Watchers – easily the best and most timely television show of the past year – was the big winner in today’s announcement of the 2020 Primetime Emmy Award nominations. The story of the comic adaptation of the fighting superheroes (or, in some cases, they reinforce) white supremacy obtained 26 nominations. That’s the maximum for any series, and a total that would be surprising in a pregame of Thrones world. There were nods for outstanding limited series; stars Regina King, Jeremy Irons, Jean Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya-Abdul Mateen II, and Jovan Adepo; and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
With a headline like that, everything seems fine in the Emmy world, right?
Unfortunately, nominations beyond Watchers They were dramatically uneven, mixing fist pumping options (Ramy Youssef for best actor in a comedy!) with options for scratching his head (The Mandalorian For outstanding dramatic series?) And pure, wrong, and anger-inducing.
Yes, we have a lot to talk about here, but we need to start with Rhea Seehorn, Bob Odenkirk and Better call Saul.
Saul He had a decent morning with seven overall nods, including one standout drama, plus one for his digital shorts where Seehorn’s Kim Wexler teaches legal ethics. But Odenkirk, who has been nominated all previous years for the series, and who has never been better than he was in his fifth and best season, was most likely beaten by Steve Carell of Apple TV + The morning show. Carell is the biggest name (in part because he once bested Odenkirk for the role of Michael Scott in The office) and Apple, which boosted the media Morning program At eight nominations, he has more marketing strength than AMC. Seehorn is even less well-known than Odenkirk, but he has been offering the best dramatic acting on television for years, with no Emmy recognition, and unfortunately the trend continues here.
But even the nominations that should have been a gift to Saul – Vince Gilligan for directing that amazing desert episode! Cinematography for that same episode, or the one with Jimmy’s reflection! They weren’t there. (Somehow, Ozark have two cinematography nods, suggesting that the category should be renamed Featured use of a blue filter.) Even some of the winks Saul Institutional laziness was suggested, like Giancarlo Esposito, who is still excellent but underused, getting a nominee for this season’s performer, Tony Dalton. The series It became an all-time season, one comparable to his emmy parenting show at the peak of Walter White’s powers, and voters collectively shrugged, ticked off some boxes, and went in search of brighter things.
OK. With that tirade out of the way, let’s find some good things. In The good placeIn the final season, voters finally noticed that the show features other actors besides Ted Danson and Maya Rudolph, with parting nominations for William Jackson Harper and D’Arcy Carden. The funniest comedy on television, What we do in the shadowsHe earned eight nominations, including outstanding comedy series and three different writing scripts. (I’m looking for Stefani Robinson’s script for “On the Run,” also known as The One With Jackie Daytona’s Toothpick.) Youssef actually received multiple nominations, both for acting and directing the strangest episode of Ramy Season two (the one featuring Mia Khalifa), though the show itself failed to decipher the field of the comedy series during the lazy second season of Kominsky’s method. And now the rage is coming up again, thinking about how Kominsky was nominated but better things completely fell off the radar of the TV Academy.
Keep together, keep together … What else was good? Well Toni Collette was nominated for the aptly titled Netflix miniseries Amazing But somehow, her extraordinary co-stars Kaitlyn Dever and Merritt Wever don’t. They certainly had the most difficult path, appearing as the protagonists in a limited series or movie, where they had to compete with stars like Cate Blanchett and Kerry Washington, but still.
At least that category was, something better! – one of several where most of the nominees were black. At a time when the television business is being driven to improve when it comes to representation, the acting nominees overall were roughly 40 percent non-white. Rudolph only picked up two different comedy guest actress nominations, for Good place and SNL, plus another for his voice work in Big Mouth. And the math is the same whether or not you count the two short form performance categories, which may need to be narrowed down to “The Quibis.” (Latinx representation? Not so much, with zero acting nominees).
It wasn’t a bad day to be new to broadcast wars, either. Disney + The Mandalorian brought home the fifth highest number of nominations of any show, with 15, though none for Baby Yoda, while Apple has to be satisfied with its Morning program Bell.
The big Emmy winners of last year, game of Thrones and Flea bagThey have finished their careers, leaving a relatively open field for any kind of virtual ceremony that ABC has planned for September. If we were placing bets right now, I would assume Watchers, Successionand Schitt’s Creek Have the best night. But then a few months ago, I was fantasizing about Odenkirk and Seehorn raising trophies together behind the scenes, so you might want to be careful to put your money where my mouth is.
