Emmy Review: Guest Actor in a Drama

By Juan Carlos Ojano

While the Comedy Guest categories are exciting, the Drama Guest categories are just hard to decipher. Last year’s winner, Bradley Whitford for The Handmaid’s Tale, was bumped up to regular supporting (and is actually nominated there). Meanwhile, none of his co-stars submitted in this category made it. Only two of the nominees are from Drama Series contenders and one of them was a surprise inclusion. One nominee is already on his fourth consecutive nomination playing the same role in the same series. Another nominee is actually a giving a lead performance. 

With no obvious frontrunner in sight, let’s consider each nominee...

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Emmy Watch: "Made-for-Television Movie"

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

El Camino

The Emmy race for made-for-television movie hasn’t exactly been the most interesting category in recent years. This category was merged with Best Miniseries in 2011 for three years, during which only six of the nominees were TV movies, and then it was unmerged. Actors in made-for-TV movies still compete with actors in mini-series though in shared categories. Last year marked the first time that not a single acting nominee came from a TV movie. That will definitely not happen this year given the quality of the contenders...

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Blueprints: "Black Mirror: U.S.S. Callister"

Jorge continues to look into the Emmy nominees before the show on September 17th.

WARNING! Spoilers below for the Black Mirror episode "U.S.S. Callister"!

Black Mirror has to operate as an individual, stand-alone story in every episode. As an anthology series, there’s no cast of characters to follow through long arcs, no stories to pick up from, no built-in mythology or tone. In a way, this is incredibly freeing, as they can experiment as much as possible since he only thing that ties the episodes together is a theme. But being basically TV movies (which is what they submit themselves as with the Emmys), they also have to to the groundwork for the audience every time.

And it’s not simple groundwork. Black Mirror revolves around the dangers, consequences, benefits and untapped potential of technology. Elaborate worlds, complex gadgets, and characters living in somewhat alternate universes are built into its fabric. It’s always part of the journey to discover what terrifying side of our screen devices they’ll explore...

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Blueprints: Emmy Nominees for Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special

Jorge has been taking a look at the Emmy history for this year’s writing nominees.  

Let’s take a look at the various shows that made up the six nominees for Writing in a Limited Series, TV Movie, or Dramatic Special. Even with the longest title in the writing categories, which aim to include made-for-TV films or broadcast theater performances, all of the nominees are from a limited series with multiple episodes (even Black Mirror, where every episode is self-contained, is part of a larger anthology). Some series submitted the entirety of their episodes, while others only a single standout episode (I ignore the specific rules, but I assume it has something to do with overall series length).

Since we’re huge fans of statistics here, let's take a look the elevator pitches and Emmy history stats after the jump…

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Emmy Nominations for 2018: Glow, Mrs Maisel, Game of Thrones, and the Snubbing of Mindhunter

Happy 70th, Emmys! The big awards night won't be held until September 17th (hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che) but the nominations were announced this morning. The Emmys have so many categories that beware when you see any site that says "full list of nominees." Even the major news outlets (like Variety and all the massive circulation papers) do this while leaving out a shit ton of categories. In other words don't believe it when anyone says "full list". The only place that regularly shares that is the Emmy site itself. Here's the PDF. 

The behemoth, once again, is "Game of Thrones" which, after a year off, returns again to its throne of "Most Nominated Show" just barely edging out "Saturday Night Live," "West World" and "The Handmaid's Tale" all of which received 20 or more nominations. I was particularly happy about plentiful nominations for "GLOW" though it's worth noting that these nominations are not from the show as we know it right this second but from season 1 a full year ago. 

After the jump the major stuff and a few other categories that we're interested in... 

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