Emmy Category Analysis: Is a 'Ted Lasso' Win Inevitable?

 The Film Experience Team has been analyzing the major Emmy categories...

Of the eight Comedy Series nominees, this is the first nomination in this category for six shows.By: Christopher James

Is it really all sewn up for Ted Lasso? The charming comedy about an American football coach recruited to coach “football” (aka soccer) in the U.K. broke the record for most nominations by a freshman series. In total, it earned an astounding 20 nominations, including Series, Actor, two Supporting Actress slots, four Supporting Actor slots, three Directing slots and two Writing slots. Can anyone stop the eternally optimistic Ted Lasso?

There are seven other series that are hoping to put up a good fight. Realistically though, only two freshmen series pose an actual challenge (and no, I’m not referring to Emily in Paris). HBO Max’s Hacks and The Flight Attendant hope to pull off an upset. Will they be able to muster up enough votes? Let’s take a look at the nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series and find out...

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Emmy Nominations Are Here!

By Abe Friedtanzer

Nominations for the 73rd Emmys have been announced, and while it was nice to see short clips of each of the program nominees, the gimmick of having father and daughter, Ron Cephas Jones and Jasmine Cephas Jones, announce together would have worked considerably better if they had been in the same place and not experiencing a delayed reaction to their joke setups. But let’s move on to the nominees, which are mostly good but sure to reveal painful snubs as we break it down by category. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that The Crown is the nominations leader with 24 bids, but it did tie with The Mandalorian, which added to its technical total with a few acting, directing, and writing bids.

It took me until I got into the details of the limited series/anthology categories to realize that Small Axe was almost entirely shut out, earning only a cinematography mention. I think that has more to do with its questionable TV format, though that didn’t stop Hamilton from gobbling up a horrifying seven acting slots. Another underperformer was Girls5eva, which managed exactly one nomination, for writing. It was also a sad day for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, which didn’t score any of the major bids I and others thought it might. That presumed domination by a few series in the supporting categories absolutely happened, though there were a few positive and unexpected inclusions thrown in. Let’s take a closer look at the categories our Emmy team predicted (plus the guest races) and go from there...

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Emmy Watch: An almost all-new lineup for Best Comedy Series

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. Today, we’re looking at Best Comedy Series.

By Abe Friedtanzer

We opened last year’s look at this category with a caveat that, compared with the Best Drama Series race, there were considerably fewer contenders here. That’s true again this time, with just one (!) of last year’s nominees eligible and two other series that were nominated in the past possible as return inclusions. With so many slots open, there is tremendous room for new shows to break in, but few clues exist as to what’s at the head of the pack beyond a few frontrunners. Let’s dive in…

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Stunt Ensemble SAG Nominations - How should they be decided?

One of the reasons we'll never see a Casting Oscar is how invisible that art is. Like editing, only even more hidden, you dont know what the person in charge was working with at all. What did they have to choose from to help create that movie magic? The fact that there's still no "Stunt" Oscar is infinitely weirder, though, because you can actually SEE stuntwork onscreen. And in some movies a lot of it. So thankfully we at least have Stunt prizes from the Screen Actors Guild. 

How should the Stunt Ensemble winners be decided at SAG #SAGAwards

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 4, 2021

I was joking on twitter about them, but at the same time, all awards categories should be taken seriously. It's an art form. What do you think of their nominations and how would you determine the winners... 

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