I Have A Theory As To Why The Emmys Keep Nominating Succession - And It Doesn't Make Them Or HBO Look Good

 

I mentioned in my last piece on criticism in passing that when Succession debuted in the summer of 2018, Newsday’s original review was not favorable only giving it two stars out of four.

This was not a minority opinion at the time. The original reviews for Succession were generally middling at best – I remember reading an Entertainment Weekly review labeling it under the same brush as the fifth season of Arrested Development, and it’s opinion of both series was not favorable. I don’t remember the exact grade, but I think it was a C- at best.  The only review that gave it a higher opinion at the time was that of The New Yorker when the first season was over. Most critics did not think this belonged in the same pantheon of great TV as the recently completed The Americans and the much anticipated new season of Better Call Saul.

When awards groups began meeting that December Succession was essentially an afterthought. Kieran Culkin was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Golden Globes, but while that circuit had a history of recognizing recent sensation, Succession was not on their Best Drama list. The major contenders were the groundbreaking Pose and the undervalued Homecoming. More nominations were given to the Netflix thriller Bodyguard than Succession got. Culkin ended up losing to Ben Whishaw for his role in A Very English Scandal.

Similarly, the Critics Choice Award which had a similar recognizes series like this even at that point, barely gave the show the time of day that December. Their major focuses of that year’s new crop of series were Killing Eve, Pose and Homecoming. Again Succession was an afterthought, with only a single nomination this time for Matthew McFayden. He would lose that year to Noah Emmerich. (Both awards show gave their Best Drama prize – deservedly – to the final season of The Americans.)

There was a certain amount of surprise when Succession got nominated for Best Drama in the summer of 2019. I may be projecting, but I don’t think anyone was particularly happy about it at the time. To be fair, I have little doubt that then most people considered an afterthought to the Emmy domination that the final season of Game Of Thrones was going to have that fall. (The fact that even the most devoted fans and critics considering the final season and the series finale a spectacular disappointment did not disparage the Emmy voter from giving the show over thirty nominations.)  I remember being extremely disappointed that Homecoming, a series that had dominated the Golden Globes and Critics Choice awards was completely shutout and Succession was nominated for Best Drama in its place. However, I was just as unhappy with the nomination of Bodyguard at the time, and in both cases for the same reason.

Wit Game of Thrones completely dominating the Emmy categories in its final season, almost no other series had much of a chance of doing well in the acting nominations by default. But for a series that would basically dominate the acting nominations its next two seasons, it might shock some that it received a total of zero in every major category. Part of this was because of Game of Thrones domination of the Supporting categories where Succession has done exceptionally well subsequently.  But it does say a lot that the Emmys were fine nominating Michael Kelly, from the already controversial House of Cards final season as well as Chris Sullivan from This is Us (though to be clear I have no complaints about that) ahead of either Culkin or McFayden who had been nominated for awards that year. As for Best Actor, I’ll admit it was a strong field including Bob Odenkirk, Sterling K. Brown and Milo Ventimiglia from This is Us, Jason Bateman and the eventual winner Billy Porter as well as Kit Harington. Richard Madden who’d won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for Bodyguard couldn’t even get a nomination, so in retrospect, maybe it’s not a shock that neither Brian Cox or Jeremy Strong was invited.

All told Succession received five Emmy nominations its first season and won two: for Main Title Theme Music and the season finale. Jesse Armstrong genuinely seemed shocked that he won the latter prize, but so did Jason Bateman when he took Best Director. Ozark had a better night Succession with Julia Garner taking the first of what would be three consecutive Emmys for Supporting Actress in a Drama and more people were focused on Billy Porter and Jodie Comer’s wins and the triumphs of Fleabag. I don’t think anyone, certainly not me, thought that Succession was going to be around at next year’s Emmys. 

Now I’ve written in my most recent article that HBO has the swagger that allows even lesser dramas and comedies to get nominated over superior series on networks or services. And to be clear, I had little doubt that with Game of Thrones vacating the seat of prestige drama, there would no doubt be other HBO dramas to fill the void. But if I had been asked to guess which would be the one the following year,  despite it’s nomination for Best Drama this year, I would have given it slim odds of repeating. And honestly, it would not have just been based on pure prejudice towards the series but rather the history of how the Emmys worked when it comes to nominations and awards.

It has been the bane of television fans existences that while every other awards show on the planet seems willing to let a new field of nominees come in every year or at least a few new visitors, the Emmys seems to be an exclusive club year after year after year. Regardless of how good subsequent seasons are, once you’re in, you seem to be in for the duration of the series run no matter how much the quality of the show declines over time. Game of Thrones was by far the most obvious example, but I could just as easily use ER and Law and Order in the 90s, The West Wing in the 2000s and The Handmaid’s Tale right now. The fact that by this point in Peak TV history certain shows would take gap years or even longer hiatuses had done little to change this over time and I had no reason to suspect there would be any change to this going into the 2019-2020 season. I was fairly certain that when The Crown returned for Season 3, it would dominate the Emmy nominations (it did) and that when Stranger Things returned for Season 3, Ozark which I considered a filler series, would drop down to take its place. (I did not think that both shows would be nominated.). I was also certain that two HBO series that had taken gap years before premiering new seasons that were to air that fall were going to be the dominant dramas – and I would have been in good faith doing so.

By the time the Emmys had aired, I was convinced the second season of Big Little Lies would be one of the bigger nominees for Best Drama and the acting categories. I realized that many had found the second season a disappointment, but I had not and I thought the series domination of the Best Limited Series category in 2017 would be enough for it to carry the day. (As you shall see, I was not entirely off in thinking that way.)

 Similarly Westworld was coming back for a third season that spring. To be clear by this point I found the series completely incomprehensible and could not understand why so many people loved it. But again, I was aware of the Emmy history of recognizing previous nominated shows and actors. And in both 2017 and 2018, Westworld had been one of the most nominated dramas among the Emmys, receiving thirty eight nominations and multiple nominations for almost every actor in the cast. In 2018, Thandie Newton had taken home the Best Supporting Actress prize for Best Drama. There was little reason to doubt that regardless of my personal feelings, Westworld would be similarly dominant.

And it’s not like that there would be other prestige dramas airing in between those two. During the fall of 2019, the most talking about show on television was Damon Lindelof’s reimaging of Watchmen, one of the great triumphs of television. In the winter of 2019, the only question that awards pundits had was whether it would be nominated as a drama or a limited series. I had basically disregarded Euphoria at the end of 2019, but considering how much popular love their was at the time for the show, people might well have thought it could have been a major contender.

The awards shows of 2020 might have done something to promote the possibility of Succession as a contender for awards in the fall, but if it was possible it didn’t seem obvious in the winter of 2019. Succession had been nominated for three Golden Globes, including Best Drama. So had Big Little Lies. The fact that Succession took the prize and Best Actor for Brian Cox might have created a tremor but it wasn’t necessarily a foreshadowing of anything: the Golden Globes had never, to take the most obvious example, ever given Game of Thrones the Best Drama prize in its entire eight year run. Similarly, it had gotten three nominations at that year’s Critics Choice awards. Watchmen (which was nominated in the Original Series category as well) had gotten four and would end up winning as many awards as Succession did that January (Best Actress for Regina King and Best Supporting Actress for Jean Smart) The fact that the show had won Best Drama again was indictive that critics like it but that did not mean future success. In 2015, Mr. Robot had taken the Best Drama prizes from both organizations and ended up losing the grand prize to Game of Thrones that year. At that point in time, both awards show had as much a history of following as they did leading: (in 2018, both had given their Best Drama prizes to The Handmaid’s Tale  after it’s triumph at the Emmys. And there was still no sign that Succession had a grass roots movement overall: when the SAG award gave their nominees for Best Drama Ensemble, they would recognize Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies, but not Succession. (The Crown won that year.)

So why in the summer of 2020, did the Emmys go so hog wild over Succession and basically shunt its previous champions, Big Little Lies and Westworld, to what amounted to the Supporting categories? You might argue that the second and third seasons, respectively, of those two shows had been of a poorer quality and the second season was so brilliant that had to prevail. If you truly believe that I wonder if you’re the kind of person who still believes in the Tooth Fairy. There had been far better shows during that period – the fourth season of This is Us which was almost entirely ignored by the Emmys and Euphoria was a bigger ratings hit than Succession but it was basically ignored as well. And yes Succession had been nominated the previous year, which had given it an in but there have been series that have received a nomination for Best Drama one year and fall out of contention the next – Mr. Robot had done so in 2016, and despite its quality remaining essentially at the same level, it never did again.

So why was Succession nominated? I have a theory, and its not a pretty one. I have, to be sure, no evidence of it besides conjecture, speculation and the history of the Emmys in general.

I have been loathe to play the race card when it comes to the Emmys, but that does not mean I am not aware of its horrible track record when it comes to minorities. It has only begun to improve quite a bit in the last decade, mostly through the victories of people like Sterling Brown, Porter, Regina King, and yes even Viola Davis’s work on How to Get Away With Murder.

I also know that while HBO has a great record when it comes to great TV, it’s track record when it comes to having nominated dramas that have minorities cast members is, if anything, worse than the Emmys.  The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood may have led the revolution, but The Wire was basically ignored by the Emmys in comparison to those series as well as Six Feet Under.  The pattern started early; Oz the show that started the revolution got practically no nominations from the Emmys at all.

After the big three left True Blood, which for all its flaws had a heavily minority cast, received just one Emmy nomination. Tremé, a David Simon series set in New Orleans, never got anywhere with the Emmys. Game of Thrones became dominant almost from the start. (Boardwalk Empire also did well but it had a fairly strong minority cast – though none of them, including Michael K. Williams or Jeffrey Wright ever received a nomination for their work there.)

I don’t have to tell you that HBO had a similar history of monochrome talent among its most nominated comedies: from Sex and The City to Entourage to Girls, there was a scarcity of white people on either coast. Silicon Valley was slightly better in that regard, but it usually paled in terms of recognition by awards shows to Veep. (They have gotten better in that regard as I’ll get to below.) Limited series is a harder nut to parse and a fairly recent category in the Emmys so I won’t consider them.

Now I’m not saying that Succession received its Emmy nomination for Best Drama because of the nominated dramas in HBO’s lineup, it’s cast was by far the most monochrome. I can not prove it, and even if I suspect based on the nominated series records, correlation does not equal causation. And I fully admit the theory only holds up if you only consider the nominees for Best Drama that year. Westworld may not have been nominated for Best Drama, but Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright did receive acting nominations. No matter what I think of the series she’s in, Zendaya did win Best Actress for Euphoria that same year. 

 This argument falls apart further when you consider the nominated series and actors in the other Emmy categories that year. Insecure, Issa Rae’s landmark comedy show, had its best year in regard to nominations, with Rae and Yvonne Orji getting nominated.  And Watchmen was nominated in the Best Limited Series category and was absolutely dominant, winning eleven Emmys including another trophy for King and Best Supporting Actor for Yahya Abdul-Mateen.

And its not like in the last couple of years HBO’s track record with minority dramas and comedies haven’t improved dramatically: the following year Lovecraft Country would be HBO’s most nominated series and I May Destroy You would prove a triumph for Michaela Coel, who became the first African-American woman to win for Best Writing for a Limited Series.  Admittedly, it is troubling that the Emmys choice to ignore the former entirely for awards and give the lion’s share of the acting wins to Mare of Easttown rather than nominees from I May Destroy You. That is indictive of the larger problem the Emmys still have when it comes to recognizing minority actors and writers. It's also not lost on me that Insecure was basically shut out of the Emmys in its final season last year while Barry dominated the Best Comedy categories.

To be clear, I am not saying that the fact the majority of nominated dramas and comedies from HBO are nominated by the Emmys because of its problematic history with recognizing minorities. That was a problem well before HBO began producing great television and it is a problem that has been indicative of much of Peak TV to this day. So much of television has focused on the white male antihero above all else that Emmy recognition of these series is perhaps inevitable. And I can’t do more than hypothesize that Succession’s track record with the Emmys is just a symptom of a poor history rather than simply recognizing a series on its own merits. Hell, Mad Men won Best Drama four years in a row and it had a similar scarcity of African-American actors.  But when the Emmys recognize a series that has such a predominantly white cast as it did last year, over the final season of This is Us, when it fills its Supporting Actor category with Succession nominees and excludes such more than qualified contenders as Giancarlo Esposito and Michael Mando from Better Call Saul as well as previous years where it has ignored nominees from series such as The Good Fight, when it nominates a cast which basically encapsulates the rich and powerful billionaire white people over series over say countless very good shows that have minority casts whose only crime is to not be on HBO (I’m thinking in particular of Starz’s Power series), well…there is a message here and it reflects on how the Emmys will always go to HBO by default and an underlying tone beneath.

And again, I have no proof of this and I loathe the idea of being the kind of critic who is ‘just asking questions,’ something I had any other person for doing. I imagine I will take a beating by just about every single group imaginable who loves Succession and thinks that it deserves all the awards it gets. Perhaps all of this is mere pettiness and dissatisfaction against a network I truly feel has dominated the awards circuit for far too long with series whose appeal I can not comprehend. I honestly don’t know. But as Succession enters what will be its final awards circuit, part of me does truly feel the question must be raised.