Emmy nominations day inspires strong feelings. This year, as the nominees for the 75th Emmy Awards were announced, there were the usual complaints — about the overlooked and the over-nominated and the baffling inadequacy of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to adjust to the realities of the art on whose merits it pronounces — and new ones, too. The Writers Guild of America strike is still going strong, which made it impossible for writers to participate in the usual “for-your-consideration” events. SAG-AFTRA may be going on strike, too.
So it’s not just the future of television that’s in doubt. No one knows at present whether the Emmys themselves (scheduled for Sept. 18) will happen. The awards show recognizing writers and performers may end up having no one to write it and no performers to hand out awards.
The stakes of these nominations are therefore a little peculiar. Several terrific or beloved shows have recently ended and been recognized in these nominations, including “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Ted Lasso,” “Succession,” “Barry” and “Better Call Saul,” a masterpiece that, despite now having 53 nominations, has somehow never won a single Emmy. So whatever glitzy, archaic out-of-touchness we might associate with the Emmys is complicated by the possibility that they may not happen at all.
On to the nominations!
This year featured an unusually high level of internecine competition. No fewer than five actresses from “The White Lotus,” Mike White’s anthology series about sociopathy at high-end resorts, were nominated for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series. Jennifer Coolidge is up against co-stars Meghann Fahy, Aubrey Plaza, Simona Tabasco and Sabrina Impacciatore, and four of her male counterparts — Will Sharpe, Theo James, Michael Imperioli and F. Murray Abraham — will compete for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series.
The more predictable contest belongs to “Succession,” Jesse Armstrong’s celebrated drama about a media magnate who manipulates his spoiled children into competing for control of his empire. In a pleasingly on-brand reprise, two of the Roy children are up against each other and their dad for the top spot: Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin will compete for outstanding lead actor in a drama series against Brian Cox, who played the fearsome patriarch who wouldn’t step down.
Sarah Snook, the lone Roy daughter, is perhaps fittingly exempt. She’s nominated for her turn as Shiv Roy — don’t get me wrong. But in her category (outstanding lead actress in a drama series) Snook will compete against Melanie Lynskey, who plays the older, quirkily murderous version of Shauna in “Yellowjackets,” Sharon Horgan as Eva in “Bad Sisters,” Elisabeth Moss as Offred in “The Handmaid’s Tale” (for which she won in 2017), Bella Ramsey’s memorable turn as the young, zombie-proof survivor in “The Last of Us” and Keri Russell for her work as Kate Wyler, a no-frills public servant in “The Diplomat.”
Perhaps it’s fitting, too, that Alan Ruck — the eldest Roy son on “Succession,” who was never quite a contender — is in a separate category from his siblings, albeit one that also pits him against fellow cast members: outstanding supporting actor in a drama series. (The “Succession” bloodbath is practically a subgenre of its own this year; three different directors for the series, Lorene Scafaria, Mark Mylod and Andrij Parekh, were nominated for outstanding director.) Ruck will compete against co-stars Alexander Skarsgard, Nicholas Braun and Matthew Macfadyen, whose place in the “supporting” category seems, oh, questionable. (As does Coolidge’s spot in the “supporting” category in a comedy for her work as Tanya McQuoid in “The White Lotus,” for which she won the Emmy last year. Who was last season’s protagonist if not she?)
“Abbott Elementary,” Quinta Brunson’s outstanding ABC mockumentary about a group of educators at an underfunded, primarily Black elementary school in Philadelphia, has Janelle James and last year’s Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph competing for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series. So are “Ted Lasso” alums Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham. Phil Dunster and Brett Goldstein — also of “Lasso” — are up for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series, as are “Barry’s” Anthony Carrigan and Henry Winkler. “Beef’s” Joseph Lee and Young Mazino were both nominated for best supporting actor in a limited series, as were “Black Bird’s” Paul Walter Hauser and Ray Liotta.
There are other stories here: the nonappearance of “Atlanta,” which ended its genre-expanding run, and the inexplicable absence of “Reservation Dogs,” easily one of the best comedies on TV. That “Mrs. Davis,” maybe the most innovative, exciting, wildly inventive show to air this year, got just one nomination (in sound editing!) is incomprehensible. And although it’s gratifying to see some diversity — Pedro Pascal was nominated for his work on “The Last of Us” and Jenna Ortega for “Wednesday” — several of the actors on “Beef” (including Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, Mazino and Lee) received nominations, and four of the seven nominees for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series alone are Black (including “The Bear’s” Ayo Edebiri and “Shrinking’s” Jessica Williams) — it is bizarre to see “Ted Lasso” wildly overrepresented for a season that was (to be charitable) far from its best.
But it’s the lead actor category in a comedy series, I think, that makes clear the ways in which the Television Academy has failed to adapt.
I can’t think of a way to responsibly and productively rank Bill Hader’s sometimes coiled, sometimes unraveling performance in the final season of “Barry” and Jeremy Allen White’s white-knuckle intensity as the chef in “The Bear” against Jason Segel’s chaotic ministrations as a bereaved therapist in “Shrinking,” Martin Short’s sprightly egotism as Oliver Putnam in “Only Murders in the Building” and Jason Sudeikis’s compulsively pleasant Ted Lasso.
These aren’t comparable performances. Not because some are better than others (though they are), but because the stakes aren’t remotely similar. This is a problem evident in the outstanding comedy category, too, as it has bloated to accommodate excellent shows that don’t quite fit the genre. There are straightforward contenders, such as “Abbott Elementary” (which, by the way, is the only show on broadcast television to get any nominations at all), “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Only Murders in the Building,” “Ted Lasso” and “Wednesday.” Then there’s “Jury Duty,” a fun hybrid experiment. But “Barry” and “The Bear”?
“The White Lotus,” which I think of as being roughly in the same camp as those shows — with a mix of black comedy and some hardcore drama, too — was forced by the Academy to move to “drama” (rather than limited series, where it competed last year). But it’s hard to understand why “Lotus,” which is much funnier than it is dramatic, counts as a drama, while “The Bear” counts as a comedy.
These are terrific shows, but their presence in the “comedy” and “drama” categories, when they fit neither, would seem to argue for revisions to the existing classifications. The Emmys have decided to innovate by offering awards for game shows — fair enough — but it’s baffling that the prestige industry, while policing whether “Lotus” can be a limited series, has not yet adjusted to the proliferation of pleasingly smeary prestige “dramedies” on the small screen.