What is the purpose of having a blog if not to contribute my two cents on every little thing as it happens, right? I actually have wondered in the past whether I'll always do an Emmy post, but I suppose as long as I have thoughts about the nominations, then sure.
First, as always, I don't want to take these TOO seriously, because there are certain factors that are obvious: while the TV audience is fractured to a degree unforeseeable except by satirists, "broadcast" network shows and shows on cable channels with a well-established track record like HBO are significantly more prominent and likelier to have robust Emmy marketing campaigns. It is a nice fiction to imagine that nominations reflect only a group of voters' thoughts about the most worthy shows, but the obvious truth is that there are too many shows for voters to have seen everything.
Not that that benefits broadcast networks -- a big part of the common ground voters share -- all that much, since they barely show up in the major categories anymore, outside of reality shows, the genre that premium cable and streaming networks for the most part haven't touched. Still -- the point is that it's natural that certain shows become repeat nominees even after their peak, that familiar faces become nominated even if theirs wasn't the best performance on their series, and so on. There's a big fucking landscape to sift through and voting patterns like that are a natural consequence.
In a weird way, it sometimes feels like the Emmys are becoming more populist, corresponding more closely to the general public's tastes, rather than representing an Oscars of television.
Anyway, on to the nominations --
The complete nominations are here, and I mean, many of them are good.
It's great to see some recognition for The Americans, for Rami Malek, for Tatiana Maslany even if Orphan Black's best days are probably behind it (but this season was definitely a step up), for Aziz Ansari and Master of None, and especially for Constance Zimmer, who has elevated the shows she's been on for a long time and finally has an incredible role on a complex show. That Horace and Pete got any recognition, given its distribution model, is amazing. Likewise, I'm glad to see a writing award for Catastrophe, a show I literally never see anyone mention except me and critics.
If there were no unacceptable exclusions, that would all be fine. But it's hard to take all these House of Cards nominations -- a show that had one great season that was really a character sketch, followed by punctuations of great acting amid muddled writing ever since -- when The Leftovers got nothing, Rectify got nothing, and these are head and shoulders the two best dramas on television. In the comedy categories, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend got no major award nominations (I was confused why it was only nominated once for best original song, but it's because they could only submit one for consideration), and should certainly have had two acting noms (Rachel Bloom and Pete Gardner) and at least one for writing or directing. To leave out Broad City is one thing, but to leave out Constance Wu, who is not only the best thing about Fresh Off the Boat but probably the best thing about broadcast network sitcoms, period?
I can't even comment on Claire Danes' nomination because, as much as we love her, at some point we realized we had never bothered to finish the most recent season of Homeland and that we didn't particularly want to. That is definitely a comment on Homeland's nomination for best drama, though, which is a ridiculous one. They have tried hard, certainly, but the show should have been a miniseries.
As for what we've been watching this summer? On Netflix, we're slowly making our way through both Star Trek: The Next Generation and The West Wing. Star Trek definitely picks up once it hits third season and they have a little fun -- it's a bit of a slog before that. They are still pretty terrible at writing about How People Or Societies Work, though, but that has been my complaint about sci fi TV since ... since Star Trek: The Next Generation was brand-new, actually (it is clearly a problem that precedes my teenage self having noticed it, mind you). We've also been delving into Caitlin's Road to Avonlea discs and my brand spanking new limited edition complete set of the Monkees.
But in the world of Actual New Television --
On Netflix, Bloodline and Orange is the New Black both suffered a bit from ending without closure, but Bloodline's second season had problems deeper than that -- like House of Cards, it was a show that started with a tightly focused first season, but even more than most shows, the events of that first season made it a) hard to justify the show continuing in the first place, b) even harder to maintain that focus. I love the actors, but the writing is not at the same level.
Orange is the New Black, though, had one of its best seasons. How you feel about this show will always depend in part on how much you give a shit about Piper, and I give no shits about her. While some of the flashbacks were, as they've been in the last couple seasons, about as shrugworthy as many of Lost's after the first two seasons (Brooke's, for instance, seemed completely unnecessary and added nothing to what we know about her), the way the show handles the privatization of the prison and its impact on both inmates and staff is stellar.
I know there have been some strong feelings about the final arc of the season. I won't get into spoilers. I will say that one criticism I can't agree with is the idea that showing the guards as being multifaceted is the same as asking us to sympathize with them or forgive them for their collective and individual sins. I think it's clear that one of the season's overall goals was to show that while there are definitely "bad" guards who are worse than others, the prison's biggest problems -- the prison industry's biggest problems -- are systemic. The existence of systemic problems does not mean that individual actions are not individual responsibilities, it only means that there is a bigger picture that is more important, that requires understanding that only addressing individual actions will not stop the problem.
This is the kind of territory The Wire got into, and more recently David Simon's Show Me a Hero, and I think it probably did a better job with it, if only because it was taking that scope from the beginning, whereas Orange has worked up to it over time.
I think I already mentioned Lady Dynamite, but I just have to point out again that I think it's one of the best things Netflix has yet done, and a perfect example of what TV is now, in that it is so specific to Maria Bamford's voice and experience, instead of pigeonholing her into a show about a Single Mom Trying To Keep It Together or what the fuck ever.
On Hulu, it's great to see Difficult People back, especially since The Mindy Project regularly irritated me this season, or second half of the season, or whatever they're calling it.
On Actual Television:
Match Game with Alec Baldwin has been surprisingly fun, but I am a huge fan of the original.
Outcast, Preacher, Scream, and Dead of Summer make this a pretty horror-filled summer - I'm still getting used to both Outcast (which I'm not familiar with from comics) and Preacher (which I started reading from the moment the first issue hit the shelves), and Tulip's my favorite thing by far about the Preacher adaptation. Scream has been more engaging in the second season, perhaps because most of the weaker or more generic-looking actors were killed off in the first season. Dead of Summer, which has a more interesting mythology going on, suffers from generic characters and egregiously lazy props that, at least once or twice an episode, make me or Caitlin go "wait, there's no way that's something from the 80s."
Not QUITE horror because it's just so ridiculous and played for laughs is BrainDead, the D.C. body snatchers comedy from the Good Wife creators -- it's fun and pretty obviously seems to have been a palate cleanser for them.
Roadies is fast becoming awful. I used to love Cameron Crowe, but from Elizabethtown on he has just kind of been an embarrassment. The actual showrunner is My So-Called Life's Winnie Holzman, which had seemed promising, but boy, you sure can't tell.
Unreal is probably the highlight of the summer for me so far. I wasn't sure where they would go with a second season, but they've not only avoided being repetitive, they are arguably turning in a better season than the first.
