Myths And Realities of Peak TV, Emmys Edition: Part 1 The Age of The White Male Antihero Was Even Worse Than It Seems at first Glance

 

Watching the 1998 Emmys I enjoyed one of the most emotionally satisfying victories in what have been nearly three decades of watching the ceremony. Andre Braugher, after years of being ignored by the Emmys for his work as Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on The Street received Best Actor in a Drama for what was his final season on the show.

At the time I was overjoyed simply because I was a fan of both Braugher and Homicide. I had no idea how historic Braigher’s triumph was. Braugher’s victory in this category was the first for an African-American since Bill Cosby had won for I Spy in 1968. (Cosby was also the first actor of any race to win three consecutive Best Actor Emmy until Bryan Cranston managed to do so for Breaking Bad from 2008 to 2010. I think we can all be grateful for that.)

Less than four months later The Sopranos would debut on HBO and reshape the television landscape forever. During the next fifteen years of the first Golden Age – from the Sopranos debut until Breaking Bad’s final season, only one actor would even be nominated for Best Lead Actor in a Drama – Andre Braugher in 2001 for the already cancelled Gideon’s Crossing.

I remember reading on the internet by the time Ozark debuted in 2017 just how exhausted so many people  of dramas that were centered around ‘White Male Antiheroes’. It wasn’t even the first time I’d heard the subject discussed. In the fall of 2013, as both Breaking Bad and Dexter were coming to the ends of their runs Entertainment Weekly wrote an article on the subject, though in this case it was in relation to sexism rather than racism. I don’t know how aware of the controversy I was at the time – I was a huge fan of the two series discussed as well as Mad Men, House of Cards and the first season of True Detective. I was aware of the sexist tropes in play, which may have been one of the reason I was such a big fan of Damages when it was on the air and spent a fair amount of time pushing for series centered around ‘anti-heroines’. (By 2014, we were starting to get more female centric dramas of this note and I’ll get to that later on.)

But it wasn’t until fairly recently that I began to truly realize just how white the era of Peak TV was, at least in the period I discussed. To be fair there had been many times when it had been incredibly obvious  - The Sopranos dominating the Emmy nominations every year it was on the air, even in inferior seasons, while The Wire and OZ, two of the most racially diverse shows to that point in television history were essentially ignored during their runs. But while was a covering the Emmys for the first time – and slowly beginning to make predictions in the nominations and winners, though until the last decade I kept them to myself – that I realized that those people who wanted to use the hashtag EmmysSoWhite could have used it during almost the entirety of the 2000s and well into the 2010s and almost inevitably been more accurate then they were when it was finally used in the aftermath of the 2021 awards. What’s more this seems to have been going on in plain view during the era – and it was essentially ignored by almost ever major critic who covered the era and indeed in the immediate aftermath. (Both Difficult Men and The Revolution Was Televised ignore it all together.)

Since many have been arguing that the era of Peak TV is finally over, I think it’s time we realistic had a conversation about why, for some more than obvious reasons, that may not be the worst thing. So in the next couple of articles, I’m going to discuss how the Emmys saw Peak TV while it was happening, both in the extreme notes and the more subtle ones and why the last decade is giving us signs that as TV is transitioning into a new era, there might very well be signs the changes are for the better.

Now I’ll start with the obvious. I’m fully aware that using the Emmys as a benchmark of great television is as foolish as using the Oscars as a bench mark for the best movies. Indeed, in the next article in this series I’m going to point out that there was another awards show – less noted and now steeped in controversy – that was in hindsight far more in touch with the zeitgeist then the too-often behind the curve Emmys. But indeed it’s for that reason I think we have to use the Emmys, because they still are the standard – and also because there’s a good argument Peak TV actually set things backwards for diversity.

To restate the obvious, many of the most diverse series during the 2000s were essentially ignored by the Emmys. But the Emmys would demonstrate their bigotry in ways that were both subtle and in hindsight, blatantly bigoted, particularly when it came to drama. It’s The West Wing only nominated its one African-American lead Dule Hill a single time during the era of Aaron Sorkin while every other regular (including Stockard Channing who didn’t become one until 2001) was nominated multiple times. It’s Dennis Haysbert never being nominated for playing a black president during four seasons of 24, while Gregory Itzin, who played Charles Logan was nominated twice (once as a regular, once as a guest actor) and Cherry Jones winning the only season she was nominated for playing white ones. It’s about Katherine Heigl winning Best Supporting Actress in a Drama the one year she was nominated for Grey’s Anatomy and Sandra Oh and Chandra Wilson being nominated five and four times apiece and each time losing to a white woman. (Blythe Danner’s two wins for Huff during Grey’s Anatomy first two season look particularly like a thumb in the eye to them – and this is coming from someone who never liked the show.) It's about Lost, which had the most diverse cast of a network series only having a single non-white cast member ever nominated for an Emmy (though to be fair, the Emmys also ignored a lot of deserving white cast members too). And it’s about The Shield one of the most diverse shows as well as groundbreaking ones during the era, never being nominated for Best Drama and only once having a colored cast member nominated (CCH Pounder in 2005) despite having multiple deserving possibilities over the years (Forest Whitaker and Anthony Anderson are the most obvious examples)

And the few nominees of color were, except for Braugher, always in the supporting category. And  they were few and far between. Asides from the ones I’ve mentioned already, the only prominent ones in the drama category during the 200s were Freddy Rodriguez was only nominated once for Six Feet Under (in 2002), Masi Oka for the first season of Heroes and Naveen Andrews for the first season of Lost. It was not until 2010 when Archie Panjabi deservedly won Best Supporting Actress for her work as Kalinda on The Good Wife that a non-white actor had won an Emmy for acting since Braugher’s triumph in 2010.

Comedy was a slight improvement, though not much of one. America Ferrara became the first (and to date only)Latin-American to win an Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy for the first season of Ugly Betty. Tracy Morgan was nominated twice for 30 Rock, Vanessa Williams four consecutive years for Ugly Betty and at the end of the decade Sofia Vergara was nominated for Modern Family. But comedy was only marginally more diverse than drama during this period, as has been pointed out numerous times over the years by others. And even for the shows that had diverse casts again the discrimination was subtle but still there. Eva Longoria was the only one of the four leads of Desperate Housewives never nominated for an Emmy (though in fairness after its first season it pretty much dropped off the Emmys radar) and I don’t think Alfre Woodard would have gotten a nomination for the second season (she shouldn’t have anyway) had it not been for the actresses long history with the Emmys.

Now I realize that the staunch defenders of the Emmys (which I’m not for the record) would argue that this was just a metrics of ‘an earlier time’. To be clear, the 2000s was not the Jurassic Era. But it might blow your mind (it certainly did so for mine) that in the decade prior to The Sopranos debuting The Emmys had a superior track record with minorities than it did during the period after The Sopranos debuted.

Jimmy Smits was nominated six times during the decade, three times as best Supporting Actor for L.A. Law and four times for Best Actor in a Drama during the four seasons he was a regular. (He won for L.A. Law in 1990.)James McDaniel, who played Lt. Fancy on Blue was nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice. Eriq Lasalle and Gloria Reuben were each nominated for Supporting Actor and Actress the first four years they were on ER. Even C.C.H. Pounder, who was never a regular, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Dr. Hicks in 1997. Steve Harris was nominated for Best Supporting Actor twice in the decade for The Practice and Andre Braugher was nominated in 1996 in addition to his win in 1998. James Earl Jones actually won Best Actor in a Drama in 1991 (take back what I said about Braugher) for the mystery drama Gabriel’s Fire.

In 1992 and 1993 Regina Taylor was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama for her work in the 1960s I’ll Fly Away. Cicely Tyson would be nominated for Best Actress for her role in Sweet Justice the following year. (It would be another twenty years before another African-American was nominated in this category again).In 1993 Mary Alice would win Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for that same series. And speaking of diversity in 1995 Hector Elizondo was nominated for the first of four consecutive years for his work in Chicago Hope winning in 1997.

Comedy was much less rewarding (Must See-TV was incredibly white) but one should not discount the nominations – and win – that Ellen DeGeneres managed to achieve for writing ‘The Puppy Episode’ of Ellen in 1997. It’s hard to imagine such shows as Will & Grace existing without it as well as the slow trickle of TV shows with LGBTQ+ characters. I don’t think Willow Rosenberg’s coming out of the closet in 2000 on Buffy could have happened before Ellen DeGeneres’ win.

Now I’m not pretending that the Emmys during the 1990s was a rainbow coalition, particularly in the comedy category. But compared to the decade that was to come it was as ethnic as David Simon’s Baltimore – which I need not remind you was basically ignored during this period in the acting categories. Indeed Lucy Liu became the first actress of Asian origin nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work as Ally McBeal. It would be another eight years before a woman of color – Williams – was nominated in this same category.

This was for the record playing out on television’s biggest stage during the era where all eyes supposedly were on television in a way they never had been before. And yet the critics who worshipped every moment of this decade never even mentioned it while it was happening. I might not have liked the message in Maureen Ryan’s Burn in Down which covers TV during this  era (when it came to Lost I was probably to close to it) and to be clear the Emmys probably don’t enter into the discussion. But looking back on it, it’s obvious to anyone that the Emmys and the kinds of series and actors they nominated during this period were clearly a ‘Whites Only Club’.

Things would only marginally improve during the three years after the end of the decade as actors like Don Cheadle received multiple nominations for Showtime’s House of Lies and Giancarlo Esposito was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his incredible work on Breaking Bad. But as recently as ten years ago when Breaking Bad dominated the Emmys (deservedly) for its final season was being very clear as to who they were allowing in and who they weren’t. It speaks volumes that an actor who was diagnosed with dwarfism would win an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama during this period and an actor of color couldn’t get in the door. Not to take anything away from Peter Dinklage but it does kind of stand out.

What makes all of this all the more troubling was that during this same period a different awards, which is now hopelessly mired in controversy it may never escape from, had been given a greater variety of awards and to infinitely more qualified nominees during this entire period. In the next part of this essay, I intend to discuss the Golden Globes and how during the era they were clearly more on top of the current feel for what the public watched and loved than, with few exceptions, the Emmys was.