I may very well be one of the few people
who watches and indeed takes pleasure out of viewing the Creative Arts Emmys
every year. I see it out on FXX, I watch every minute of the 2 and half hours
that are edited out of two days of broadcasting, I love hearing all of the
speeches and the presenters more, if possible, then the winners for the actual
Emmys.
As Robby Hoffman (who just as she did
with Hacks stole the show when she presented) pointed out the Creative
Arts Emmys people do even more work than some of the actual presenters. In her
case she pointed out that every director is standing on the back of a DP and
while this was played for laughs obviously there's a deeper truth to it. So
many great shows would not work without the scores, the editing, the
cinematography, the casting directors and everything else that makes the best
television sing.
Of course sometimes these nights can
remove all the suspense from what will happen on the big night. As in last year
in which Shogun had essentially won every Emmy it was nominated for to
set a record even before the actual awards with fourteen Emmys. But as we also
know sometimes it can be a false flag. Last year The Bear ended up dominating
the comedy awards with seven Emmys at the Creative Arts Emmys which many took
to be a sign it would sweep every prize the following Sunday. That didn't
happen as Hacks took one of the most surprising and deserving wins in my
lifetime.
And it is conceivable that we could
see similar patterns in quite a few of the Emmys tonight despite the results of
the Creative Arts Emmys, certainly the possibility is real in Best Drama. Severance
was up for 17 nominations in these categories in the drama awards. To be
sure it did win more Emmys than any drama in contention with 6 – Best Sound Mixing
for A One Hour Program, dramatic score, title design, cinematography,
Production design and its biggest surprise Best Guest Actress in a Drama.
Widely expected to go to Kaitlyn Dever for The Last of Us, it went
instead to Meritt Weyer.
But in many cases its multiple
nominations in the same category worked against it and as a result Andor managed
to win four other awards. Perhaps most tellingly it lost Best Casting in a
Drama to The Pitt, very frequently a tell into which TV series will Best
Drama in particular. And its being in direct competition with The Penguin also
didn't help it.
The Penguin did spectacularly with 7 wins: Special
Visual Effects in a single episode, Sound Mixing in a Limited Series, Sound Editing in a Limited Series, Music composition in an
anthology, Prosthetic and Non-Prosthetic Makeup, Contemporary Hair
styling, Contemporary costumes. Adolescence by comparison only won 3 but
they included casting. Also Adolescence was only up for five Emmys in
the Creative Arts categories while The Penguin was up for 17.
Fittingly The Studio had the
best night of them all taking 9 Emmys. These included Production Design,
Casting, Cinematography (for 'The Oner', obviously) Contemporary costumes,
Music Supervision, Single Camera Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing (the
latter two were for 'The Golden Globes' and Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy
which was won by Bryan Cranston. The latter marks the first Cranston has won
for his comedic work, which is somewhat ironic considering that for the longest
period he couldn't win an Emmy for that. This is his fifth Emmy for
Acting.
Hacks won only one Emmy, albeit a significant
one. Julianne Nicholson prevailed for her hysterically wonderful work as 'Dance
Mom', the second she's won so far this decade. (On the down side, any chance
she had to win Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama probably went out the
window.) So it's easy to say The Studio has the advantage going in
tonight.. However this is one more Emmy than Hacks won at the creative
arts Emmys last year – and it didn't win Casting that last year either.
The Guest Actor in a Drama Emmy went
to Shawn Hatosy for The Pitt. His reaction to "quote my seven year
old: "Holy shit!" He went out of his way to praise both Noah Wyle and
everyone there and just as adamantly praised the first responders and emergency
workers. That's the kind of message the Emmys likes.
The Last of Us and The White Lotus each took
one Emmy apiece, the latter for its incredible title music (which I think makes
perfect sense) Bridgerton and The Boys each won three Emmys; the
former mostly for costumes, the latter for its stunt work. The Righteous
Gemstones took an Emmy for its stunt work. And perhaps in the biggest sign
as to how times have changed The Bear didn't win a single one of the
seven Emmys it was nominated for at the Creative Arts Emmys. There's a good
chance it will go home empty handed tonight.
Reality TV was dominated by The
Traitors in another major shift as the show took four Emmys and Best Host
went to Alan Cumming. This may be a shift as to how Reality competition is
moving away from RuPaul's Drag Race after dominating it for the last
several years. Jeopardy repeated as Outstanding Game Show for the second
straight year; however Jimmy Kimmel won Best Game Show Host. And The Daily
Show did superbly in Comedy with one of my favorites Desi Lydic taking home
two Emmys. Her first acceptance speech was my favorite: "Before I came
here tonight, my seven year old said he was going to give me a moonstone in
case I didn't win a trophy tonight… and I can't wait to shove this in his face
for not having faith in me! Suck it."
Saturday Night Live won the majority of the technical
award for variety special for 50 years while many of the rest were taken
by the Oscars. One Hundred Foot Wave won Best Documentary. Pee Wee as
Himself won Best Documentary Special. Outstanding Television Movie was
given last week and it went to Rebel Ridge.
There's a possibility that in all
three major categories we have the biggest winner end up going to one show and
the show with the most awards be a different show. The Pitt does seem to
have momentum that could take it over Severance for Best Drama (we'll
have to see how the directing and writing awards go) Hacks very well
could take Best Comedy over The Studio (the controversy over late night
in recent months may very well be enough to give it an edge) and Adolescence
will definitely have fewer awards than The Penguin. I'm not backing
away from any of the predictions I made over the last few weeks in any of the
other categories.
I'll be back tomorrow with the
results.
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