Qualified Emmy love

The Emmy nominations are here and are largely as expected (lots of The Bear, Shōgun, and Baby Reindeer), but there are a couple nice surprises, and one maybe not so much surprise and disappointingly met expectation. Let’s start with the good news.

Reservation Dogs FINALLY got major Emmy nominations! They previously only had one for sound editing, but for their final season, the Reservation Dogs team earned four nominations, including an Outstanding Comedy Series nomination, and an Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series nomination for D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. Especially by its last season, Reservation Dogs was not particularly a comedy—no more than The Bear is—but as long as the Emmys comedy vs drama eligibility is determined by runtime, which it is, here we are. And it is really great that the show finally earned a little recognition on its way out the door.

But let’s be clear, it is deeply unserious of the Television Academy that NONE of the women were nominated. Yes, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai’s character, Bear, was really going through it, but so was Elora Danan, played by Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs. They were co-leads that season, their characters acted as foils for one another, their story arcs on complimentary if separate trajectories. 

There’s always the issue of “too much TV” when it comes to the Emmys, it’s impossible to nominate every deserving person and series, but I truly don’t know how you watch Reservation Dogs and don’t see Elora Danan as central and important as Bear. Similarly, how do you watch that last season and not acknowledge the work done by Lily Gladstone and Kaniehtiio Horn? Both were eligible for the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series category, and both were overlooked. While I am glad that the Television Academy recognized this stellar show AT LAST, it does feel a bit like doing the bare minimum.

In the same vein, Fallout got a couple nominations in the most prominent categories, one for Outstanding Drama Series and one for Walton Goggins as Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, out of 16 nominations overall. But Ella Purnell, who anchored the series as vault dweller Lucy, was ignored. Again, not sure how you watch that show and come away thinking Walton Goggins was working in a vacuum. It actually makes me wonder how many voters really watched these series, even if only a few episodes, and how many just nominated names they know. Not that Walton Goggins doesn’t deserve to be nominated, he absolutely does, but Ella Purnell is just as impressive and important to the story as he is. It’s just so interesting how actors seem to get the benefit of the doubt in a way actresses don’t when it comes to performance.

Finally, after successfully lobbying to be included in Emmy consideration, YouTube show Hot Ones failed to crack the Outstanding Talk Series category. I guess I’m not entirely surprised, I imagine there is some resistance to including a show that doesn’t air on TV, or even on a “proper” streaming platform like Netflix or Prime Video. Even more than a decade into the streaming revolution, there is still a defensive stance about what is and isn’t “television” in the streaming era, and YouTube isn’t viewed as a “network” like Netflix is. 

Just my excessive use of quotation marks, though, should indicate how truly arbitrary these definitions are, and have been for years. Short of multiplying the Emmy categories, though, I don’t know how to fix it, and the Television Academy is extremely reluctant to add to their already overwhelmingly long list of categories. But eventually, they are going to have to learn to incorporate shows that come from YouTube, and whatever the next evolution of digital viewing is. TV isn’t just TV anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time.

You can see the full list of Emmy nominees here.