The Emmy’s Are A Joke

The Emmy nominations are in and we have some no-brainers, some out-of-left field shockers and some crazy snubs to go over.

To nobody’s surprise, Succession walked away with the most nominations, nabbing 27 including multiple Best Actor nods. HBO’s corporate family drama is one of the most brilliant shows out there, so you’ll get no complaints from me.

HBO had three shows get the most nominations. The White Lotus and The Last Of Us each nabbed 24. I definitely thought The White Lotus was brilliant in its second season, but I admit I’m a little surprised at this many nominations. I’m even more surprised by The Last Of Us which, while quite good for the most part, was not that good. It’s a decent adaptation of a better video game. It is not a 24-Emmy-nominations production.

Several other shows that got far, far fewer nominations were better than The Last Of Us. I’d rank Beef, The Bear, Barry, Andor and Better Call Saul higher than The Last Of Us. The Bear and Beef each nabbed a respectable 13 nominations. Somehow Barry only got 11—ridiculously edged out by the perfectly fine (but nothing special) Wednesday, which was only good thanks to the excellent performance by Jenna Ortega.

Just as ridiculous, The Mandalorian somehow nabbed 9 nominations while the vastly superior Andor only got 8. Repeat after me: The Emmy’s are a joke. The voters are playing a popularity contest here and the outcomes only vaguely represent actual quality, though we’ll see who actually wins in the end. That could make me less acerbic about the whole affair.

Better Call Saul somehow only got seven Emmy nominations, meaning that both Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring) and Jonathan Banks (Mike Ehrmantraut) will never receive an Emmy for their work in either Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, which is a travesty. Anyone who loves great acting and television should be furious about this. I know I am.

Somehow the truly awful Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series managed to walk away with five nominations, including one for Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series. That’s just two fewer than Saul and three fewer than Andor. What a joke!

HBO’s excellent (if flawed) House Of The Dragon received just 8 nominations, while Amazon’s execrable The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power somehow managed to get 6, despite being one of the worst shows ever made.

But things get worse. The wonderfully funny, poignant Reservation Dogs somehow didn’t receive even a single nomination despite being one of the best, most unique shows on TV, not to mention the only show on TV created and written and produced by Native Americans. The sheer gall of this is beyond the pale.

The final season of the critically acclaimed Atlanta received just one nomination: Outstanding Cinematography For A Series (Half-Hour). Good grief.

Other snubs include:

• Harrison Ford, who everyone raved about in both Shrinking and 1923.
• Basically all things Taylor Sheridan, including Yellowstone and Kevin Costner (and the aforementioned 1923 which also starred a snubbed Helen Mirren).
• Selena Gomez was ignored for her role in the much-nominated Only Murders In The Building for reasons beyond our understanding.
• Poker Face wasn’t nominated for Best Comedy, while Freevee’s Jury Duty got the nom instead (Amazon’s Freevee did quite well, with shows that cost much, much less to make than The Rings Of Power).
• Not surprised that Stranger Things only got six here because the show has truly and utterly run its course.
• I haven’t watched it, but people are surprised by Daisy Jones & The Six not getting any music nominations given its excellent original songs.
• The Great stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult were both criminally snubbed. What the hell?
• House Of The Dragon stars Emma D’Arcy and Paddy Considine both snubbed for best actor roles. Considine, in particular, put on one of the best performances of the year and deserved at the very least a nomination. No offense to Pedro Pascal, who is great, but Considine’s Viserys deserves that nomination more than Pascal’s Joel.
• Diego Luna snubbed for his excellent performance in Andor. Elizabeth Olsen snubbed for Love and Death.

The list goes on and on. Oh, and I didn’t even mention that the third (pretty bad) season of Ted Lasso walked away with 21 nominations! Truly, the Emmy’s are a joke.

Here’s the Series Scorecard via Variety:

Breaking this down by production company we get another year of HBO dominance:

• 1st place HBO with 127 nominations
• 2nd place Netflix with 103 nominations
• 3rd place Hulu/FX with 64 nominations (but no Reservation Dogs!)
• 4th place Apple TV with 54 nominations (but no Harrison Ford!)
• 5th place Amazon Prime with 41 nominations (no thanks to Rings Of Power!)

What do you make of all this? Which shows and actors should have been nominated but were snubbed instead? What show deserves the most wins?

Let me know on Threads, Twitter and Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. You can also sign up for my Substack newsletter, Diabolical.