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| Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston in "Breaking Bad" |
In finishing up my continuing series
looking at the Emmy nominations ballot and laying out who I’d nominate (if I
had a vote obviously), today I’m looking at the categories of Outstanding
Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series.
One of the complaints I often see is that there are simply too many good
television shows. While I doubt I’d say
there are “too many,” there is a lot of good television on these days. And a wider variety of channels seem to be
putting on these shows. It used to be
that the broadcast networks were the only players in the game, but then HBO got
involved and they were followed by Showtime.
Then basic cable started picking up nominations with FX and AMC. Drama reached a turning point last year when,
for the first time in Emmy history, not a single broadcast program was
nominated. This season has seen the
field expand even further with networks like Sundance, BBC America, and even
Netflix all having reasonable chances to score their first Outstanding Series
nominations. More and more channels are
putting on original programming and a lot it is really very good. That means there is no shortage of shows for
this list and, I expect, no shortage in the future either.
Again, the usual caveats apply. First, I’m working from the actual Emmy Program Ballot,
so I can’t put continuing series that submit as miniseries (The Hour, American Horror Story) in their proper categories, nor can
I nominate a show that didn’t submit itself (sadly, Bunheads). Also, I’m only
including shows that I watch regularly, so if The Good Wife, Shameless, and Enlightened aren’t here, that’s why.
Outstanding
Comedy
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| Jake Johnson and Zooey Deschanel in "New Girl" |
I mentioned this in my Lead Actor
post, but comparing The Big Bang Theory
now with the pilot that aired six years ago is just remarkable.
It’s amazing how things can change so much in television. Six years ago, How I Met Your Mother was the critically-adored CBS comedy, nabbing
an Outstanding Series nomination in 2009 and a pair of Supporting Actor
nominations for Neil Patrick Harris. Now
it’s The Big Bang Theory which,
though probably not as loved
critically as HIMYM was six years ago, is pulling down all the nominations
and, in Jim Parsons’s case, all the awards.
And it’s been well-deserved. The
opening of the show’s world (most notably in the introduction of more female
characters like Miayim Bialik’s Amy and Melissa Rauch’s Bernadette) has made
the show deeper, funnier, and more flexible.
This isn’t a “the most popular show on television should be nominated”
nomination. This is a legitimate, “this
show is good” nomination.
Look, I don’t enjoy watching Girls.
It just holds little interest for me.
But there is no doubt that this is one of the best-written,
best-directed, best-acted shows on television.
And when it’s telling stories I find interesting, like the Patrick
Wilson episode, it really is a great show.
It’s unfortunate that Louie is taking a year off but it seems
like their schedule will allow them to be eligible for both the 2013 Emmys and
the 2014 Emmys (since they aired episodes in August 2012 and are on pace to
return in May 2014. That’s important
because Louie really is a fantastic
show and it deserves to be recognized for its brilliance. Like Girls
it is often more dramatic than hilarious, especially in this year’s “Daddy’s
Girlfriend” episodes and while it didn’t have the brilliant standout episode
like it had in 2011 with “Duckling,” I found the third season to be much more
cohesive, thanks largely to the three part story where Louis auditions for The Late Show. Louis CK controls every bit of this show,
from the acting to the writing to the directing and it shows, as Louie is the clear result of turning
auteur television (which we’ve seen work so well in Drama) to the comedy realm.
I’ve mentioned multiple times in
these Emmy recaps that I believe New
Girl made The Leap this past season.
It was a show that really struggled to find itself in its first season
but, in its sophomore followup, discovered its characters and how they relate
to each other. New Girl is a show that can be funny and romantic all at the same
time. The only piece they really haven’t
figured out yet is Winston, but even he gets to be hilarious occasionally, even
if there isn’t a great deal of cohesion.
This was a fantastic show this season and it only looks positive moving
forward.
The
Office was a legitimately bad show last
year. They didn’t quite know how to
navigate Michael’s departure and everything involving Andy was just
dreadful. The final season still had too
much of dreadful Andy, but pretty much everything else made a nice turn toward
quality. There were a few hiccups along
the way (the Twittersphere collectively losing its mind about Brian in a
completely unwarranted fashion is one such example), but for the most part, the
show returned to its heart: Jim and Pam.
Their relationship was thrown for a loop throughout much of the season,
but they came out stronger in the end.
In the middle was a touching, funny season of television.
While The Office, perhaps, emphasized its heart this season, 30 Rock finished out an amazing seven
season run by maintaining its mile-a-minute joke pattern in what may have been
its funniest season yet. Liz Lemon gets
the romantic storyline she always wanted (and ends up adopting a mini-Tracy and
mini-Jenna). Jenna briefly becomes a
superstar. Jack becomes CEO of GE. Kenneth gets to run the network. Everybody gets a happy ending and we get the
promise of Grizz & Herz. A fabulous final season that capped an
all-time comedy run.
Others meriting consideration:
Arrested Development, Cougar Town, Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, Happy
Endings, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation (which I’m immediately regretting
leaving off and probably should have replaced Girls), Community
Outstanding
Drama
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| Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie in "Game of Thrones" |
I debated on how to kick this
category off and ultimately decided to begin with my favorite show on
television last year: Game of Thrones. It was easily the show’s best year to date
and had the most talked about moment on television with the Red Wedding. While the show had George R.R.
Martin to thank for giving it great material to work with this year, the producers also
made some good choices in how they paced the storylines that made the show feel
a lot smoother and made the disparate characters seem a lot closer
together. It’s unlikely Game of Thrones will actually win the
Emmy for Outstanding Drama, but it certainly merits strong consideration.
Mad
Men had four straight wins under its
belt before finally falling to Homeland
last year. It’s still one of the best
shows on television, though, even if some people felt the sixth season was
Matthew Weiner returning the "Don’s familiar neuroses" well one too many times. Even if you feel that way, Mad Men was still one of the most
riveting series on television. It’s not
common for a show to win an Emmy after it stops winning Emmys (in the last 25 years,
The Sopranos is the only show to win
non-consecutive Outstanding Drama Emmys), but this show is certainly strong
enough to break that trend.
I’m a little worried about Breaking Bad’s chances this year. Its followup to what may have been the best
season of television ever was great, but not as strong. The show hasn’t aired an episode in 10½
months and is going to go more than eleven months between airings. And it only aired eight episodes last summer. I have little doubt that the show will be
nominated, but this series really does deserve to win an Emmy at some point and
it’s down to its last two chances. Those
questions aside, Breaking Bad is
still one of my two favorite shows on television and this past season was
fantastic, if for no other reason than that Walt and Jesse rob a train.
Homeland
is probably the last sure thing on
this list. The show won this award last
year and, though many critics complained about its sophomore season, the show
was still pretty great. There were some
problematic spots (pretty much anything with Nazir in the US) and I have
questions about how the show is going to handle the Brody character moving
forward, but Q&A was a fantastic episode of television and there were so
many great character moments throughout the season (not least Carrie’s and
Saul’s smiles bookending the first and last episodes) that I’m willing to
forgive the hiccups.
Justified
peaked in its second season. I’m not going to deny that. The show was brilliant, creating a
season-long storyline anchored with a pantheon villain performance from
eventual Emmy winner Margo Martindale.
Its last two seasons haven’t been able to match the greatness of that
second, but they’ve still been fantastic.
Justified is made or broken
(usually made) by its casting and this year had some of the best. Ron Eldard, Gerald McRaney, Patton Oswalt,
and Mike O’Malley all gave great performance (some more significant than
others) that served to perfectly accent the always wonderful Timothy Olyphant,
Walton Goggins, and Jere Burns. The
season-long mystery left a little something to be desired, but it culminated in
a pair of great episodes at the end of the season.
The one freshman drama to grace this
list is the marvelously moody Hannibal. I fully expected this show to be terrible
when it aired, but it surprised me completely in every way. The performances are great, especially Hugh
Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen. The
season-long storyline was effectively spooled out and came to a thrilling,
horrifying conclusion. Even the “monster
of the week” stories were, if not always narratively deep, still visually
stunning and appropriately terrifying. It’s
not like a large audience is a prerequisite for an Emmy win (Homeland and Mad Men both had audiences roughly the size of Hannibal), but Hannibal
would be, by far, the lowest rated network show ever nominated for an Emmy
(though that’s mostly because it’s also one of the lowest-rated network shows
ever to not get immediately canceled).
Others meriting consideration: The
Americans, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Orphan Black, Person of Interest
If forced to choose among this
group, I'd probably choose New Girl and Game of Thrones
So thoughts? Questions? Just
want to call me an idiot or tell me my blog sucks? Let me know in the
comments or hit me up on twitter @TyTalksTV
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