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TThis year’s Emmy nominations have just been announced the largest megadump of 118 groups. So with that in mind, let me be the first to say that Survivor was robbed blind for being so well blended with a reality show. His lack of selection should no longer be frowned upon, and the 26,000 members of the television academy should hang their heads in shame.
But, on the rare chance that you didn’t come here for 800 words of horror about the injustice of failing to recognize a 26-year-old television show in a category I didn’t even know existed until 15 minutes ago, the Emmys luckily managed to ignore a lot of big shows. Actually I’m saying Strange Things Here.
Stranger Things is undoubtedly a huge show, and its success put Netflix on the map. The Emmys usually have a tradition of showing the benefits of their final seasons, but this year the show was cut to the major categories entirely. Unless you really like prosthetic designs or weird connections, this is not going to be the year of Stranger Things. Obviously if you watched it, you can understand the sarcasm, because it was the most innocuous thing that ever hit the screen, but this may not be the result that Netflix wanted.
Similarly, besides the agent of Richard GaddHalf Man was also locked out. That will hurt, too, because the show was pitched as a hard-hitting watch that voters tend to go crazy for, but maybe even marginally so, depending on how difficult it was.
The reason for this is Jon Hamm’s lack of choice in Apple’s Your Friends and Neighbors. The show got great ratings, which is a sign that people like it. But since it depends so much on Hamm’s central performance, it seems surprising that he missed out. Could it be that people love him even? It seems impossible. The same can be said of Paul Anthony Kelly. Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette received many nominations – including one for the highly-deserved star-studded transformation of Sarah Pidgeon – but Kelly was shut out.
Anyway, let’s move on to the happy part of the surprise. And in this case the winner of the day has to be Matthew Rhys, who finds himself in two different roles in two different formats. As Nile Jarvis in Netflix’s The Beast in Me, he was nominated for actor in a minor or anthology series, and as Tom Loftis in Apple’s Widow’s Bay he was nominated for actor in a comedy.
To be honest, he is not the only one who gets hyphenated this year, because there were a lot of them. Colman Domingo was nominated for Euphoria and The Four Seasons, Jason Bateman was nominated for Black Rabbit and DTF St Louis and Martin Short was nominated for Best Killer in Building and Match Game. Likewise, Laurie Metcalf received all the votes for Monster: The Ed Gein Story and Hacks, and Nick Offerman was nominated for Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Death By Lightning.
But let’s choose Rhys, partly because no other actor has shown as much depth as he did when playing the lead role, and because his overall performance was strong enough to win both. If nothing else, he should be a lock for the show, as he was a big revelation in Widow’s Bay. In fact, the show as a whole is probably the best of last year. Not every nominee from the show will end up winning, as Dale Dickey and Kate O’Flynn were both nominated for best actress, but that still leaves 18 Emmys on the table for them to take home.
It will not be an easy fight, because the Hacks were also selected to be 24 candidates, and they have a proven track record. But you always knew that Hacks won its Emmys not because it was good, but because there was nothing better to choose from. This year there are.
Also, let’s save the fun of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms which (at least in the turbo-franchise world of Game of Thrones) counts as something to be despised. For something so difficult and self-reliant to find the best choice of drama should count for something.
The Emmy Awards will be held in September. Unless you’re a fan of Survivor’s vocal mix and plan to ignore the ceremony, it should be fun.
