’m most curious to see which previous nominees make it in. Atlanta came off of it’s four (!?) year hiatus with a third season that seemed to puzzle then fade in the public consciousness (for transparency, still haven’t watched it yet). Insecure was never an Emmy darling, only racking up a handful of nominations over the years. Its final season was a bit of a meandering mess in my opinion, but reviews were mostly still positive. I could see Issa Rae and Yvonne Orji returning in the acting categories but I doubt we will see a one for the show overall. Russian Doll similarly came back after a long break with a decent second season, but it again didn’t seem to make the waves that its predecessor did.
Personally, all my favorite comedies of the year were ones that flew under the radar but in my opinion have the writing, acting and inventiveness to go against the bigger names at the Emmys. South Side, Made For Love, Flatbush Misdemeanors, The Sex Lives of College Girls and Love Life all topped my list and it’s a shame that they received minimal campaigning from their networks that is necessary to make noise for awards.
Regardless, Only Murders in the Building was another excellent and funny show that has already racked up several nominations from other awards bodies and that’s guaranteed more at the Emmys. Can’t wait to root it for come September.
Animation
I’ve already written before on how animation has struggled to be seen as a diverse medium versus just a certain genre many times before and the Emmys is yet another institution that can never get it completely right. There’s a limited number of categories for animation to be recognized. Just Outstanding Animated Program, Short Form Animated Program, Individual Achievement in Animation and Character Voice-Over Performance (compare it to the live action categories that also have more technical and writing categories).
Most of the winners of the years for Animated Program have been adult animated sitcoms and I always felt that non comedy TV was overlooked (weird that this is the one category that ignores dramas!). I was especially mad in previous years seeing amazing adult dramas like Invincible and Undone get completely shut out. Though Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, an experimental fantasy show, won the Emmy last year and gives me hope that the tides are shifting. For 2022, I hope to see season 2 of Undone, a brilliant genre time travel piece exploring generational trauma and Arcane with its groundbreaking hybrid animation get nominations at the 2022 Emmys.
Broadcast
Broadly there’s two different types of television networks:
These channels are ABC, Fox, CBS, NBC, PBS and The CW.
"Unlike broadcast channels, cable channels like Animal Planet, AMC, or Comedy Central do not use public airwaves. Instead, they charge viewers subscription fees for transmission."
Even if you don’t know the difference between cable and broadcast, you most likely recognize it, broadcast network shows are less explicit and have certain content guidelines while cable has free reign to show what they want to their discretion.
Of course not every cable network (and now streaming) is showing softcore sex scenes and a mountain of curse words like an HBO show, but the freedom has allowed for more ambitious TV to be made.
Broadcast TV (especially on the drama side) has felt stagnant for a long time. Rote medical and police procedurals, flat cinematography and amateur acting feels the norm these days when you watch a broadcast TV show. It’s hard to believe that we used to get quality TV like The X Files, How To Get Away With Murder and 24 on broadcast.
Things are slightly better on the comedy side, usually there’s two or three shows a year making critical waves but their time at the Emmys are dwindling rapidly.
A broadcast drama hasn’t won the top prize since 2005 and a comedy since 2014. This Is Us has been the most acclaimed broadcast drama in the past decade and has received several nominations, but only won one major award, Sterling K Brown for Lead Actor. Similarly, Black-ish has been nominated for 25 Emmys yet only winning one for Outstanding Hairstyling in 2020. With both their final seasons wrapping in the first half of 2022, this will be This Is Us and Black-ish’s last chance at the Emmys, it begs the question of what’s left for broadcast going forward?
It makes the rise of Abbott Elementary even more impressive. The sweet ABC comedy about teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia elementary school charmed many at the beginning of the year. It broke streaming and viewership records and was considered a revitalization in both the mockumentary genre and in broadcast sitcoms.
As a long time fan of creator Quinta Brunson, she started off as a Buzzfeed and internet creator, it made my heart warm to see her success and I can’t wait to see how it performs at the Emmys and if it can break that broadcast stigma that’s been so pervasive as of late.
Enough Already
I’m so sorry, but I’m so fucking tired of biopics. The limited series race is oversaturated with them, none of them are that great and it feels like people make them for a cheap shot at an award versus actually having something interesting to say on the subject. After several strong years of limited series, 2021-22 felt especially disappointing.
I have no wish on Emmy nomination day for this category, I didn’t watch anything good the entire year.