This week’s Emmy nominations went largely as expected: Shōgun and The Bear dominated in the comedy and drama categories, The Crown and Curb Your Enthusiasm received nice farewell embraces, and the Television Academy’s love affair with The Morning Show only intensified. (Seriously, 10 acting nominations for this one show, guys?) But between the lines of this year’s slate are key indicators of the state of TV—and perhaps post-peak TV.
I’m David Canfield, and it’s worth starting with the obvious: You can feel the strikes’ impact on this list. I found predicting certain categories difficult, not because there was too much culture-shaking, critically beloved TV to choose from, but rather the opposite: At a certain point, there was nowhere left to look. The Emmys’ new mandate of fixing best comedy and drama series at eight nominees each meant both races were more bloated than usual, given the light field. It’s hard to look at expensive, divisive streaming freshmen like Palm Royaleand 3 Body Problem as anything but filler nominees here. And while I’m more thrilled than anyone to see Reservation Dogsfinally get noticed for its last season, it’s no secret that the ineligibility of more than half of last year’s best-comedy contenders—and the lack of new challengers—helped pave that path.
TV production hasn’t exactly accelerated to 2019 levels in the past year, so I wonder if the Academy needs to confront the fact that the sheer number of slots on offer no longer reflect the breadth of the TV landscape. The strikes initiated a business correction that remains ongoing, and this will continue to result in less competition. Awards shows are better when they feel more curated, and less like a free-for-all.
Yet this year was kind of a free-for-all, and you can see how greatly campaigns mattered in this cycle’s nominations. Viewership for Apple TV+ pales in comparison to Netflix (and even the likes of Prime Video and Hulu), but with the resources to get the starry talent of Palm Royale, The Morning Show, Lessons in Chemistry, and more pounding the pavement, that platform pulled off its best-ever nominations haul. Not everything worked out—despite robust pushes, the likes of Masters of the Air and Sugar were blanked above the line—but seeing Maya Rudolph get through for the underrated Loot, or veteran character actors like Karen Pittman get their due thanks to The Morning Show, is a signal of Apple’s might. Peacock, too, pulled out all the stops to get The Traitors the Emmy noms it was cruelly denied last cycle—and it succeeded.
Netflix led the overall nominations total. But things still could have gone better, since its full-fledged campaign for Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen mostly flatlined, leaving the platform without a best-comedy nominee. HBO Max slipped to third in the tally, a demotion that can be attributed to its spring flops The Regime and The Sympathizer. But still, Hacks and True Detective: Night Country outperformed in their totals and are challengers in the comedy and limited-series races.
The real success story of this year, though, is FX. The Bearand Shōgun led all comedies and dramas in total noms, respectively—the former a scrappy half hour that’s now a bona fide phenomenon, the latter a massive financial and creative risk that paid off splendidly. But look beyond those two favorites to the network’s continued support of Reservation Dogs, a show that had been championed by critics while the industry mostly ignored it, until now. Or Fargo’s massive comeback for its fifth season. Or What We Do in the Shadowsreceiving breakthrough nominations for its own fifth season. Or the acting branch going bananas for the new edition of Feud,bestowing it with the most acting nominations of all limited series (tying Baby Reindeer). I can’t argue with any of these choices. The only question is how many of them will go the distance in September.
No comments:
Post a Comment