The themes of the Emmy’s this year are clearly diversity & the domination of mini-series. After a year of #OscarsSoWhite, this is a showcase for how much the entertainment industry has evolved in the newly dominant cultural medium. More eyes are on the shows and actors than ever before and we’re all better for it even if there’s no way to watch everything these days. Except all the voters watch HBO which is why they are going to clean-up again this year. With that quick overview out of the way, onto the predictions. As with all entertainment awards shows keep in mind these are pointless and art is subjective. So it doesn’t matter but is a fun medium for talking about quality shows even if there are inevitably some problematic omissions and inclusions. Overall though the Emmy’s do a shockingly good job of nominating worthy shows, especially in the comedy categories.
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Ok, I’m going to try and make this quick (at least in relation to my usual awards columns), but before I get to predictions & preferences I’d like to point out a few big themes for this year that will have impact across the board. The voting process has been updated, moving to an online system and away from forcing a small judging panel to watch all the submitted episodes prior to voting. I don’t 100% understand the new system, but by all accounts it will likely allow a much larger group to impact the final voting, and it will certainly diminish the usual power of a very strong submission episode from an unknown actor/show. This could (and probably will) lead to more populist picks, but I think this really gives the number of nominations more predictive power for the eventual winners. Across the board support mattered less when episodes could have a big impact on a small group, but now this will likely end up more like the Oscars, where a show with support from different branches sees more wins. This also gives me another excuse when my predictions are terribly wrong! The biggest change in the drama categories is that Breaking Bad concluded and had a final victory lap last year. That leaves a lot of room for new winners in all categories as that show dominated for most of the last 2 years. The beneficiaries will most likely be one of the perpetual bridesmaids from these years, no longer blocked from winning by a behemoth like that. In comedy it’s the same thing that I’ve been hoping for the past few years – Modern Family fatigue finally hits the series category. There are just so many great, groundbreaking comedies on TV currently (that actually get nominated!) and they have all lost out to this milquetoast series over & over again. I’m hoping the reign is finally over, but a bit worried about the impact of this new voting system. The other noteworthy change is the split of the variety series category into sketch & talk. Saturday Night Live can now lose to something other than The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Despite that weak attempt at comedy there are a couple brilliant sketch comedies that have finally broken through due to this changes, and one fo them will actually win this year. It seems more appropriate for these to compete in a separate category and highlights the breadth of quality programming currently on the air. With that – on to the should, could & will win game! This is an interesting year, because as I mentioned in my comedy predictions television has just gotten so good that it’s impossible to recognize everything with 6 nominees in each category. There is so much good TV that even if most of these nominees were deserving, many were still left out. Yes, Downton Abbey got a boatload of nominations, but it won’t win anything and Homeland’s significant decline in quality for the 3rd season was actually noticed by voters, as it didn’t get in to several categories based on name alone. If The Good Wife were nominated in series, I would probably be predicting a few wins for it, but I don’t think it can do much without that support. Game of Thrones remains proof that they like fantasy if it’s actually good, but the competition is too great for any big wins. Some of the big omissions are the continued depletion of Mad Men nominations (how do you not nominate John Slattery for this season?) and voters’ habits to just reward the same shows in each category instead of spreading the love a little bit. No major nomination for Boardwalk Empire or The Americans is ridiculous. The one nomination for Masters of Sex is great and I love Lizzy Caplan, but it should have been included across the board. Tatiana Maslany is the biggest acting snub of the year once again. Oh and Hannibal has a grand total of zero nominations - not even cinematography! – the biggest travesty of this years nominations. That said, here are my final predictions for the big drama categories – enjoy! As mentioned in my pre-nomination Emmy write-up, it’s been a pretty amazing year for television. In fact, I think there’s little chance we will ever have a bad year again given the amount of freedom afforded to many creators and the number of outlets available. There are still the usual nominations that seem to come out of a certain complacency by voters, but even with the omissions that will seemingly never be corrected (Nick Offerman, Parks & Rec), the newcomers who will keep hoping (TJ Miller, Silicon Valley) or the actors overshadowed by more famous co-stars (Timothy C. Simons, Veep; Jo Lo Truglio, Brooklyn 99; Terry Crews, Brooklyn 99) there are quality nominees – yes, even if all those examples came from a single category. At least a surprising show led by a diverse cast of women such as Orange Is The New Black can get a shocking amount of nominations for its first season, powerhouse Modern Family is truly beginning to lose some momentum and there were a few very deserving surprises – Silicon Valley in series and Fred Armisen for Portlandia. The biggest surprise though, is that I actually think every deserving winner of each category may be the frontrunner! As always with awards shows, this comes with the caveat that creative awards and competitions in general are essentially meaningless but are still a fun way to recognize some stand-outs from the increasingly large pool of quality programs on TV and the internet. With that said I’ll move on to my predictions for the major comedy categories – what could, should & will win. Drama predictions will come sometime before the awards tonight. Yes, Monday night. It’s once again time to look back at the past year in TV and reward the ‘best’ with some statues. As with all creative awards, they don’t really matter but do provide a way to spotlight some highly deserving performances and programs. In previous years I’ve just put up predictions of which I thought would be nominated and a quick list of who should’ve been. I’m going the opposite this year, with much more about who I think will be nominated than what the final list might actually look like. I was going to put up separate posts for comedy, drama and miniseries/movies, but due to timing it will all be in one. and I don’t have time to write-up anything on Mini-series & movies, so just know that I’m extremely happy that Fargo will actually get nominated for and even win a bunch of things and wish Treme would be recognized for everything about its final season. With that said, enjoy! It’s that time of year again, when the television industry hands out awards that essentially mean nothing (to anyone who isn’t a nominee, winner or someone who works with them), but provide a nice framework for discussing the year in TV. As always these are nothing to take too seriously but it is a welcome chance to celebrate when the right nominee emerges victorious. This year in particular provides a lot of possibilities for recognizing what I consider the best television has to offer, as the perennial winners somehow seem weak (although I say that every year and they still win). The Emmys are a different beast than the Oscars, as there are not 20 other awards given out to the same batch of nominees for the 3 months leading up to them. It is much more difficult and fun to predict these winners and the possibilities seem endless before your hopes are shot down. Will the Modern Family spell finally be broken? Will Breaking Bad finally win for what may have been its worst batch of episodes in 3 years (still fantastic and arguably better than the other nominees)? Will Louis C.K. parlay his record breaking nomination haul to an acting or producing win? Did Emmy voters love the final 30 Rock season as much as the rest of us? Will they acknowledge the moronic lack of nominations for Arrested Development’s revival? As usual, I will let my own personal bias sway me when I don’t think there is a lock to win, which may be true for every single category this year. So go forth and enjoy my meaningless commentary on a meaningless awards show that I might not even be watching in real time due to Breaking Bad’s penultimate episode. |
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