Emmy FYC: Ten Nominees?
Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 8:08AM Emmy nomination voting begins Monday. For the next week or two we'll be sharing FYCs of some kind. Here's Daniel...
If you haven’t had a chance yet to read Debra Birnbaum’s shake-up Emmys proposal in Variety, I highly recommend you do. Her argument seems tailor made for feedback from passionate awards watchers (i.e. TFE readers) who have cultivated reams of opinions for how various awards bodies do business, nomination-wise, in an ever-changing marketplace of taste and broader appeal. Living in this age of television where high quality programs are on an infinity loop, she wonders whether the Emmys should consider expanding their Outstanding Drama and Comedy Series categories to ten nominees.
Sound familiar?
While there’s a certain integrity in maintaining a tradition of exclusive acclaim – after all, not every deserving piece of art can statistically make the cut – one wonders how a taboo-busting, conversation-elevating, and surprising comedy like the aptly named Broad City can so consistently take bong hits off the zeitgeist without seeing a few gold men women along the way. That aren’t hallucinations, mind you. Same goes for The Americans, which has been uniformly accepted by critics as one of the all-time greats and yet fails time and time again to nudge out a longstanding favorite like Downton Abbey. The Emmys notoriously pick their favorites and bitterly cling to them so could this be an inclusive measure to better reflect populist and critical tastes?
On the flipside, for every District 9 or A Serious Man, there’s a Blind Side amongst expanded groups. On the movie side, AMPAS has struggled to find clarity on this issue – abandoning the hard ten for a jostle between seven and nine. That's made some yearn for a time when five was fine. There's no guarantee that bigger sized envelopes equal 'pushing the envelope' in awards selections. After expanding their roster to seven nominees last year, perhaps the Emmys are better served to wait and see how their fresh shuffle deals in the long game. As Birnbaum touches upon, mainstays like Mad Men and Nurse Jackie have ended their runs and opened up space for new nominees. And, yet, the juggernaut that is Modern Family journeys on unchecked, save a Veep.
Should the Emmys take a page from the 2009-2010 Oscar playbook and expand their nominations in hopes of new players? Or will their fresh groceries go stale? How do you adjust an influx of quality with such limited quantity?
Reader Comments (14)
Okay.
Drama guess:
Orange is the New Black
Better Call Saul
Game of Thrones
House of Cards
Downton Abbey
Homeland
Jessica Jones (Will win Supporting Actor at the very least (David Tennant, submission episode: AKA WWJD?), but highly probable to take Lead Actress (submission episode: AKA Top Shelf Perverts) as well, even if it doesn't take series as a whole.)
Orphan Black
Bloodline
Empire
Comedy Guess:
Veep
Modern Family
Silicon Valley
Transparent
Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt
Inside Amy Schumer
Grace and Frankie
Black-ish
Last Man on Earth
Shameless
The Emmys should definitely revamp their nominating process to ensure better coverage of the field, but stick to five nominees. But here are six in each of the two main categories for your consideration:
DRAMA
The Americans
Better Call Saul
iZombie
Mr. Robot
Orphan Black
UnREAL
COMEDY
Angie Tribeca
Archer
Blackish
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
The Real O'Neals
Transparent
LOL at the article's assumption that series with bigger audiences would get nominated if they expanded the field. Um...they already vote for Modern Family and Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones. Big Bang Theory has FOUR nominations! The problem is not the ratings of the shows. Ten nominations would just let the shows that go bad stay on the list longer. (Glee would have made it another season or two. Same with Boardwalk Empire.)
A whopping TWENTY series being nominated in addition to miniseries and movies is so unwieldy.
Opening up the fields is not going to affect the outcomes. Emmy will still choose her longstanding fave for the prize.
time to bring back blue ribbon panels I think.
I wonder if Streaming/Non-television shows should have their own category?
Maybe it's because I don't have Netflix/Hulu/etc, but I have never even heard of half those shows lol
I'm ashamed to say I'm not watching anything *new* right now. All my faves have been on TV for a while.
That said, Ellen Burstyn should (and probably will, given her record) clean up for her part on House of Cards.
Yeah, this is ridiculous, particularly since I think "Golden Age" gets thrown out a little bit too frequently right now in television-while there are certainly good shows on television, the Golden Age in my opinion ended a few years ago. A lot of the lauded shows have gotten tired (Modern Family, House of Cards, etc), and the new shows are intensely repetitive and formulaic. The current format, with as Nathaniel mentioned blue ribbon panels to remove some repetitive contenders in favor of fresh blood, can manage just fine.
Hell no.
Expanding the series field would be like adding 10 nominees to each acting category in the Oscars.
Unnecessary and excessive.
One thing that's worth remembering is that the Emmys format, nominations wise, really hasn't adjusted to the new era. We're talking a standard that was sufficient for the big three networks, then big four, then big four and HBO. In fairness, the networks don't seem to be doing all that much that is interesting.
I don't think blue ribbon panels are the way either (see foreign film category, 2007). In the end, they just need better voters.
Please let someone notice Vera Fermiga and Freddie Highmore in Bates Motel and Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance in American Crime Story Please.
Arkaan -- but since they don't have better voters they need to do something. I think a blue ribbon panel to narrow down the potential nominees (rather than winners... which i think is how it used to go) would help. It could potentially weed out series that had gone stale that people vote for merely from habit. Take a couple of those away as options each year and you might have a very different more dynamic awards body.
...and somehow I managed to leave Penny Dreadful off my shortlist...