How Can We Improve The Emmys? A New Series About Some of the Disputes and Potential Solutions: Introduction and Part 1

 

 

If you’re a long time reader of my column you are aware of my complicated relationship with the Emmys. Every year I write in great detail about the shows and actors I believe with every fiber of my being should by nominated. Then July comes and I am frequently more disappointed than I am happy. Then as August approaches I start to rank and predict in great detail which shows and actors I believe should win each year and by contrast who I think will win. When September comes I have a certain mix of disappointment and encouragement by the whole process (though in recent years there has been more of the former than the latter) and not long after I start the long march towards next year.

But for all my problems with the shows and awards the Emmys have given over more than a decade of trying to track them and more than twice that following them seriously, I rarely have given credit for the improvements the Emmys have made over the years. And they deserve to be noted. When I was watching the Emmys seriously in 2000, there were only five nominees in every major category: now there are eight nominated dramas and comedies and six nominees for lead actors and eight for supporting. Limited Series hasn’t managed to expand at the same rate (though to be fair, they’ve only become nearly as central to it over the past decade) but the Academy has been willing to nominate six actors and actresses as leads and as many as seven in each supporting category. They’ve also made expansions in all of the other major categories, including most critically writing and directing.

They’ve also acknowledged the growth in both period pieces and fantasy dramas by divided their technical awards among those kind of shows and contemporary ones. This is a big deal because well into the previous decade the lion’s share of the costume and technical awards went to shows that were period pieces such as Mad Men or fantasy dramas like Game of Thrones, series which had a built in advantage that shows like Homeland or Better Call Saul couldn’t match. Similarly they’ve expanded the nominees in all these categories to as many as seven apiece, a major concession for an awards show accused of stasis much of my lifetime.

There are many prominent people who also critique the kinds of shows that the Emmys nominate. But where we differ is how those improvements could be made. The lion’s share of the criticism I’ve noted recently involves either contraction, most notably in eliminating gender categories for acting entirely, or reclassification of so many of the television shows given the difficulty in interpreting what genres they are.

Now if you’ve read much of my previous work you know that I stand adamantly against the former idea which has mainly been suggested for non-binary performers. I’ve argued – convincingly I believe  - that this would exclude far more than it could include, that there is an inherent hypocrisy in being comfortable  in taking money for playing a role that doesn’t match your gender but not accept an award for it  is a bridge too far, and giving voice to an alternative solution that would solve this problem. None of this will make a difference to the people who are speaking the loudest on the subject; I’ve come to realize this in terms of anything that is a political issue there is no room for maneuvering.

When it comes to the latter idea, however, I have somewhat more sympathy. I do have an understanding that not all dramas or comedies are created equally and that a limited series will often be limited based on how successful the initial season is. That said, I have heard a lot of the alternatives over the years and I’ve always thought the cure was worse than the disease.

So in this series, I’m going to concentrate on the problems when it comes to determining what a certain television show is by the standards of the Emmys (or indeed, most TV awards) the solutions suggested and why I believe they are flawed and my humble ideas for what could be done as an alternative. I want to acknowledge that this has, in recent years, seemed to have become a more thorny issue than usual. But I’m going to look to the past to prove that the critical word is ‘seemed’.

Let’s start with what has recently become a complicated issue: comedy.

 

Part 1: Comedy Is Hard. Trying to Reclassify It Is Foolish

 

Almost like clockwork every five or six years, someone raises a certain TV series that the Emmys have classified as a comedy and argues that we have to refurbish the entire way we classify TV. Twenty years ago, it was Desperate Housewives. Ten years ago, it was Orange is the New Black. These days, it’s The Bear.

The argument always seems to be made that none of these shows fit the parameters of what was traditionally a comedy. I think the problem has been that, while television has been changing in so many ways the past thirty years, our definition of comedy seems to be stuck in the broadcast era. Everyone seems to believe the era of broadcast television is dead (I don’t) but whenever it comes to considering what a comedy is, they bring up Seinfeld or Friends or Everybody Loves Raymond. Even though the laugh track sitcom model has been dead for more than a decade, so many people still consider that what a comedy is and won’t leave that model.

I have never believed this for the record. I’ve always been able to determine what comedy is based on Potter Stewart’s description of pornography: I know it when I see it. And while the network comedy writers have gnashed their teeth when Ally McBeal or Housewives or Glee came along, I knew one thing for certain: they weren’t dramas, certainly not by the definition of what we were seeing on cable or network television at the time. Ever since The Sopranos exploded on HBO in 1999, we were willing to acknowledge drama could break all the rules network television couldn’t. Yet somehow when it comes to comedy, the traditionalists still seem to be arguing the model should never change.

By the time Orange is The New Black came along there was an even larger furor and Jenji Kohan argued that the entire rules for the Emmys should be shattered entirely and we should divide the awards into half-hour series and one-hour series. This was to be clear an entirely ego-centric process because the only show it might help was Orange is the New Black. Strangely enough when Kohan began producing Glow for Netflix she had no problem saying it was a comedy even though it was not tonally that different from Orange.

Now I’ll confess over the years I’ve had some issues with what gets considered a comedy and what’s a drama. My biggest problem during the 2000s was the decision to classify Monk as a comedy when it seemed based on what I’d see a drama or a mystery. Much as I like Tony Shalhoub, I don’t think it was right for him to win all those awards in the comedy category. I didn’t have the same issues with either Housewives or Glee. I knew these shows were mixes of genres but at their core they were comedies.

But to argue that there should have been a reclassification because of the length of the show is not one that would have solved the issues. Because even while that was going on Showtime was developing a new series of shows that while they were a half-hour in length, the traditionalists had just as much problem with them being classified as comedies as they were having with Housewives. Kohan should have known that better than anyone because one of her shows led that revolution.

Weeds was in the same tonally grey area between comedy and drama that Orange is the New Black was. Indeed, I thought it was infinitely darker  - and less of a comedy – than Orange would be. But as far as I know Kohan had no problem when the show won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy over, among other series, Desperate Housewives in 2006 and Mary Louise-Parker won Best Actress over a category with all four leads being nominated. She didn’t seem to mind as Weeds got several major nominations over the years – though it was never nominated for Best Comedy.

As anyone who watched Showtime, during this period there was a series of female led dramedies that were among the most nominated series in the Emmys and Golden Globes. Indeed between 2009 and 2011 Best Actress in a Comedy went to an actress from each of these series: Toni Collette for United States of Tara, Edie Falco for Nurse Jackie and Laura Linney for The Big C. Collette and Falco each won Emmys for their work (when Falco claimed hers in 2010, she opened her speech with: “I’m not funny) and Linney did as well, albeit for the final season when it aired as a limited series. All of these shows were in the half-hour format and all were off high quality. Yet many question the merit of Collette and Falco’s wins (and later on Merritt Weyer for Supporting Actress for Nurse Jackie ) The logic seems to have been that these shows weren’t comedies. Well what were they then? They sure as hell weren’t dramas; no one would have thought to have them competing against Mad Men and Breaking Bad. And they weren’t violating the idea of the format as Kohan would be arguing for years later.

 The dramedy is one of those odd categories that is neither fish nor fowl and has always fit an odd notch. In 1998 Aaron Sorkin had broken big with his extraordinary Sports Night a show still beloved by millions. It was a half-hour long but while ABC tried to put a laugh track like they did its neighboring shows like Spin City it was so off-putting that it was dropped within a few episodes. Almost everyone who saw it (myself included) things it was brilliant but ABC ended up cancelling it in 2000, despite its improvement in ratings. In hindsight, perhaps it was because the traditionalists running the network just didn’t know how to market it and got rid of it. Network television has made many vast improvements in the comedy over the years but it’s never tried anything like it since.

And its not like the half-hour solution Kohan breezily suggested would have done anything to solve the problem. It wasn’t just Showtime that was rewriting the rules. Amazon’s first major success Transparent rewrote the rules of what a comedy could be by the same limit. In the past five years Donald Glover and Bill Hader have completely rewritten what the comedy show could be in their masterpieces Atlanta and Barry, by far two utter masterpieces. Furthermore one of the greatest comedies of the era Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fit the hour-long parameter and no one ever questioned it was a comedy. Should it have been forced to compete against Game of Thrones or Succession rather than Fleabag or Schitt’s Creek?

And has the half-hour limit really made us forget the difference? In the late 2000s the incredible half-hour drama In Treatment aired on HBO. The Golden Globes had no problem nominated it and much of the cast in the Best Drama category and giving Gabriel Byrne Best Actor in a Drama. Nor did the Emmys have any issues giving Dianne Wiest Best Supporting Actress in a Drama either. No one argued it should have had to compete against 30 Rock or The Office because it was a half hour long. They knew it was a drama and they put it there.

I could keep going like this for a while (believe me, I’ve got more than enough material) but I think the core issue is this: the problem with classifying a show a comedy or a drama isn’t going to change simply because of how long a show is. For the record hurt the dramas far more: I don’t know at this point of any half-hour long series that qualify as dramas and I know of more than three or four hour-long series going on today (Wednesday is the most recent) that would qualify as comedies.

The problem is that we still seem to be locked on to the idea that a comedy series should follow the model of  Roseanne or Two and a Half Men or The Big Bang Theory. And the fact is that model hasn’t been in place for a long time. Even before the discussion became louder, shows like MASH and Cheers redefined what the model of a comedy should be, bringing about as much grief and sorrow as it did joy. We seem to feel there is some kind of quota or marker that we can use to determine that a show is a comedy and the thing is there never has been.

The best comedies, in my opinion, can be about laughing at the ridiculous and the silly like 30 Rock and Parks & Rec did. They can also deal with life and death as Scrubs did; the lives of the ignored such as the just competed Reservation Dogs has or some of the problems with our families like the incredible Breeders did. All of these shows went to dark places and I considered all of them incredibly funny as well as moving. The Bear has been of the same tradition. In their own ways, so are Hacks and Abbott Elementary.

Comedy is one of those things that is incredibly brittle, can come from an immense amount of pain and tragedy and can change from era to era. And it’s always been one of the hardest to classify in a few words. Yet as I said at the start, I know when I see it and I think we all do. We argue that everything else needs to change with the times. Why should the Emmys have to change its model because some of us are still judging it by a long-gone past?