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.
Showing posts with label emmys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emmys. Show all posts
Friday, July 15, 2016
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
emmy ballot
There is something about being a fan of a particular medium that makes some of us compulsive list-makers, right? Our desert island discs (Carried to Dust, Everywhere at Once, Challengers, In the Wee Small Hours...) and books (Little Big, House of Leaves, The Talisman, Swamp Thing...), top ten lists every year, and so on. I have to admit, when I first thought of doing this TV blog, one of the things I thought of was Sepinwall's annual "if I had an Emmys ballot" post.
Well, voting for Emmy nominations closed last week. Who would I have nominated?
Comedy
Series
Broad City was the single funniest thing on TV this year. I keep grouping it together with sketch shows in my head, because it's rare that a sitcom not only has such a strong voice, but for that voice to be that of the performers. I mean, Community, Taxi, Arrested Development, those shows have strong voices, but they belong to Harmon, Brooks, and Hurwitz, not anyone on screen. Broad City feels as personal as Key and Peele or Inside Amy Schumer, it just happens to be a sitcom.
Louie is of course the other sitcom for which that's true, though it is even less like a traditional sitcom than Broad City is. This season wasn't as ambitious as last season's multiple multi-episode arcs, but being more low key isn't a bad thing. I really hate the Louie/Pamela relationship, especially at this point in its history, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide good comedy material.
I might put Transparent here even if all it did was give Judith Light a good role again. But Jill Soloway's show has even more going on than that, and although the transition of Jeffrey Tambor's Maura is the main focus, there's plenty going on in the rest of the family -- all of whom are self-absorbed, obnoxious, and various degrees of broken, which isn't surprising for a show created by a Six Feet Under vet.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt seems more like a network show than any other Netflix show does, but only because the work Tina Fey previously did on 30 Rock changed what network sitcoms can feel like. In a world that hadn't already seen 30 Rock, this show might be almost too weird, and maybe that's why NBC passed on it at the last minute. But it's one of the best things to come along in ages -- it's like Fey and her co-creator have realized that what sitcoms like to do is let their performers really ham it up, so they put something together where (just as in 30 Rock) hamming it up somehow works because of who the characters are (a girl recently escaped from a cult, an out of work actor, a wealthy trophy wife) instead of being yet another grating schlub of a husband rolling his eyes at his grating blonde of a momwife.
There are a lot of animated series that deserve at least consideration here. Rick and Morty didn't air last Emmy season, it turns out -- I didn't discover it until late -- but Adventure Time had a very strong season as it delves deeper and deeper into its own mythos and gets weirder and weirder. Bob's Burgers is of course always great. But I think the best thing in this mini-category this year was Netflix's Bojack Horseman, with Will Arnett as the anthropomorphic horse former star of a TGIF-type 90s sitcom. There are so many great things about this darkly funny and sometimes very bleak show, though my favorite is probably Vincent Adultman.
Lead Actress
Although Britta was underused in some of this year's Community episodes, Gillian Jacobs was still the funniest part of more episodes than not. While everyone on the cast has always seemed thoroughly comfortable in their characters, Jacobs really nailed Britta's combination of physical comedy, intellectual pretensions, and lack of self-awareness, bringing one of my all-time favorite TV characters to new heights of greatness. She's a large part of why this was one of the best seasons (despite the missing cast members, only the first two seasons were better).
Both Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have to be on here for Broad City. And although I'm not going as far as imaginary nominations for guest stars, I'll reiterate that Kelly Ripa was fantastic, and really emblematic of what the guest star Emmy often represents: an actor working outside their usual boundaries and making something excellent happen there.
I'm not sure this was Amy Poehler's funniest season of Parks and Rec, but it was consistently one of the funniest shows on the air and even her weakest season would put her in the top five performances on TV, no question. Besides, there is something so joyful about Leslie Knope that it's always fun to see good things happen for her.
Ellie Kemper anchored The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made it look easy, though I realize I'm including her at the expense of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on Veep, Gaby Hoffmann on Transparent, and Constance Wu on Fresh Off the Boat.
Lead Actor
Jeffrey Tambor has had a hell of a career, hasn't he? He's come a long way since The Ropers, but even if Larry Sanders was the thing he was remembered for, that'd be a pretty great career. But then came Arrested Development, and suddenly he was at the center of two all-time great shows. And now a third with Transparent. Somehow you can always find him right there wherever the most innovative and interesting work is happening, and this time, he's anchoring the whole thing.
Louis CK is never not going to be on this list, not as long as he's making his show.
Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are consistently funnier than the vast majority of sitcoms out there, and even their goofiest, most ridiculous stuff -- okay, maybe especially that -- always makes me laugh, from "A. A. ron" to "L'Carpetron Dookmarriott" to, well, this.
Did Review actually come out during the just-ended Emmy season, or was it the one before that? Well whatever, I'm going to say Andy Daly here, the lead of Review, a show that might not sound amazing -- fictional TV show host "reviews" real-life experiences like "stealing," "being a racist," and "eating ten pancakes" -- until you see it.
Drama
Series
Mad Men had a fantastic season, albeit one with a rocky start -- I'm still not sold on the necessity of Diane, even as I recognize how she got us from point A to point B (and maybe that's the problem, since who fondly remembers a character as the route from one place in the story to another?) and am ambivalent about a few other aspects. But I think it's probably a show that should leave you feeling that way.
With Mad Men and Breaking Bad done, the best dramas by far are Rectify and The Leftovers, both of which can be slow and thoughtful in novelistic ways, though I recognize that is frustrating for much of the potential audience. It isn't for me. I'd be on board for a Rectify that was twice as slow. These shows are exactly why TV is great these days, because when else would we have a slow-paced show about a man recently released from prison from death row for a murder he isn't sure if he committed or not, or a bleak portrait of families (and communities) gradually falling apart in the wake of a Rapture-like event?
Better Call Saul is way up there, it's just a little harder to call it a drama at times. But that's not a new problem, right? Ally McBeal was nominated for comedy Emmys but felt like apples and oranges against its sitcom competitors, and before that, St Elsewhere got drama awards but was funny at least as often as BCS.
Took me a minute to think of what the fifth nominee should be. The Good Wife had too uneven a season and the nonsense with Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies reached its show-affecting peak. Justified had its strongest season since the Bennetts, but still felt like it was treading water at times. The Americans, on the other hand, dealt with some of its strongest material, though I am still having trouble swallowing some of the plot developments (or the lack of certain plot developments occurring, I suppose) where Clark and Martha are concerned.
Lead Actress
Elisabeth Moss is the best actress on television in the 2010s, period. Okay, Connie Britton could give her a run for her money if Nashville gave her material to work with as strong as Friday Night Lights did, but between Mad Men and Top of the Lake, there is just no one else who has done better than Moss in recent years. The final season of Mad Men includes some of the best Peggy moments, especially the final two episodes. I really hope we don't lose Moss to movies. There is a particular joy in seeing the way an actor develops a character over time, one you can only find in television.
Carrie Coon and Amy Brenneman are the strongest performers on The Leftovers, doing very different work that -- like that of Moss and Christina Hendricks on Mad Men, for instance -- is grounded in their shared world. I knew Brenneman was good, of course, but it's great seeing her have something so meaty to work with, while Coon has been a revelation.
Speaking of revelations, Keri Russell somehow keeps getting better and better. Felicity is a pretty underrated show in the first place -- I think it's too easily summed up by its sort of wincey "girl follows crush to college" premise -- and Mission Impossible aside, she didn't have a lot of high-profile movie work in between series. But holy shit is she good on The Americans. If we weren't in such a golden age of drama, it would be no contest, hers would be the best female performance on TV.
Although Orphan Black hasn't stayed as strong as its first season, that's largely because of the rambling plotting. Tatiana Maslany continues to do heroic work in half a dozen roles -- differentiating them by more than just their hairstyle would be hard enough, but she manages to bring nuance to characters who could easily seem straight out of Central Casting, especially soccer mom Alison.
Lead Actor
Look, lots of guys were great this year, and it's a shame Aden Young hasn't already got an Emmy for Rectify, but he'll have time, as will Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul. This year has to be Jon Hamm. There is no close second. It has to be Don Draper. Come on. Teach the world to sing.
Supporting performances
I would nominate everyone on Transparent, Mad Men, and Rectify who doesn't qualify as a lead. Sam Elliott is probably an obvious choice for Justified; same with Michael McKean from Better Call Saul. Speaking of which, I was unfamiliar with Rhea Seehorn before BCS, but she's terrific. The whole Togetherness cast has submitted as supporting actors, and they all deserve nominations. Lorraine Toussaint and Uzo Adaba are the obvious choices from Orange is the New Black. Anybody on The New Girl or Parks is Emmy-worthy -- like a lot of the best sitcoms (Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, Community, Happy Endings), the strength of those shows is their combinations of characters, much more than any one central performance. Zach Woods and T.J. Miller deserve nods for Silicon Valley, too, as does Kether Dononue for You're the Worst.
Well, voting for Emmy nominations closed last week. Who would I have nominated?
Comedy
Series
Broad City was the single funniest thing on TV this year. I keep grouping it together with sketch shows in my head, because it's rare that a sitcom not only has such a strong voice, but for that voice to be that of the performers. I mean, Community, Taxi, Arrested Development, those shows have strong voices, but they belong to Harmon, Brooks, and Hurwitz, not anyone on screen. Broad City feels as personal as Key and Peele or Inside Amy Schumer, it just happens to be a sitcom.
Louie is of course the other sitcom for which that's true, though it is even less like a traditional sitcom than Broad City is. This season wasn't as ambitious as last season's multiple multi-episode arcs, but being more low key isn't a bad thing. I really hate the Louie/Pamela relationship, especially at this point in its history, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide good comedy material.
I might put Transparent here even if all it did was give Judith Light a good role again. But Jill Soloway's show has even more going on than that, and although the transition of Jeffrey Tambor's Maura is the main focus, there's plenty going on in the rest of the family -- all of whom are self-absorbed, obnoxious, and various degrees of broken, which isn't surprising for a show created by a Six Feet Under vet.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt seems more like a network show than any other Netflix show does, but only because the work Tina Fey previously did on 30 Rock changed what network sitcoms can feel like. In a world that hadn't already seen 30 Rock, this show might be almost too weird, and maybe that's why NBC passed on it at the last minute. But it's one of the best things to come along in ages -- it's like Fey and her co-creator have realized that what sitcoms like to do is let their performers really ham it up, so they put something together where (just as in 30 Rock) hamming it up somehow works because of who the characters are (a girl recently escaped from a cult, an out of work actor, a wealthy trophy wife) instead of being yet another grating schlub of a husband rolling his eyes at his grating blonde of a momwife.
There are a lot of animated series that deserve at least consideration here. Rick and Morty didn't air last Emmy season, it turns out -- I didn't discover it until late -- but Adventure Time had a very strong season as it delves deeper and deeper into its own mythos and gets weirder and weirder. Bob's Burgers is of course always great. But I think the best thing in this mini-category this year was Netflix's Bojack Horseman, with Will Arnett as the anthropomorphic horse former star of a TGIF-type 90s sitcom. There are so many great things about this darkly funny and sometimes very bleak show, though my favorite is probably Vincent Adultman.
Lead Actress
Although Britta was underused in some of this year's Community episodes, Gillian Jacobs was still the funniest part of more episodes than not. While everyone on the cast has always seemed thoroughly comfortable in their characters, Jacobs really nailed Britta's combination of physical comedy, intellectual pretensions, and lack of self-awareness, bringing one of my all-time favorite TV characters to new heights of greatness. She's a large part of why this was one of the best seasons (despite the missing cast members, only the first two seasons were better).
Both Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have to be on here for Broad City. And although I'm not going as far as imaginary nominations for guest stars, I'll reiterate that Kelly Ripa was fantastic, and really emblematic of what the guest star Emmy often represents: an actor working outside their usual boundaries and making something excellent happen there.
I'm not sure this was Amy Poehler's funniest season of Parks and Rec, but it was consistently one of the funniest shows on the air and even her weakest season would put her in the top five performances on TV, no question. Besides, there is something so joyful about Leslie Knope that it's always fun to see good things happen for her.
Ellie Kemper anchored The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made it look easy, though I realize I'm including her at the expense of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on Veep, Gaby Hoffmann on Transparent, and Constance Wu on Fresh Off the Boat.
Lead Actor
Jeffrey Tambor has had a hell of a career, hasn't he? He's come a long way since The Ropers, but even if Larry Sanders was the thing he was remembered for, that'd be a pretty great career. But then came Arrested Development, and suddenly he was at the center of two all-time great shows. And now a third with Transparent. Somehow you can always find him right there wherever the most innovative and interesting work is happening, and this time, he's anchoring the whole thing.
Louis CK is never not going to be on this list, not as long as he's making his show.
Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are consistently funnier than the vast majority of sitcoms out there, and even their goofiest, most ridiculous stuff -- okay, maybe especially that -- always makes me laugh, from "A. A. ron" to "L'Carpetron Dookmarriott" to, well, this.
Did Review actually come out during the just-ended Emmy season, or was it the one before that? Well whatever, I'm going to say Andy Daly here, the lead of Review, a show that might not sound amazing -- fictional TV show host "reviews" real-life experiences like "stealing," "being a racist," and "eating ten pancakes" -- until you see it.
Drama
Series
Mad Men had a fantastic season, albeit one with a rocky start -- I'm still not sold on the necessity of Diane, even as I recognize how she got us from point A to point B (and maybe that's the problem, since who fondly remembers a character as the route from one place in the story to another?) and am ambivalent about a few other aspects. But I think it's probably a show that should leave you feeling that way.
With Mad Men and Breaking Bad done, the best dramas by far are Rectify and The Leftovers, both of which can be slow and thoughtful in novelistic ways, though I recognize that is frustrating for much of the potential audience. It isn't for me. I'd be on board for a Rectify that was twice as slow. These shows are exactly why TV is great these days, because when else would we have a slow-paced show about a man recently released from prison from death row for a murder he isn't sure if he committed or not, or a bleak portrait of families (and communities) gradually falling apart in the wake of a Rapture-like event?
Better Call Saul is way up there, it's just a little harder to call it a drama at times. But that's not a new problem, right? Ally McBeal was nominated for comedy Emmys but felt like apples and oranges against its sitcom competitors, and before that, St Elsewhere got drama awards but was funny at least as often as BCS.
Took me a minute to think of what the fifth nominee should be. The Good Wife had too uneven a season and the nonsense with Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies reached its show-affecting peak. Justified had its strongest season since the Bennetts, but still felt like it was treading water at times. The Americans, on the other hand, dealt with some of its strongest material, though I am still having trouble swallowing some of the plot developments (or the lack of certain plot developments occurring, I suppose) where Clark and Martha are concerned.
Lead Actress
Elisabeth Moss is the best actress on television in the 2010s, period. Okay, Connie Britton could give her a run for her money if Nashville gave her material to work with as strong as Friday Night Lights did, but between Mad Men and Top of the Lake, there is just no one else who has done better than Moss in recent years. The final season of Mad Men includes some of the best Peggy moments, especially the final two episodes. I really hope we don't lose Moss to movies. There is a particular joy in seeing the way an actor develops a character over time, one you can only find in television.
Carrie Coon and Amy Brenneman are the strongest performers on The Leftovers, doing very different work that -- like that of Moss and Christina Hendricks on Mad Men, for instance -- is grounded in their shared world. I knew Brenneman was good, of course, but it's great seeing her have something so meaty to work with, while Coon has been a revelation.
Speaking of revelations, Keri Russell somehow keeps getting better and better. Felicity is a pretty underrated show in the first place -- I think it's too easily summed up by its sort of wincey "girl follows crush to college" premise -- and Mission Impossible aside, she didn't have a lot of high-profile movie work in between series. But holy shit is she good on The Americans. If we weren't in such a golden age of drama, it would be no contest, hers would be the best female performance on TV.
Although Orphan Black hasn't stayed as strong as its first season, that's largely because of the rambling plotting. Tatiana Maslany continues to do heroic work in half a dozen roles -- differentiating them by more than just their hairstyle would be hard enough, but she manages to bring nuance to characters who could easily seem straight out of Central Casting, especially soccer mom Alison.
Lead Actor
Look, lots of guys were great this year, and it's a shame Aden Young hasn't already got an Emmy for Rectify, but he'll have time, as will Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul. This year has to be Jon Hamm. There is no close second. It has to be Don Draper. Come on. Teach the world to sing.
Supporting performances
I would nominate everyone on Transparent, Mad Men, and Rectify who doesn't qualify as a lead. Sam Elliott is probably an obvious choice for Justified; same with Michael McKean from Better Call Saul. Speaking of which, I was unfamiliar with Rhea Seehorn before BCS, but she's terrific. The whole Togetherness cast has submitted as supporting actors, and they all deserve nominations. Lorraine Toussaint and Uzo Adaba are the obvious choices from Orange is the New Black. Anybody on The New Girl or Parks is Emmy-worthy -- like a lot of the best sitcoms (Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, Community, Happy Endings), the strength of those shows is their combinations of characters, much more than any one central performance. Zach Woods and T.J. Miller deserve nods for Silicon Valley, too, as does Kether Dononue for You're the Worst.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)