With the Actor Awards on March 1st
I mark the end of Phase One of the Emmy Watch. Phase Two, for lack of a more
accurate chronology, would seem to cover every major awards shows given between
March 1st and the end of April. And just in the past week there've
been a lot of them.
I'm not going to focus so much on the
various other Guild Awards in this particular article because the nominations
themselves seemed more pertinent then the actual winners, which followed a
familiar pattern. Instead in this article I'm going to deal with the winners in
several other niche categories that were given in the past week or so.
I'll start with the 2026 Image Awards.
Technically I should have dealt with that last week because the Images were
given over multiple days on the last week of February and aired their official
ceremony on February 28th.
But I felt it would lose focus from my coverage of the Actor Awards that
same weekend and there's only so much focus I can give.
So here we go:
2026 Image Awards for TV
Comedy
Quinta Brunson will no doubt be a
formidable contender for Best Actress in a comedy this year, particularly as
its unclear if the final season of Hacks will air in time for
eligibility requirements. Combined with her Critics Choice Award Janelle James
would appear to be, in my opinion the official frontrunner for Best Supporting
Actress in a comedy. Abbott Elementary deserves to win and William
Stanford Davis deserves a nomination. Cedric the Entertainer will never get
there and we all know it.
I was glad to see Tyler James Williams
win for direction and I'm always glad to see anyone win for Hacks.
DRAMA
Sterling K. Brown will be a frontrunner for
Outstanding Actor in a Drama for Paradise even though he will yet again
face formidable competition. Caleb McLaughin might well contend for an Emmy for
Stranger Things and The Pitt will be in the hunt for writing.
Angela Bassett deserves an Emmy
nomination for her work in in 9-1-1. They gave the Supporting Actress
prize for Aisha Hinds for 9-1-1 the only actress among the nominees who
has no chance of winning.
The Images really hurt themselves by
giving the grand prize to Reasonable Doubt.
I'll said limited series TV movie
aside because even before the awards the odds of any nominations were shaky at
best.
Now I'm going to deal with a newcomer
to my Emmy Watch Series that really should have been there years ago: the
Saturn Awards. One of the major awards groups that recognizes science fiction
in television and films and considering the fact that particularly in this past
decade sci-fi in all its forms have moved from the fringes of the Emmys to
perennial contenders in every major category in drama one would ignore at one's
peril. I've only recently become aware of its existence and more importantly
the awards show itself has only recently begun to expand to handle the medium
at great length.
The nominations this past year alone
represented several major contenders from the 2024-2025 season and some that
will almost certainly contend at the 2026 Emmys. Some are already overwhelming
favorites, others may yet contend.
Andor took the top prize for Best
Science Fiction Series with Diego Luna winning Best Actor and Stellan Skarsgard
winning Best Supporting Actor. Outlander took Best Fantasy TV series. It:
Welcome to Derry was recognized in Horror TV. Dexter: Resurrection won
Best Thriller with David Dastmalchian winning Best Guest Star for his work as
Gemini. Best Superhero TV Series went to Peacemaker and Best
Action/Adventure TV Series went to the now cancelled Duster.
But the most pertinent results to this
year's Emmys was Pluribus which tied with Andor for most wins in
TV overall with three. It won Best New
Genre TV series as well as both female acting awards. Rhea Seehorn added yet
another Best Actress trophy to her list (it was given to her by Bob Odenkirk
which just made me love them both more) while Karolina Wydra took Best
Supporting Actress for her work as Zosia. Wydra's work has been much respected by
critics and viewers to this point and with many expected openings in the
Supporting Actress slot certain with series such as The White Lotus ineligible
she will likely be a formidable contender.
One would be remiss to add that many
of the major nominees have already seen overlap with this year's awards shows
including Season 2 of Wednesday, Alien :Earth, The Lowdown and Mobland.
When one considers the original Dexter's track record with the Emmys
one can see quite a few of the winners being on the red carpets next fall.
After all we saw it with Andor and though they didn't do well at the
Saturn's this year Severance, Paradise and The Last of Us did pretty well at the
Emmys last year in terms of nominations.
And while it's not going to cover
things as much as the Dorian Awards will later this year (those I will pay far
more attention to) the GLAAD Media Awards held their annual awards this
weekend.
While I'm unconvinced the massive
popularity of Heated Rivalry is going to translate to award nominations
(its not eligible for Emmys technically) they did give Outstanding Drama Series
to Stranger Things which is going to be in the conversation a lot.
Their choice for Best Comedy was
intriguing: Palm Royale. This series did get a lot of Emmy nominations
for 2024 and has gotten some recognition for Kristen Wiig already. It has also
been cancelled rather abruptly after two seasons.
Does that mean the Emmys will
necessarily ignore it this year? Hard to say. The Studio isn't going to
be around for Season 2, which is going to leave a lot of gaps in a lot of
categories which, particularly in the technical ones, Palm Royale can
easily fill. And considering the level of star wattage in this cast I find it
impossible to believe the Emmys will give nothing to Wiig, Allison Janney or
Carol Burnett. I mean this show is
definitely a comedy. One can't say the same about The Bear (though its
looking like the major awards groups are running out of patience with that show
too.)
Don't expect Wayward, the
winner for Best Limited Series, to be at Emmy red carpets. This show has been badly reviewed not so much
because of transphobia but because it's not very good. Which is a sign of
equality: LGBTQ+ based series can be mediocre, even lousy, and it's not a big
deal.
That concludes my record of this part
of Emmy Watch 2026 Phase Two. I'll be back in late March with what the results
of the BAFTA TV Nominations for 2026.
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