My Reactions To This Year's Emmy Nominations: Conclusion Limited Series

I expected Watchmen to do well with the Emmys: given not only the level of technical work that went into, but the superiority of the writing and performance, it was outstanding. Did I expect it to be the most nominated show, period? Not this much. I guess this officially breaks the comic book curse. Let’s go over the rest.

OUTSTANDING LLIMITED SERIES

Watchmen, Little Fires Everywhere, Unbelievable, and Mrs. America I predicted would be here.  The fifth series was a bit of a shocker. I Know This Much is True was a bit of a long shot, but honestly I thought that The Plot Against America or even Hollywood would have a far better chance than Unorthodox. Well, at least Black Mirror won’t overshadow everything.

OUTSTANDING ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES.

There’s something not right here. I expected Jeremy Irons, Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Jackman to be here. But have the Emmys decided that Breaking Bad has gotten enough Emmys? Where’s Aaron Paul? For that matter, are the Emmys really that far left wing that they didn’t nominated The Loudest Voice at all? Russell Crowe was good enough for a Golden Globe? He didn’t even get nominated for an Emmy.

I may have doubts about the Emmys constantly nominating five Limited series when there are at least six or seven good ones, but they’ve had room for six actors. So why are there only five? And why are Jeremy Pope and Paul Mescal nominated when their series didn’t get a Best Limited Series nod? Something is amiss here.

BEST ACTRESS IN A TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES

It gets even harder to fathom in this category. Cate Blanchet, Regina King, and Kerry Washington more than deserve to be here. But what did Reese Witherspoon do to get robbed three times by the Emmys? And how can you nominate Unbelievable and leave out Kaitlyn Dever and Merritt Weyer? Is there some kind of bias against the police procedural that I’m not aware of.

I know there was praise for Octavia Spencer for Self-Made and Shira Haas for Unorthodox, but it’s more than obvious the Emmys nominated the wrong actresses from Netflix. Again, I ask why are their only five nominees when there lots of great performances? What’s going on?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A TV MOVIE/LIMITED SERIES

It gets even freakier here. Now I expect Yahiya Abdul-Mateen II to get nominated for Watchmen, but if you’re going to go as far as to nominate three actors from the series, how can you ignore Tim Blake Nelson? Don’t get me wrong, Louis Gossett Jr. more than deserves his nomination. But Jovan Adepo was only in two episodes of the series. It would’ve made more sense (and I could’ve lived with it) if Don Johnson had been nominated instead.

Now Jim Parsons and Dylan McDermott were highly thought of for Hollywood so I’ll let that go. But seriously, nominating Tituss Burgess over John Turturro. Don’t get be wrong; I’m all for nominating a comedy in this category, but they were far better choices from TV series. Jessie Plemmons or any of the group fro El Camino for one.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE

This is the closest to a logical group that I saw. Toni Collette and Jean Smart are the heavy favorites in this category. I expected Mrs. America to dominate this category, but it was going to be really hard to pick which brilliant actresses were going to be nominated. I was right about Uzo Aduba for her work as Shirley Chisholm, I nearly picked Tracey Ullman over Rose Byrne, and I’m always glad to see Margo Martindale nominated for anything.

That said, did the Emmys just get tired of nominating Allison Janney? I realize they may have thought seven was adequate for now, but I find it hard to fathom that Holland Taylor deserved to be nominated over here. (Or any of the actresses in Little Fires Everywhere or Hong Chau for Watchmen, or… let’s just leave it at that.)

Well, I’ve got a lot of TV to catch up on. I’ll keep you appraised as we get closer to Emmy night. (Though what it’s going to actually look like is beyond me.)