Emmy voters desperately need to watch more television
Yes, Succession and The White Lotus are tremendous, but do the Television Academy members know that other shows exist?
TV Features Emmy
What will it take for Emmy voters to broaden their viewing horizons in order to actually honor the best of TV? It’s a question worth asking on the heels of the 2023 nominations. It’s not a new phenomenon for the buzziest, most popular shows to occupy a huge chunk of the slate. This year, Succession, The White Lotus, and The Last Of Us dominated the drama categories. While a fascinating HBO face-off involves three shows deserving of accolades, I would like to scream about how they aren’t the only shows to leave an impact in the past year. You only have to watch television to know this.
It’s easy to look at, say, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series—featuring four mostly white male nominees from Succession and The White Lotus—and get dispirited. (Similarly, Succession and The Last Of Us cornered the nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor and Actress in a Drama). It appears voters only viewed or heard consistent chatter about these HBO offerings, and decided not to challenge themselves further. That meant no nominations for Andor’s Stellan Skarsgard, Bad Sisters’ Claes Bang, Better Call Saul’s Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks, The Diplomat’s Ato Essandoh, or House Of The Dragon’s Matt Smith, to name a few. Their respective shows earned nods elsewhere, so at least there’s some solace.
But what about the rest of the worthy contenders? Stars like Interview With The Vampire’s Sam Reid, Industry’s Ken Leung, or Evil’s Michael Emerson don’t stand a chance. Neither do hidden gems like P-Valley, Interview With The Vampire, For All Mankind, Snowfall, and Industry. Despite critical acclaim and a strong fandom, they tend to slip under the radar. (Yeah, shows like Good Times to Diff’rent Strokes, Halt And Catch Fire to Hannibal, and Superstore to Jane The Virgin, can relate). It’s emblematic of a persistent problem, more so with hundreds of TV shows premiering on different platforms every year now. That’s why it’s crucial to pay real attention; there’s no telling what project might deservingly break out. Look no further than Amazon Freevee’s delightful Jury Duty, which scored big.
Look, it’s increasingly difficult to keep track of release schedules. So, naturally, Academy members might favor stuff everyone is already talking about instead of doing the necessary homework to catch up, no matter how essential. It also partly depends on where—and on whom—networks and studios are placing their bets with FYC campaigns and Emmy promotions. Wednesday sneaking in with an Outstanding Comedy claim, or Emily In Paris in a previous year, are perfect examples. Netflix shows become constant online fodder because of things like hate-watching, viral TikTok dances, or other Jenna Ortega-related items, which means they secure eyeballs.
Apparently, that was all Academy members needed this year to bestow a nomination to Wednesday at the expense of other top-quality comedies like Reservation Dogs, The Other Two, Somebody Somewhere, The Great, What We Do In The Shadows, Ghosts, A League Of Their Own, and Never Have I Ever. The list could go on.
Even Ted Lasso’s weaker final season grabbed several slots above and below the line. It’s easier to assume Apple TV+’s celebrated comedy is still deserving if you haven’t seen (or been targeted with) much else. The Ted Lasso discourse never stopped churning, even though another noted comedy ended its sublime run during the eligibility period: Atlanta. It’s a long-running Emmys tradition to honor shows that have a history of wins and nominations. The Academy did this with ABC’s Modern Family, CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, and, going further back, NBC’s Cheers and Frasier. Now, some of you are probably thinking: Who cares? But egregious snubs take away from talent that merits more viewership, and therefore, more money—a vital thing to keep in mind during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. (None of the Emmy-nominated programs would prevail without writers and actors).
It’s criminal that Reservation Dogs, a coming-of-age show that beautifully highlights the Native American community, doesn’t have multiple trophies already. Ditto for Snowfall, FX’s stellar long-running drama that wrapped in 2023 without any fanfare. Series star Damson Idris’ excellent performance continued to be shut out, including for the final season. Succession’s Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong, and Brian Cox (for his two-episode run) got three of the top spots along with The Last Of Us’ Pedro Pascal, BCS’ Bob Odenkirk, and The Old Man’s Jeff Bridges. Once again, it’s an HBO-heavy lineup. Perhaps the Television Academy didn’t stop to consider how split voting might ruin the chances for the Succession trio.
This year’s nominations did show some surprises, though, with unexpected nods for The Diplomat’s Keri Russell and Bad Sisters’ Sharon Horgan showing that voters are willing to embrace some variety. Still, it’s a limited exercise. The nominees remain overwhelmingly and blatantly white and with so many coming from the same networks. It makes it harder to take the awards seriously. The only real way to break out of this pattern is for voters to experiment with watching more diverse TV than they’re used to if they want to credibly honor from within their industry.
[7/18: The article has been updated to change the misspelling of actor Ato Essandoh]
152 Comments
I demand that they nominate indigenous people and fatties, regardless of quality.
And you wonder why you are alone.
Shut up
Truly spoken like someone who didn’t watch the show, or won’t because they’re a closeted bigot.
Only if they’re neurodivergent and lgbtq+ though…
The Diplomat. It’d be nice if the AVC had heard of this show, too.
I watched it because I like the leads but it’s not exactly “prestige television”.
Where did I say it was “prestige television”? If you think this site only covers “prestige television”, I got new for ya…
The article is about the Emmys. Seems you’re suggesting The Diplomat is Emmy worthy.
Seems I’d say “The Diplomat is Emmy-worthy” if I thought that.
The Diplomat is what you get when Renny Harlin thinks he can do Le Carre.
Still a good show, and better than most of the the dreck they cover here. I love the political jigger-pokery.I don’t think anyone is suggesting it’s Dave Cornwell. I’m not.
It’s possible my expectations were set at The Americans.
The political side of it reminds of the best bits of The Expanse, which was the shit Avasarala pulled. Also, I love the gender-reversal in the two leads’ roles. Normally, it’s the woman of the couple who’s the social buttery, the informal-powered I-kn0w-a-guy type who gets stuff done behind the scenes, and the it’s man to who’s staunch, by-the-book formal-powered bureaucrat. It was great seeing Kerri frizzled out trying to read up on some boring treatise or law, and then see Rufus go and call some guy he played golf with six years ago in Taiwan or wherever and “solve” the problem for her.
I miss when trolls had to be funny, or clever, or halfway intelligent.
youre a cunt
How do we make the determination that these nominations are a result of Emmy voters watching insufficient television, rather than their having different opinions?The subheading asks, “Yes, Succession and The White Lotus are tremendous, but do the Television Academy members know that other shows exist?” The article later answers that question: “with unexpected nods for The Diplomat’s Keri Russell and Bad Sisters’ Sharon Horgan showing that voters are willing to embrace some variety.”So apparently these voters do know that other shows exist, even if not all of Saloni Gajjar’s favorites received nominations.
Another example is Black Bird, which snagged three nominations despite little critical fanfare. The three nominations are well-earned, too (I would love to see Paul Walter Hauser win for supporting actor in a limited series, but he likely won’t). Although I tend to think that the limited series category sees a bit more variety because they are one-offs. Voters either see them or they don’t—they can’t coast on reputation from previous seasons. With the recurring series, I do think there is a problem of coasting and concentrating nominations among too few shows. But I’m not familiar enough with the voting guidelines to put my finger on where/how that problem could be addressed.
Welcome to the world of clickbait titles.
Yes, this article is in the fine AVC tradition of reviews that complain that the show they are watching isn’t the one they wanted. You know, they whole ‘they should have done this’ type of review.
If the question is “What are shows or performances worthy of greatest praise?” and the answer is not “Reservation Dogs and everyone in it.” then no, they clearly haven’t watched. It is hands down the best half hour of TV going.
You’re under the impression that entertainment awards are based wholly on merit, rather than corporate insider business politics. Don’t take any of it at face value.
This probably speaks to me personally rather than a broader range of people, but I have heard a bunch about some of those shows, heard of a few others in passing and never even heard of a handful of others. I have watched almost none of them. I have a bunch of streaming services and the fact of the matter is, I just don’t have the time to sit there and binge on all of this stuff. Between a job, family and other options (board games, movies, books, going out for a night, etc.) there is just way too much content and my queue is like the hydra – every time I watch something, more series get put on there.I am sure a lot of the unnominated stuff is deserving, but that just speaks to the sheer volume of new content being thrown out there as streamers/channels claw for eyeballs. I have to pick and choose the stuff I watch because I will never get to all of it. Furthermore, part of that calculus is what is possibly going to get cancelled – I was really excited to get around to Paper Girls and it was cancelled after a season, so I decided to not even bother. I think it also speaks to the fact that, while unfortunately still important, awards like the Emmys are somewhat archaic. Awards should do something like “10 comedy shows we enjoyed this year” rather than an Emmy for “best comedy” or whatever – same for movies, music, etc. The era of monoculture is increasingly a thing of the past and institutions should keep up.
Yeah, I watch 1, maybe 2 shows at once with my partner, and maybe 2 of my own, at any given time, and I often feel like that’s too much.
I work in the industry and even I can’t get to all the shows. I usually have to make a snap decision after one or two episodes: do I continue watching now? Does it get backlogged? Or is it just not for me?It’s an impossible task to fairly watch and evaluate them all. Films are slightly less daunting but still similar. The Emmy and Oscar noms/winners are a combination of being the actual “best”, being in the zeitgeist for long enough to not be forgotten, and having a decent media blitz. At the end of the day, no award has ever changed how I personally felt about a show/movie.
Bad Sisters in the drama category and The Bear as a comedy maybe skewed some nominations.But it would also help if they limited the number of nominations to one per show/per category. 8 nominations for Supporting Actor/Drama from only 2 shows is a little ridiculous.
I agree about limiting the nominations per show. Let’s be real: Very few shows have more than one lead actor, let alone three. If you really, critically look at this season of Succession, the only real choices for lead actor are Culkin and Strong. Brian Cox is great, but his character (really old spoiler alert) died in episode 3 of the season and thus was only in snippets of the season after that. He was not a lead actor in the last season of Succession. He should have moved down to supporting actor.
I can see Bad Sisters in either the comedy or drama category, but I find The Bear being a comedy completely confounding. Is it because the academy still assumes 1/2 hr=comedy?
Maybe, or, probably the producers decided they’d have less competition in the ‘comedy’ category (fair, as people seem determined to give Succession every award imaginable).
Probably, although it is a little unfair to the straight comedies. Par for the course, I suppose.
I honestly think they dont give a fuck what genre they are , just as long as the ones they’re paid to promote I mean the ones they nominate get in somewhere
My stance is I don’t really care what the Academy does, and we should just ignore it. But egregious snubs take away from talent that merits more viewershipIs this true? Genuinely curious – is there data that shows that Emmy awards lead to more viewers?
Maybe not a huge spike in viewership, but I would definitely expect that they lead to more future opportunities for all staff involved on the show.
I should think that was definitely the case in the past and remains so now, but to a lesser extent. Keeping in mind that being nominated for and getting an Emmy serves as free advertisement for your show as well during that news cycle.I should think another issue is the ability of the actors and showrunners to advertise themselves for future work. “Emmy-nominated” is still a pretty big feather in your cap.
A major award conversation about a show also prompts the networks themselves to spend more on advertising it, and sometimes that extra bit of saturation helps.As an example from my own life, I had been mildly interested in Ghosts when I first heard about it, because I really enjoyed Rose McIver in iZombie, but the fact that it was airing on CBS gave me pause, because I have not generally been able to stick with CBS sitcoms for long. (Even today, the broadcast networks still have their own sensibilities, and the stuff I enjoy most tends to show up on NBC, ABC, or Fox, in that order.)But once it started getting nominated for awards and promotion of the S1 reruns ramped up, I finally decided to give it a try, and now they have a new devoted weekly viewer. So it can happen.
I can’t speak to streaming as I work in physical media but I can say that Academy and Emmy nominations absolutely lead to more viewership.
I would say it definitely effects the network’s choice to invest more in the show, as network execs view those awards as their awards
Yep, if they can find a way to connect an award to a new property they will:
“From the Secondary Boom Operator that brought you the Academy Award Winning Last of Us.”
I had seen the Diplomat image on Netflix but never thought to watch it until I saw Keri Russell got nominated. Glad I did, and she was great.
At the very least, actors winning Emmys get better jobs, so it promotes more opportunities going to more people who really deserve it.
Reservation Dogs is so good, really it is sort of an honor for it to be snubbed by the Emmys, putting it in the same category as The Wire, an all time great show that the awards shows are too mediocre to appreciate
I really think res dogs is the most under-appreciated show on TV. It is effortlessly shifts from humor to drama to social commentary, and it seems to do so without ever being preachy
Insanely charismatic cast, as well.People really don’t seem to get how deft it is. It can weather some pretty wild swings from absurdist humor to really crushing drama, and it never feels that abrupt or unmotivated. The control of tone is impressive.
Yes. I *suppose* I can let go of the performance categories (although no, fuck that, JENNA ORTEGA FOR WEDNESDAY?!?!?!?!?!) but it’s a fucking crime to not get a writing nom. An absolute fucking crime. The writing is goddam immaculate.
Wednesday is exactly what I’d expect an AI to come up with for a streaming service. Not the writing, but just the idea of doing it how Netflix is doing it in the first place.
Reservation Dogs makes me, and everyone I force to watch it, laugh out loud and tear up. It’s about as great as TV gets, to me. Wednesday is cute and fun but feels like a kids show, its a bizarre choice.
Wednesday is the *exact* kind of role that gets a nomination, though, right? It’s a big, eccentric character that invites conspicuous oddness and unsubtle, non-naturalistic choices. I don’t want to give Jenna Ortega shit, as she understood the assignment.But Reservation Dogs is asking for way more subtle work. Devery Jacobs (in S2E4 “Mabel” in particular) has such a hard task: to play a guarded, inexpressive teen who feels alienated from her community and emotionally shut down by loss, yet still desperate to share the burden of her grief before she drowns in it. How do you embody those contradictions? She does, though, and it’s really painful.
As a writer and lover of writers I can’t help myself: DID Ortega understand the assignment? Or did she understand what she WANTED the assignment to be and then try to do that instead?(I remain very salty about her bullshit power move that nevertheless got her what she wanted, which is a producer job.)
I don’t know what was on the page or how her performance differed, so that question’s unanswerable to me. Whether her creative liberties were excessive or not, I think Wednesday accomplished its goal, which was to be a genre-aware YA series with a precocious cool girl lead.Res Dogs deserved nominations. But given the current context of the SAG-AFTRA strike, I’m not too butthurt about a young and not-that-established actress standing up for her interests against legacy producers and succeeding.I’m mostly surprised that a show I’d call CW-tier is up for an Emmy against all these prestige-y streaming shows. (I also suspect Christina Applegate will win that category anyway because of the personal context behind her work on Dead to Me.)
You don’t have to know. She stated *herself* that she changed the dialogue of a scene because the scene took the character in a direction she didn’t agree with. She tried to ad lib her way out of a character choice that didn’t sit right with her. And while I might agree with her critique, what you DON’T do is just improvise dialogue because you dislike what was written. Nowhere did she state that she went to the staff writers or showrunners with those concerns. She pulled a flex. A flex that she has admitted *herself* was unprofessional. And that sort of move, accompanied by frequent very public complaints about the show’s treatment of the character, helped get her into a position as producer on the show. So now whatever temper tantrum she decides to have about the character has to be endured.I say all that with the biased, unfair invective of a person who fucking hates the way writers get treated in the industry. Outside of that behavior, which made me incredibly angry, I quite like Ortega. I thought she was great in X, I enjoyed her in Scream. And I think she has good instincts when it comes to the character of Wednesday! I think her critique was well argued! But the way she went about addressing it was fucking nonsense. And her legion of stans have been insufferable about it. You can love a performer and admit when they’ve been an asshole. (It’s even crazier to me when SHE’S THE ONE WHO ADMITTED SHE WAS AN ASSHOLE!)Let’s not pretend that Ortega was fighting some noble and righteous battle against the AMPTP when she pulled her move on the show, okay? She wasn’t so “young and not-that-established” to get the lead on a Netflix show after having a second lead in a horror movie about a 1970s porn shoot. This is trying to frame her in some heroic ingenue role and it’s nonsense. She was an actor having a moment of egomaniacal character ownership that she was able to turn into *actual* influence on the production. Kudos to her.
And the elevation of Willie Jack and Cheese has been really welcome. Moving off of mopey Bear and Elora and onto two characters with legit interesting arcs was really welcome in s2.
As time has passed, I actually think it’s kind of cool that The Wire never got nominated for anything. It’s almost like the show was so realistic that it didn’t even read to the Academy as theatrical. Like they just thought that it was a sad reality show or something. And now it can stand forever as the prime example of some glaring blindspots in the industry.
I wish I was able to get into it but holy crap I got like 3 episodes in and it’s amazingly depressing, I don’t need that.
This is why I don’t listen to people’s comedy show recommendations s these days. “Haha, you’ve gotta watch Junk’d! It’s funny!”“Yeah? What’s it about?”“It’s about a woman who keeps trying to kill herself because her toddler got into her opioids and ODed and died!”“WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK?!”“Haha, yeah, it’s hilarious! She’s on first name terms with all the social workers and paramedics!”
It’s really not that bad, but whatever
Their entire situation is depressing as hell.
The Wire was never gonna win anything due to the way the Emmys make shows fall into neat structures, like giving your actors “limelight episodes” where they get a big scene or monologue to secure that acting nomination. Like, I struggle to name any episodes of The Wire beyond “Boys of Summer” and “Clarifications” because that show just wasn’t structured like that, and even those two episodes I can think of because one showcases the dramatic shift in setting for season 4 and the other features the death of a very particular character.And it sucks, too, because it limits the way showrunners and writers and directors can work with the TV format.
All you had to say was…
The other actor in the pic you posted in Kirk Fox. He is also in Jury Duty and that drove me fucking crazy. How would no one recognize this guy? Sure, you probably wouldn’t know his name. But he’s been in a million shows! I liked Jury Duty but that broke it a little bit for me. (Also, he was given absolutely nothing to do.)
Well if the actual AVClub doesn’t cover 90% of those shows listed, then why should the Television Academy?
That’s…a completely fair point. There is something ironic about AV Club ignoring many of these shows and then complaining that an organization that generally looks to the press to determine trends/tastes doesn’t give enough attention to shows that they themselves ignored.
Ironically, complaining about the Emmy’s ignoring TV shows while also ignoring TV shows- The AV Club
“Does this Cheerio look like Cousin Greg? An A.V. Club Investigation.”
22 slides later …”so..I guess we dont know ?, please create content for us for free by engaging in the comments section”
“10 Succession Characters Who Most Look like A Cheerio.”
“Succession Cheerio Power Ranking: How did your favorite cheerio fare this week?”
(74 page slideshow)
I feel like that’s more of a Ringer thing.
There’s like four people working here now.
And three of them are busy refreshing TMZ.
Ouch.
Wait, this site covers TV shows? With, like, articles and reviews?
As you mention, there are hundreds of scripted shows, and presumably several dozen of them are quality. I’ve all but entirely automated my job, and I can’t keep up with them. For someone like Alan Sepinwall, it is his job, and he’s made a point of saying he can’t keep up with all of them. For people in the Television Academy who actually vote, I would imagine they spend most of their waking hours (pre-strike) working on set and thus don’t have time to devote to watching TV for the sake of more “informed” voting. (As an aside, no one “desperately” needs to watch more television, though a great deal many people could stand to watch less.)Ultimately, it seems natural that voters would gravitate towards the more zeitgeist-y shows they’ve heard—I’m not quite sure how one would reconcile that? (I suppose this website could take a metaphorical look in the mirror and recognize, “Oh, we’re a pop culture news aggregator and thus we help set the conversation on what’s even in the zeitgeist—perhaps we could diversify our regular coverage to encompass shows like Reservation Dogs and Industry beyond maybe a token article per season?” But of course taking accountability would be a bridge too far when you can complain instead.)Or perhaps the solution is to stop allowing Emmys their cultural cachet and cover the TCA Awards instead? Those nominations seem much more your sensibility. (Yes, I know the forces of capitalism will never allow this, but still.)
Lots of very excellent points in there.
Emmy voter here. And you’ve got it exactly right. Many Emmy voters are working people with day jobs (or night jobs… or swing shift jobs… or significant overtime hours… production is not kind to human sleep schedules), which is to say most have time to watch what they enjoy – or have heard of through the grapevine or sites like AV Club – and maybe a handful of alternate options at best, and no time to watch anything at worst.The number of potential nominees for a single category (which we vote on BEFORE the nominees proper) can exceed well over 100, and they run the gamut from long form to short form(typically web shows tied to a more traditional TV series) to TV movies. Depending on the category, we may be voting on multiple episodes of a show or even the entire series. So if it’s something we haven’t already invested in, the likelihood of taking it all in and appreciating it in its proper context is tough. That’s not hundreds of hours of television but thousands that’s submitted for consideration.FYC events and screeners can actually be useful tools to expose us to shows we otherwise wouldn’t be interested in or aware of, but that’s assuming we have the time to watch anything beyond the usual (or leave work early to make it across town in LA or New York traffic for an event). Even then, that’s curated based on how much time and money the networks want to devote to their own programming for awards season (as the article pointed out). That’s to say nothing of additional personal biases like people voting for shows they work on or their friends work on.Also worth mentioning is that voting changed in the last year. It used to be that pre-nomination we could vote on as many shows as we liked, then the nominees would get whittled down from there via, presumably, however the numbers shook out. So if we watched five shows and have heard another 17 are excellent, great! We can include them all in our list of selections. Now that’s reduced to a handful (typically eight). We have to do the whittling down ourselves, and there’s less opportunity for outliers to make it into the fray.So it’s a lot! And while it IS an honor to be nominated – you still have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there – the Emmy voting body is not some carefully selected group of experts on all things entertainment (your TCA mention is very valid), nor are we some shadowy cabal of suck-ups a la the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. We’re just working folk who (hopefully) enjoy celebrating the industry we work in. As for cultural cachet. Yeah, we absolutely shouldn’t have any of that.
I mean thats one of the reasons that actors and people taht work in the industry are just the worst people to vote on what’s actually good . They dont have the time to watch ,they have biases since its their industry and worst of all , they constantly upvote any mawkish shit about how magical film making is ..bonuses votes if its a fawning piece about old Hollywood.
Everything you say is true, and it all speaks for the absolute pointlessness of the Academy awards; everything true about the Emmys is a thousand times more true about the Grammys.Why are we still pretending that these are definitive awards?
From an extremely quick glance I found at least 10 articles on this site about Reservation Dogs, hardly “one token mention per season” (it was also #5 on the site’s best of 2022 list). Most media outlets need to do better at more frequent coverage of shows that aren’t Succession/White Lotus/Last of Us, but I don’t think AVClub are the issue and I’m not sure how you feel “of course taking accountability would be a bridge too far when you can complain instead” is a fair thing to say when you’ve clearly not even looked into their coverage of it.
I think it’s insane It’s always Sunny has never been nominated for anything. It’s one of the best shows of all time
What we do in the shadows should also be drowning in emmy awards.
It’s at least been nominated a couple of times though its never won (that I can recall). It absolutely should though. Best comedy going today.
At least it’s nominated for a lot of Emmys. Most are in the “creative arts” but they did get nominated for Best Comedy and Comedy Writing in the past. One win or costumes, last year.
They’re in good company.A few years back The Terror (which was the best thing I saw on TV that year) got nominated for absolutely fuck all leading awards . That was when I realised I was a better judge of TV quality than Emmy voters .
God DAMN was The Terror great. Season one, anyway. Season two was such a shift that it should’ve been called something else.
I know right ! it not getting nominated HAD to have been down to some weird politics ..because for it just to be “oh we never got a chance to catch that one …lol” is a crime. Plus the stuff that was nominated …well there were some clunkers there ,,
It’s a pretty low-class show, but at the very least “Mac Find His Pride” should have gotten something
I’m of two minds about this.On the one hand, the way Sunny can keep making extremely funny and twisted episodes about hot-button issues in culture and politics is kind of magical in today’s climate, and deserves some sort of recognition.On the other hand, if the show was Emmy-nominated, it would probably draw a lot more press attention, and people with axes to grind would have a long list of clips from past episodes to take out of context and argue that X is not funny, has never been funny, and someone needs to cancel this awful, offensive show that dares to joke about it.
Oh fun. One of YOU people.
“It appears voters only viewed or heard consistent chatter about these HBO offerings, and decided not to challenge themselves further. That meant no nominations for Andors Stellan Skarsgard, Bad Sisters’ Claes Bang, Better Call Sauls Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks, or House Of The Dragon’s Matt Smith, to name a few.”
Oooh, I love this narrative that the voters are too obsessed with HBO shows to vote for Matt Smith.
I also love that the academy obviously didn’t watch Bad Sisters because they didn’t nominated Claes Bang, even though they apparently DID watch enough of Bad Sisters to nominated Sharon Horgan.
“ut egregious snubs take away from talent that merits more viewership”
There is no such thing as a snub when literally *thousands* of people are voting.
Biden getting more votes than Trump doesn’t mean Trump was snubbed.
More well known shows get more Emmy nominations…I am shocked. Shocked, I say!
This is how the Emmys have always worked, which is why I mostly ignore them. They latch on to one or two pet shows, and then those shows get all the awards for their lifespans, and no one else stands a chance until the pet show ends, at which point the Emmys select a new pet show.This is why The Good Place never won an Emmy, because the Academy’s pet comedy series at the time was Schitt’s Creek. It’s also why Better Call Saul never won, because the pet drama at the time was Game of Thrones (a decision that really aged well!) and after it ended the Academy switched to Succession. Maybe being on HBO is all you need to do to impress these people?
I don’t hunk it’s a matter of pet projects…more that it’s the same people that vote every year. If someone likes Schitt’s Creek more than The Good Place one year, they’re probably not going to change their minds. The obvious solution, rotate voters, so maybe one person only votes every four or five years.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true, because shows often vary in quality season to season, or remain consistent but lose novelty. Look how fast people turned on Ted Lasso. I’d agree with Turbotastic in that, more than the typical TV viewer, Emmy voters seem to really cling to specific shows.
“Look how fast people turned on Ted Lasso.”People just love to build up expectations and then pile on when what they want to happen isn’t exactly what happens.
The third season was way better than the second.
Yes, the reviews of S3 here are in the vein of ‘this show should be the one I have imagined in my head and not the one I am watching and therefore it is bad’.They’ve been doing that here, on and off, forever. It’s more common since the Kinjapocalypse though.
That’s always been the case, though. There’s a whole list of TV shows that won every year despite the obviousness that they were better things out there. There’s also a whole list of actors/actresses who never won due to actors being given the award year after year (looking at you Alec Baldwin and Kelsey Grammar). There’s too many TV shows on, especially now, and too many that are worthy so the Emmy’s just glommed onto something and went with it. Lately, they’ve been throwing awards at people in their last seasons as a way to reward them for constantly ignoring them in the past which is why I think Odenkirk and Rhea Seahorn will win this year (AND THEY BETTER). Still better than the the other awards.
For some reason the image of Tituss Burgess’s tight smile/grimace at Alec Baldwin winning Best Supporting Actor for his Trump SNL appearances is burned into my head, and I couldn’t help but think of it and giggle at your mention of Baldwin getting Emmys thrown at him.
I mean, Baldwin was GREAT in 30 Rock but so was Steve Carrell in the Office and yet Baldwin always beat him to the point it became a joke. They could have at least traded off them. On a side note, it is here I once again point out that Nick Offerman wasn’t even nominated once for Ron F’ing Swanson and for that, the Emmy’s should be held in shame.
Agreed on all points. Baldwin absolutely did not deserve to win Best Supporting Actor for playing Trump on SNL though, that’s just insulting to the other nominated actors who put in more work (Tituss for Kimmy Schmidt, Louie Anderson for Baskets, Ty Burrell for Modern Family, Tony Hale and Matt Walsh for Veep). That was in 2017 so I get it, Trump sucks, but iirc it was ridiculed at the time. I respect the professionalism and restraint of the other nominees for not rolling their eyes when the winner was announced.
“Maybe being on HBO is all you need to do to impress these people?”Honestly I think that is a big part of it. HBO always seems to be over represented in the award nominations.
Which is why The Wire won so many Emmys.
The article seemingly forgets what the old AVClub did report on in the past is the huge lobbying, name recognition, insiders badmouthing every rival nominee, and big-money campaigns behind the scenes going on to get their stuff nominated for the Oscars, Emmy, Golden Globes, etc. A large number of voters haven’t watched them either; they vote for whatever is getting the most press, friends whose names they know, or the show/person who should get one because (fill-in-the-blank). You have HBO, Netflix, and all the other big studios spending $20 to $30 million, from print and billboard “for your consideration” ads to movie coffee-table books, Christmas ornaments, and all kinds of swag on even their most well known shows like Succession. HBO knows how to hustle this well, hence why White Lotus racked up so many noms despite this season not as good as the previous one. An indie show like Reservoir Dogs doesn’t have the money and clout to influence the academy or even convince the execs at Hulu to promote it on its behalf since they would rather promote their better known shows.
I agree that the Emmys have become dominated by streaming and on demand programs. Only a handful of shows on a major network got a mention. I can’t believe that no Emmy love has been bestowed on “Will Trent” which I stumbled across and found addictive. “Not Dead Yet”, “The Company You Keep” were all excellent. But in the end, I agree that there is just too much content being created and awards become meaningless.
It’s strange to me how addictive Will Trent is. Very watchable.
“I agree that the Emmys have become dominated by streaming and on demand programs.”
Um, except that they haven’t.
This years noms were “dominated” by three HBO shows (Succession, The White Lotus, The Last of Us).
To be honest, there’s such a significant amount of inertia when it comes to television viewership amongst consumers, so it’s not at all surprising that the people voting on these things are more apt to continue watching series they’re already invested in (and thus makes their job easier via confirmation and recency biases), versus actively taking in all of the new shows that premier on the myriad of platforms available.
You have to think, moving from the big 3 of yesterday, to including paid networks (such as HBO and showtime), then premium cable (such as FX and AMC), to streaming, and all of the shows being produced by the major players is absolutely daunting. Further, so many otherwise great shows only get advertised on the platforms they appear on. So unless you’re actively scouring all of the disparate platforms for new releases (and, like most people, you’re only going to watch shows that already appeal to you, even if you’re a voter), you’re gonna miss a significant amount of good shows that would, in all honesty, knock shows like The White Lotus or Succession, and their respective performers and writers and producers, out of contention.
There’s also the significant role that money and access plays, so a smaller, newer show without the money and cachet behind it just isn’t going to get the push that a juggernaut like Succession or White Lotus will get.
In a world where there are only limited slots for nominations I have one thing to ask: Who are you taking off? I mean you mention Ted Lasso and Wednesday and that is fine. But you bitch hard about the Best Actor statement and things like how Idris is overlooked, yet you never mention who was nominated that shouldn’t have been. Tell me who on that list is so terribly outperformed by him that it is a joke that he is there instead of Idris? If you can’t then it isn’t a snub.
Despite critical acclaim and a strong fandom, they tend to slip under the radar. (Yeah, series…to Halt And Catch Fire…)THANK YOU. A great show and one that made the hard and smart decision to pivot after a so-so first season and turned into some really special. I absolutely love this show and I don’t think it got its due.
It appears voters only viewed or heard consistent chatter about these HBO offerings, and decided not to challenge themselves further. That meant no nominations for Andor’s Stellan Skarsgard, Bad Sisters’ Claes Bang, Better Call Saul’s Giancarlo Esposito and Jonathan Banks, or House Of The Dragon’s Matt Smith, to name a few. Their respective shows earned nods elsewhere, so at least there’s some solace.One presumes that since their respective shows earned nods elsewhere, voters saw them and didn’t nominate these (very talented) folks for whatever other reason.I don’t envy these voters. There is way too much good TV and TV that caters to very specific interests, that I really don’t feel compelled to watch stuff that’s highly recommended if the previews don’t appeal to me. It’s why I kind of shrug off criticisms about networks canceling shows too quickly and not letting shows “find their voice.” It’s one thing to have a great show that just needs to find its audience. It’s another to take a dozen episodes – sometimes multiple seasons – to find its groove. The latter kind of feels disrespectful of audiences’ time today.Anyway, God help anyone who is actually determined to watch *everything.*
I was surprised by the lack of variety in all the male categories, especially in light of the fact that the female categories had a lot more variety.
And if Better Call Saul doesn’t sweep Best Drama, Actor, and Supporting Actress, I will officially be done with the Emmys.
Just ignore it and, even if it doesn’t go away, you won’t care that it hasn’t.
I will say, I genuinely don’t understand how Brian Cox got a nomination this year. He’s a spectacular actor and has been deserving of accolades, but he was *barely* in this season. (Culkin and Strong are both deserving; there was no reason to have three cast members up in that category from the same show when one of them was hardly in it this year.)I can’t help but hope that the Succession votes cannibalize each other and Odenkirk finally gets his long-overdue recognition, though.
Because actors only need to submit one episode for awards. And three episode for a series award.
I think the explosion in the number of scripted TV series makes it really hard for voters to keep up. I like to think I’m pretty plugged into culture but a number of those shows you mentioned I have heard of but can’t recall ever having seen a recap or review or seen people talking about it online or in person. I would expect a full-time TV critic to have a broader viewing palate than just whatever is popular and/or generating buzz with tastemakers but the vast majority of Emmy voters have full-time jobs in the industry and thus have just as hard a time keeping up with new shows as any other working stiff. I don’t think you can really fault them for falling back on heuristics.
The White Lotus is “tremendous”? “Fine” or “perfectly ok” seems more like it. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not like it’s doing anything spectacular or groundbreaking.
Especially in season 2.
I don’t know who votes, but what are the requirements? Do you even have to have Hulu to vote? Many of these shows I can’t even watch based on my non-subscription to this or that.
Honestly, Wednesday getting any kind of overall nomination is just…I just don’t understand it. The best thing about it was the setting, costuming, etc. So certainly some acclaim there.But as an actual TV show – like, the WRITING, and CHARACTERS, and shit like that – it was not good. Not the worst thing in the world BUT it getting a nom over Reservation Dogs is just absolutely batshit. It’s inexplicable and it makes me sad.
And it chaps my ass to no end that Ortega gets an acting nod for a character who is famously NOT EMOTIVE. And meanwhile Devery Jacobs and Paulina Alexis kill it as Elora and Willie Jack. Teen characters who act like teens? Nah, let’s choose the deadpan goth cartoon.
Based on the two episodes I could stand to watch, I’ll defend Ortega’s performance given the constraints of the character and the godawful writing, but yeah, there are dozens of better performances in better shows that should have been nominated instead.
It’s not a zero sum game. All are excellent acting performances, despite being vastly different characters in vastly different show. Just because you prefer one to the other doesn’t mean Ortega doesn’t deserve it.
And if Jacobs and/or Alexis had even been nominated you might have a point.But they weren’t.So you don’t.This specific “game” is very much zero sum if you aren’t allowed to “play”.And I think if you read my sarcasm correctly you’ll see it’s not simply a matter of preference. It’s also a matter of cheap trick acting. Deadpan your way through a bunch of teen drama and throw in a dance number and I guess that’s good enough, right? In the end, I’m just salty so who gives a shit? It’s really not worth arguing the point.
I’m surprised that more people don’t understand (apologies if you’re not one of them) that acting awards are based on one submitted episode. One. That’s why showier roles are always more likely to get a nomination than a subtle performance. That’s Rez Dogs real problem…the more you watch, the more rewarding it is. It’s not the kinda thing you can watch an episode or two of and really appreciate.
That is actually a very fair point. And there are other good, if frustrating, reasons mentioned elsewhere in these comments (in particular the ratio of material to time voters have to watch it). Wednesday and Ortega just stick in my craw harder because of the improv/ad-lib shit she pulled. In truth I think fucking Barry over Rez Dogs is just as egregious. Talk about overrated… But I have no beef with Hader or Berg or whoever. I honestly don’t particularly like the Hader hyphenate thing but he’s good at it so whatever.
“It’s easy to look at, say, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series—featuring four mostly white male nominees from Succession and The White Lotus—and get dispirited.”
I mean, not if you genuinely think those folks are there on merit, and value merit in these cases above performative quota-filling.
But this is AVC’s daily ‘_____ isn’t woke enough’ piece and just by commenting I’m enabling that perspective of art and entertainment, I guess.
Always has been true. Remind me how many times, in it’s seven year run, Buffy, The Vampire Slayer got a single nomination in a major category? Was it once?
My hidden gem is Single Drunk Female, but I can’t imagine a Freeform show ever getting nominated. It’s SO GOOD.
Freeform should get an award just for putting bisexual alcoholics and gay witches on what used to be the Christian Broadcasting Network (and is still obligated to carry the 700 club!)
Interview With the Vampire was a terrible show, and no one deserves any nominations from it.
It pretty demonstrably was not. The writing, costuming, casting, and acting were all quality and the special effects were top notch. In this essay I will . . . .
These articles were more convincing when it was Better Call Saul being passed over as opposed to “Ghosts”.I’m sorry, but Reservation Dogs just isn’t that good.
Wait – Michael Emerson has a TV show!?
It’d help if they had an actual comedy show award , and created a second one for comedy/dramas, a rule of thumb straight comedies are usually under 30 mins , comedy hybrids are longer and usually closer to an hour ..if they did ,most of the shows nominated as a comedy (with the exception of Lasso and Abbott)would be in a separate category thereby freeing up space for actual comedies like WWDITS .In a perfect world they’d do the same for actor/supporting actor, actress etc etc as well , but creating 4 new awards would probably too much.
Yeah, the shift toward dramedies has really messed with these awards.
STRONGLY agree. Dramedies are their own thing at this point and it’s about time we recognize them on their own merits instead of continuing to cripple the comedy category with their presence.
I agree with most of what you have to say! I think that shows like the Emmys are inherently antiquated, broken, and don’t account for the explosion of streaming content. I would just say that this article would be more meaningful on this website if the AV Club didn’t laser-focus on most of the zeitgeist shows the way that the awards show voters do.
While we’re at it, it’s not fair that someone like Dan Marino, one of the best quarterbacks in history, never won a Super Bowl, or that Charles Barkley never won an NBA Championship. Everyone should get the opportunity to be recognized.
Wednesday got a nomination??? Jesus fucking Christ…..
For comedy series AND lead actress in a comedy! Despite the existence of Res Dogs and the leads (Elora at least, Willie Jack too depending on the episode).
Ridiculous. But the Emmys have never been not stupid.
I assumed it was this way round intentionally. More people watched White Lotus therefore more people will watch the Emmys. They don’t care which shows you watch, other than their show.
You going to do an article on Emmy snubs and not mention It’s Always Sunny?
The Emmys meant something when there were 3 channels and 20 or 30 primetime shows total on the air. And even during the Peak TV era, when HBO and AMC were in their prime, it still made some sense. Now, with a dozen streaming services and hundreds of scripted shows on the air, with more hours of television than anyone could watch in a lifetime released every year? They’re pointless.
The actor from The Diplomat is Ato Essandoh (you juxtaposed the Ts and the Ss).
Revised headline:“Emmy voters desperately need to watch more television I like”
I demand Best Animated Program justice for Harley Quinn and Cyberpunk Edgerunners!
This. It is insane to me that they find five supporting actresses from White Lotus more worthy of recognition than a single one from Yellowjackets.
yes yes yes to your comedy list!
Ever since they nominated Barb from Stranger Things, I refuse to believe that Emmy voters actually watch television. I think they just pay attention to what they hear people say online.
Let me sum up the comments here:The show I like didn’t get nominated, so the Emmys suck.
My proposed solution: I’ve watched literally everything mentioned here as well as everything actually nominated so just let me pick from now on. I literally have nothing better to do that will get in the way.