Every year, the Emmy nominations are a mixed bag. They do a wonderful job honoring the most praiseworthy in television in some categories, while routinely screwing up the most obviously deserving nominations in others. Award shows inherently are subjective; every person won’t agree with every choice because no two people have the same opinion.
But in comparison to the Academy Awards, where as a culture we agree the winners and nominations are the best in movies, there is a large enough disconnect between the Emmy nominations and the most critically acclaimed and fan-loved shows to the point that the Emmys are widely criticized.
The main issues seem to stem from the Television Academy’s wide range of inconsistency on the rationality of nominations in some of the categories. Take the difference between the nominations for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and Outstanding Comedy Series. Four of the five nominations for writing are for “Parks and Recreations,” “Community” and “Louie,” arguably the three best and most critically praised comedies on television. But none of the three shows were nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series.
I have trouble understanding how three of the four best shows in comedy writing aren’t considered one of the best six comedies. There is more than just writing when it comes to quality, but I would assume the best-written comedies would usually be the best comedies.
“Louie” is probably the greatest example of this inconsistency, since the Television Academy also nominated Louis C.K. for Best Directing and Acting. The Television Academy thinks “Louie” is one of the best-directed, best-written and best-acted comedies on television, but it isn’t one of the six best comedies?
Another issue is how predictably bad a lot of the nominations were. Jon Cryer is annually nominated for “Two and a Half Men,” even though the show hasn’t been good in years. “Veep” and its star actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus were both assumed locks for nominations way before the show even came on air, solely because of how much the Television Academy loves HBO (most-nominated network this year) and the star quality of Louis-Dreyfus. The show ended up being only average, and Louis-Dreyfus wasn’t even that great. The same could be said about Emmy darling “Modern Family.” While the first season was fantastic, the third season was pretty sub-par, and yet it’s essentially a lock to win Outstanding Comedy again this year.
The Television Academy is also insistent in giving every adult actor on the show an Emmy nomination every year, while more deserving actors are ignored. And since it’s assumed, and reluctantly accepted, that four of the six supporting actor roles will go to “Modern Family,” it’s sadly not as tragic that fantastic performances like Danny Pudi from “Community” or Adam Pally from “Happy Endings” are often ignored. But the fact that Nick Offerman from “Parks and Recreations” is continually snubbed is just a travesty, considering he has brought us one of the funniest and most iconic roles of the last twenty years in Ron “Effing” Swanson. Really the only bright side to the comedy categories was seeing Max Greenfield nominated for his hilarious role as Schmidt on “New Girl,” and Bill Hader finally being recognized for his fantastic work on “Saturday Night Live.”
Of course, in contrast to the comedy categories, they did an overall fantastic job with the drama categories. With the exception of snubbing John Slattery, who was fantastic last season on “Mad Men,” for Outstanding Supporting Actor and nominating Michael C. Hall for Outstanding Lead Actor after a mediocre season of “Dexter,” there really isn’t much to complain about.
I was happy to see “Breaking Bad” get the full recognition it deserved with Aaron Paul, Giancarlo Esposito and Anna Gunn getting nominated, and once again, it will be competing against “Mad Men” in most of the major categories, including Outstanding Drama, and with Bryan Cranston going head-to-head against Jon Hamm in Outstanding Lead Actor. It was also great to see breakout new hit “Homeland” get recognized in multiple categories.
Overall, the Emmy nominations were about what I expected; they could have been worse, and they could have been better. Until there is some consistency and open-mindedness by the Television Academy, the Emmy’s will continue to remain a mixed bag and a tier below the Academy Awards in cultural relevancy.
