With Season 43 of Jeopardy Underway We Can Now Officially Update The Roster for the 2027 Tournament of Champions

 

 

Those of you who read my columns know that when the 2026 Jeopardy Masters concluded I promised to be back this weekend with an update for Season 43 before it began Monday. And I was genuinely planning to do so – until I remembered my own history.

Ever since I began regularly covering Jeopardy in my writing intentionally or not, a pattern has been developing. In the post-Trebek era I don't start writing about each new season of Jeopardy until something of importance happens. (Or in the case of Season 40 when nothing of importance seemed to be happening.)

What was important? Basically someone qualifying for the next Tournament of Champions. Sometimes you had to wait for their run to end (as we did with Matt Amodio way back in the fall of 2021) Sometimes you needed to wait for someone to qualify at all and that could take a bit. But I figured I would be best served by waiting at least until the first week of the season was over.

With good reason. At the end of Season 42 Matthew Riggle, a community college professor from Madison, Alabama had won the last two games and $64,400. So if he could just make it until Wednesday then he would officially qualify for the 2027 Tournament of Champions.

Which he has managed to do, though he really made it look hard. In the season premiere he spent the entire game trailing Bryan Lee and when he wagered everything on a Daily Double in Double Jeopardy and lost it all, I thought it would end right there. But he managed an impressive recovery and on a tough Final Jeopardy no one got right, he left himself with enough money to win his third straight game. On Tuesday he was challenged seriously by Wesley Jalipa and Abby Mullen but maintained his lead throughout the game and ended up winning his fourth game.

So yesterday with $95,602 he just needed one more win to officially get to the Tournament of Champions. Unfortunately he proved to be his own worst enemy – though to be fair even if he hadn't he almost certainly would have still lost.

Matthew led throughout the Jeopardy round more due to the failures of his opponents Daniel Nicastro and Jen Spinoglio. Both of them were in the red for much of it and while they recovered Matthew finished it in the lead with $4800 to Jen's $2600 and Daniel's $400.

His odds improved as Dan got the first Daily Double in Double Jeopardy wrong. Matthew moved up to $9600 when he found the other Daily Double in UNFINISHED LIT. He wagered $7000:

Published posthumously in 1938, her 'The Buccaneers' wasn't about pirates but about love in the Gilded Age.

There was a long pause. Before time ran out he guessed: "Who is…Stein?" He didn't know what I did it home: it was Edith Wharton. He dropped to $2600.

After that Jen who'd been pretty quiet during this round went on a run of her own. She finished the round with 20 correct responses and only four incorrect ones and was helped by not finding a Daily Double to end with $10,600. Matthew had to struggle to stop her from running away with it and Dan, who at one point was at -$1900 had to fight to finish in positive. Both achieved their goals: Matthew finished with $5400 while Daniel got the last clue of the game correct to end with $100.

But it was irrelevant because of how Final Jeopardy went. The category was NAMES IN TECH NEWS:

This last name in A.I. news has the same origin as a Latin name meaning 'lover of God' or 'loved by God.'

Now I had no idea what they were talking about with this clue. Daniel wrote down: "What is Theodore?" That was wrong and he lost $98.

Matthew was next. He wrote down: "What is Amadeus?" Right idea but the wrong name. It cost him $5201, leaving him with $199.

Jen was in pretty good shape and she knew the correct last name. In fact she wrote it down almost immediately. "What is Amodei?" That was correct. The founders of Anthropic are Dario and Daniela Amodei. She added $201 to become the new champion with $10,801.

But despite that Matthew is now officially listed as the eleventh player qualified for the 2027 Tournament of Champions. So now is as good a time as any to remind of you of the lineup we have coming back for the 2027 Tournament of Champions:

Harrison Whitaker, 14 wins, $373,999

Will Riley, 4 wins, $77,403

James Denison, 4 wins, $99,400

Jamie Ding, 31 wins, $882,605

Tristan Williams, 10 wins, $221,902

Chris  D'Angelo, 8 wins, $194,201

Peter McFerrin, 6 wins, $147,399

Adam Remsen, 12 wins, $306, 415

Caleb Groen, 12 wins, $346, 698

Mina Kimes, Celebrity Jeopardy All-Stars Winner

Matthew Riggle, 4 wins, $95,602.

 

I mentioned in my wrap-up of Season 42 that there were three three-game winners who, if past was prologue, would be invited automatically to the Tournament of Champions. However, discretion being the better part of valor, I'm going to wait until the eligibility requirements for the 2025-2026 come to an end in November before I officially put them on the roster. A lot can change in two months.

Besides it's already a formidable lineup with five super-champions, one of whom is already a cultural phenomenon. Jamie Ding, now the fifth best player in Jeopardy history in terms of games and money one, has become a cultural sensation, appearing on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire with Ben Affleck this summer, among other places. However there are no guarantees in Jeopardy as Scott Riccardi ended up learning when he made it to the Finals this past February.

Will someone the level of Paolo Pasco emerged in the next two months? Will another super-champion rise during that period? Anything can happen and your humble scribe will be there.

And once again congratulations to Jeopardy for winning the Emmy for Best Game Show this year. Well-deserved.

Why Did So Many Fans Leave Lost 20 Years Ago, Part 1:Why I Stuck With Lost Through Season 3

 

On October 4^th 2006 I was one of over 18.8 million viewers who watched the premiere of Season 3 of Lost. I'd come to the show somewhat later than most (I'd watched the reruns of the first season during the summer of 2005) but by that point I was just as devoted a viewer as anyone who'd been there since the Pilot.

At the time I was 27 years old writing about television but still not really putting much of it online  and was still very limited in my viewing habits. This had more to do with the options available during the mid-2000s. Not only was there no streaming to speak of network television, by and large, was still the big kahuna. This was proven by the fact that it was still dominating the Emmys in both drama and comedy (and would continue to do so for the rest of the decade) and also because cable still wasn't as big a thing as it would be at the end of the decade.

At that point the only two real players in prestige TV were HBO and FX. (Showtime still wasn't quite there yet.) And I was still somewhat erratic in my viewing of it. I'd only started watching The Shield seriously during Season 3, hadn't watched Deadwood at all and by the end of Season 5 I'd given up watching The Sopranos. So like the overwhelming majority of Americans I was still following network TV and at that point I basically stuck with network dramas and comedies week after week, year after year.

I'd been infuriated by the fact that that summer the Emmys had ignored Lost for Best Drama and all the major acting awards. (I was also just as pissed they'd ignored The Shield completely and I wasn't exactly thrilled that Hugh Laurie had been ignored for Best Actor for House and Hank Azaria had been nominated for Huff instead.) But I'd moved past it and after that I was counting the moments until October 4^th.

I watched the next six weeks eagerly. I don't remember what I thought of the individual episodes at the time (I'll get to what I thought of them in hindsight) but I do know when the series had what we would now call a 'winter finale' in November of 2006 I was angry as hell I was going to have to way until February for the show to come back.

What I didn't know at the time – and wouldn't know until Nikki Stafford wrote about it in the Season Three volume of Finding Lost  - was just how frustrated the fan base was to the point that many of them never came back after that cliffhanger. Indeed it wasn't until I read Alan Sepinwall's The Revolution Was Televised that I learned the frustration was great not just among fans but the critical community at large.

There has never been a point in the twenty years since that this hasn't baffled me. Mainly because I've never been sure how frustrated that response really was. At the end of 2006 TV Guide put Lost on its annual top 10 list of the year in large part because of some of new characters we'd seen in the first six episodes of Season 3. The show was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Drama for the third consecutive year, something that never happened again even though the Emmys would deservedly nominate it for Best Drama for its final three seasons.

So who's right? The people who believed those six episodes were the absolute worst things they'd seen? Or the critics and awards show who thought it was  as good as ever?

Having rewatched the series multiple times since I will acknowledge that when it comes to overall quality Season 3 is by far the weakest of all six seasons of Lost. That's still a relative term and I'd argue even at its worst it was still better than quite a few of the shows that were on network TV during the 2006-2007 season.  

So to answer the question I need to be a bit more personal in my writing then I've been in the vast majority of these articles and talk about why I stuck with it.

I'll be honest much of it may have been due to the fact that when I was in my twenties I was more patient when it came to watching TV then I would be a few years later. Back then with almost every major series I was ride or die, even when it became clear to me that they were becoming shells of what they once were. By the time I reached my thirties I would be more selective and start bailing out on television shows when they had exhausting my patience.

In some cases, mainly because my home didn't have a DVR and there really wasn't any streaming to speak of, a lot of the shows I gave up on during this period were shows that conflicted with other series I loved. That's the reason I decided to abandon the CSI franchise, first the original and then the spin-offs, Without a Trace, Smallville and eventually Grey's Anatomy. (I stuck with the show through Season Five.)

Now it's not that I was naïve about how much a show could drop in quality from season to season. In fact during the interregnum when I was waiting for Lost to return I was about to get a far better example that tested my fidelity as a viewer far more.

As I've mentioned in other articles (and in a few weeks I'm actually going to give its own series) I was a rabid fan of 24. And in 2006 television was graced by not only its finest season but one of the greatest seasons in TV history. The fifth season was so remarkable that it was ranked Number 1 on the best of 2006 list of TV Guide and deservedly won the Best Drama Emmy that year, along with four others.  Like everyone else who was a fan I was eagerly anticipating Jack Bauer's return.

And when Day 6 came it very quickly showed not only was it not living up to the hype but it was the worst thing on television. And I'm being literal. Entertainment Weekly ranked it as one of the five worst shows of 2007 a full year having ranked it as one of the best shows of 2006. And they were right to do it.

Far more than what happened during the first six episodes of Lost Day 6 of 24 absolutely tested my willingness to stick with a show during a season. It was clear to me by the time we were a third of the way in that this was disastrous but I kept hoping that it would turn the corner and it would improve. Instead it kept getting worse and worse. By the time Day 6 finally ended I was seriously considering if I was going to come back for Day 7: something that would have been unthinkable to me  a year earlier.  (The reason I ended up coming back, interestingly, has an overlap with why many critics may have gotten back on the Lost bandwagon for Season 4 and I'll get to that in due time.)

Perhaps that's why I was much more forgiving then many fans. When Lost returned from the winter finale 24 was one third of the way through Day 6. By that point I knew that no matter how tiresome the daddy issues of the characters on Lost were becoming I would rather deal with them then the daddy issues Jack Bauer was dealing with that season. (And if there are any Lost fans who never saw 24, trust me: Philip Bauer makes Anthony Cooper look like Father of the Year.)

The biggest argument about the first third of Season 3 of Lost  is that it basically seems to be running in place during the first six episodes. There's certainly some truth to that. The manipulations of Ben and the Others really do seem ridiculously protracted, particularly when we finally learn why Ben has gone to all this trouble to abduct the three of them.  I had more patience for it then some but I get why others didn't.. The question is: why did I have more patience?

I think a lot of it had to do with having watched The X-Files as a teenager. Now I wasn't at the point where I could have put those feelings into words and I'm not sure it occurred to me until multiple rewatches of both shows. But I have a feeling that a fan of The X-Files might have had more patience to stick with Lost during the first six episodes of Season 3 then someone who'd never watched it the latter. (The comparisons between the two shows had begun even before the first season of Lost was over.)

I think the main reason I was giving Lost more latitude was because it wasn't making the same mistakes that The X-Files had with its mythology during that period. I'll illustrate some of the more pertinent examples below:

 

When Lost said it was going to change things it actually did.

One of the great frustrations any X-Files fan had of the mytharc was that every time we got to one of those two-parters during sweeps  the promos would promise 'This is the Episode that changes everything!" And at the end of it nothing really had. Mulder and Scully would always be on the verge of getting some new piece of the puzzle but by the end of the episode it was snatched away from them and by the next two-parter came along, they were either following a completely different piece of the mytharc or what they previous believed was completely reversed. And the longer the mytharc went the less our heroes seemed to have any control of it which was just as frustrating the longer the series went on.

Even after two seasons Lost  was more than willing to shake up the status quo.  When they found the hatch, they finally went inside it and we spent the next season trying to figure it out and the mysteries involving the Dharma Initiative. When the Others abducted Walt and blew up the raft, it signaled that we were going to start learning more about the Others and slowly but surely during Season 2 we did to the point that by the end of the season we'd met their leader.

To be sure the series did a habit of getting bogged down with some of the arcs of its characters. Charlie's troubles with heroin became tiresome almost immediately and the show's decision to have Sawyer manipulate Jack and Locke into taking the guns was a major step backwards for the show and the character. But there's a difference between getting bogged down on character arcs and the story and it helped matters that Lost had a big cast many of which were always more interesting to follow. That counted for a lot for me.

 

Lost was pushing  the boundaries of how network TV worked.

Back in the 2000s on network TV and very much still today TV shows upheld a status quo. This was true not just for The X-Files but really every drama to that point. A season ending cliffhanger had to be resolved with the characters back where they were at the start of the previous season. This was particularly tiresome with The X-Files where Mulder and/or Scully's lives were always in jeopardy at the end of the season but you knew that by the end of the first two episodes they'd be back to investigating Monsters-of-The-Week. (The fact that the show kept doing that in Season 6 when they were supposed to be banned from working The X-Files really became tiresome in that regard.)

Even by the start of Season 3 it was very clear Lost wasn't playing by those rules. This had happened at the end of Season 1 when the launching of the raft had some of the castaways leaving the island and even though the raft blew up, they didn't come back to the camp until Season 2 was nearly a third over. Season 3 took it even further. Jack, Kate and Sawyer were on Hydra Island in the hands of the Others. Sayid, Jin and Sun were on a boat trying to save them. The camp was still dealing with the implosion of the Hatch.

It took three full episodes to catch up on where everybody was at the start of Season 3. And Lindelof and Cuse took their sweet time trying to bring the family back together. Sayid, Sun and Jin didn't come back to the camp until 'The Cost of Living' at which point the show killed off Mr. Eko. Even after the winter finale aired it would be several more episodes before Sawyer and Kate ended up back at the camp with Jack still being held prisoner. Kate would then immediately turn around and bring Locke and Sayid back to try and find the Others. (I'll stop here because I don't want to spoil the rest of the season which I may deal with in further articles.)

To be fair Lost wasn't the first drama I'd seen that was fine disrupting the status quo: The Wire and Six Feet Under had already demonstrated how great they were at it. But for one of the highest rated dramas on television this was unprecedented and a foreshadowing of how other network dramas such as The Good Wife and to an extent Shondaland and Greg Berlanti's Arrow-verse would in the 2010s.

 

The death of a character meant something that it really didn't on The X-Files.

 I don't just mean the fact that after a character was killed, you could just as easily see them in a flashback or maybe a shape-shifting alien. Even by Season 2 Lost was making use of that trope as well (though to be fair it was going to mean something in the endgame.) I mean that the death didn't signify anything important to the series.

Deep Throat dies, X comes along. X is killed; Marita Covarrubias comes along. A shadowy villain from the conspiracy comes along, he's killed, another one shows up. The names change; the role doesn't. And those are just the ones the show stuck with; so many times the show appeared to kill off a major character (Smoking Man, anyone?) and he'd pop again a season later exactly where he was before.

By contrast the deaths of the survivors meant something in a way I'm not even sure they meant in other series at the time. There were memorials for them in a makeshift cemetery that kept getting subtly bigger each season. In a way we ended up learning that the deaths meant something to the Others as well during the opening of Season 3.

In 'The Glass Ballerina' Colleen Pickett, the wife of Danny, goes on a mission for Ben Linus and ends up getting shot by Sun in self-defense. Two episodes later in 'Every Man for Himself' Juliet pulls Jack out his cage to try and operate on Colleen and as shocked as the Others are by her actions, there are quite a few of them watching through a glass screen and they're clearly upset that one of their own is in peril. When Colleen dies on the table her husband is racked with grief and in a rage sets out to kill Sawyer in an eye for an eye. In 'The Cost of Living' Ben takes Jack out for the  memorial for Colleen where the Others put on white robes, play Brenda Lee's 'I Wonder', put Colleen's body on a raft and light a funeral pyre that will burn her body to ashes as it goes out to sea.

On a story level this arc shows that the Others are like the Oceanics in a critical way: they mourn the life of one of their own the same way the survivors do.  This does more to humanize them then it ever did the Syndicate, or for that matter many of the antiheroes or heroes we've seen on TV. We didn't get to know Colleen the way we learned about the overwhelming majority of the Others but by treating such a minor character with great respect in death it's a subtle and powerful moment - even if its undercut by the fact that this episode ends with the death of Eko by the Smoke Monster.

 

It was far too early in Lost's run to worry about the writers screwing up the mythology.

That may be the biggest reason I couldn't understand why so many fans chose to bail.

While responses always vary as to when the mythology in The X-Files went off the rails I think by the time Lost began I'd decided for me it was during Season 5. The way that the writers chose to complete reverse everything Mulder believed in at the start of the season – and then basically restore it even before the season was over – was in hindsight a bridge too far for me.  So it essentially took four and a half seasons for me to completely lose faith with Chris Carter and company with the idea the mytharc would ever make sense.

So the fact that when we were barely six episodes into Season 3 and a sizable percentage of the fanbase bid the show adieu really told me more about the viewership then whatever problems the show was having. We're only two seasons in and you guys want frigging answers now?!  Give me (or Darlton) a break!

There's also a clear contrast behind the scenes. Carter's original plan for The X-Files was to end the series after five seasons and then continue the franchise in films. But by the fall of 1997 the X-Files was being watched by 20 million viewers a week so the decision was made to essentially make Fight The Future and keep the fifth season to run up to it. The result permanently paralyzes whatever forward momentum the mytharc had and it never regained it.

Now compare this with Lindelof and Cuse who wanted to come up with an endgame for Lost but the show was one of the biggest hits on television. They were similarly paralyzed and it's clear quite a bit of Season 3 shows it in the stories that are being told. However they convinced ABC that they needed a definitive endgame and by April of 2007 the network agreed allowing them to announce the series would come to an end in 2010. By that point Lost had regained its forward momentum and headed into a magnificent stretch during the final half of the season, fully rewarding fans like myself who stayed the course.

So now I've explained why I chose to stick with Lost through the trials and tribulations of those first six episodes. The question is: were those who chose to leave after the winter finale right to do so?

The thing is, there are pros and cons to each side that even I as a die hard fan of Lost can argue. And in the next two articles I'm going to illustrate them.

Revisionist History Series: I've Been Writing About Presentism All This Time

 

I've written on multiple occasions about how so many people, at this site and in historical articles, have taken the position of judging the past for the impossible crime of being the past. At the time I thought I'd had a real insight, only to find out, like so many of my other great ideas, someone smarter than me had it first a long time ago.

The term is called 'presentism'. In historical analysis it’s a term for the introduction of present day ideas and perspectives in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias and believe it creates a distorting understanding of the past. It was first cited in the historiographic sense in 1916 and may have been used in this meaning since the 1870s.

The historian David Hackett Fischer identified it as a fallacy known as Nunc pro Tunc, or now for them. In British history it was used in which 18^th and 19^th century British historians wrote history in such a way to use the past to validate their believes rather than an objective historical context. In this kind of approach, which emphasizes the relevance of history to the present things that don't seem relevant receive little attention.

There has been much debate among historians about the problematic question of history and moral judgments. Among historians the orthodox view (and the one that was prevalent among traditional ones) is that reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Slavery is given an example, letting that fact influence judgment about a group of individual would be presentist. Most of the books I've cited for my column, such as Robert W. Merry's Decade of Disunion took this objective view arguing the counterpoint between the secessionist such as Barnwell Rhett and the abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison. Kai Bird's The Outlier, which I recently reviewed, was essentially a presentist version of Carter's Presidency – and its worth remembering Bird's progressive credentials make it clear that this is the kind of history he would prefer to tell.

Critics argue that avoiding presentism on issues like slavery amounts to endorsement of the views of dominant groups, in this case, slaveholders, as opposed to those who opposed who held them at the time. They also argue that to avoid moral judgments is to practice moral relativism. The problem is while one can take that argument in philosophical terms, which is abstract, it has little to do with history which is about the past.  Fischer argued that while historians might not be able to avoid the fallacy completely, they should at least try to be aware of their biases and write history in such a way that they do not create a distorted version of the past. He might very well have been giving side-eye to Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal and other revisionists who only look at America and the world through presentist views.

 

This came up  in 2022 when James H. Sweet, who once served as President of the American Historical Association wrote an article observing a 'trend towards presentism in contemporary historical scholarship. One of the major points of contention was The 1619 Project which I've written about before. The result was predictable. One historian wrote an article about 'Two Cheers for Presentism.'  Another historian wrote that "while we can take disturbing issues of students and faculty on the left seeking to censor what can be taught or even spoken, the concerted attack from the right – in the form of state laws prohibiting the teaching of so-called critical race theory the 1619 Project (italics mine) gender and sexuality and other topics – are much more dangerous to the practice of history. Keisha Blain, an African-American historian, argued 'Black historians have long recognized the role of the present in shaping our narratives of the past. We have never had the luxury of writing about the past as though it were divorced from the present concerns."

In other words, when it comes to presentism those historians who use it refuse to be objective.

John Quiggin took this to an extreme: "When academic opponents of presentism say that current moral standards are being imposed on the past, what they mean is that racist views that are now deprecated were once dominant and vice versa. The real issue isn't to do with time, it's whether any moral standards at all apply to history. Rather than saying that (for example) Pol Pot was a man of his times and exempt from contemporary judgments, they should just say that's it's not their job to decide whether genocide is good or bad, just to report the facts.

Now the idea that Pol Pot, who was a 20^th century figure, could be viewed as 'a man of his times' is perhaps the most reduction view of history you could take. I don't know of any historian whose even put that into print, I seriously doubt the most Marxist of all historians would do so. (Or if you're Noam Chomsky, you'd say too much attention was paid to his actions compared to East Timor.) And to paraphrase an old friend on the idea of the difference between the right and the left, the left is defending a presentist version of history by saying "they feel it is too important to ignore."

There's no factual reason to give a presentist version of history.  All the arguments for it fall into the version of morality which is a hodgepodge of 'this is too important to be objective' and 'why don't you focus on what the right is doing?" The former argues that you can't do two things simultaneously; the latter argues is just another version of 'never push back against the left'

Sweet said the left's argument is: 'If we don't read the past through the prism of contemporary social justice issues – race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism, are we doing history matters?  If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise. Too many Americans have become accustomed to the idea of history as an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions."

That is a truth that, I can personally verify, both sides are guilty of whether it is the writings of Victor Davis Hanson or Nikole Hannah-Jones. That one is doing it as part of the holding the past in high regard and the other it by holding it in  complete contempt doesn't make their revisionism contemptible.  And it's clear the defense of Keisha Blain argues that like everything else the past can only be afforded to be held objectively if you're a white man. (Which last I checked Zinn, Chomsky and Vidal are and they sure as hell were presentists.)

But even if I were to argue that the presentist approach is the correct one and that it should be applied to historian the question I ask is: why? I want to know what the end goal is. Say we teach every American student The 1619 Project, The People's History Of the United States and Lies My Teacher Taught Me. What does that do?  The presentist view of the past isn't any different from the view of today. It just does on a bigger scope. America is as racist, sexist and homophobic today as it was in 1619 and it'll never change.

So what is the student who reads these books supposed to take away from it except a loathing of your country? Don't give me that argument it's telling people not to trust those in authority, the left basically makes that argument for everything. Healthy skepticism and questioning your country's leaders are good things; arguing that all of them are basically corrupt and untrustworthy is the view of an extremist. The arguments for presentism's counterargument hasn't really changed: it's that the right is the bigger threat and all Americans need to be focused on them. That's another kind of moral relativism, you know, the exact same thing the presentists are saying we shouldn't have in our history.

What this is based on, of course, is the left's moral superiority, the certainty that if they had lived in 1776 they would have the values they would today. But time moves in one direction and most things that were acceptable a hundred years ago aren't.

The famous saying about history was once: "Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it." The presentist doesn't want to learn from the past; he was to judge it. The presentist is incapable of realizing the only reason they have the values of today is because we learn from our mistakes and we make improvements. Since the presentist has judge a dim view of people who aren't them in the present, they don't believe people can do that either.

I'll end with a statement from Eugene O'Neill in A Moon For The Misbegotten: "There is no present or future, only the past happening again and again, now." I'm fond of it now more than ever because when it comes to how so many on the left try to bring about their vision they never learn from their mistake and as a result they keep trying to have their past happen again with no improvements. Either from an objective perspective or the presentist one, their approach keeps failing in the present so they can't realize their progressive future. No wonder they keep trying to rewrite the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Night's Emmys Winners Were Historic, Surprising And Satisfying That's A Pattern Worth Celebrating

 

 

Author's Note: Because I have made it clear those who review an awards shows as if it were entertaining completely miss the point of them, this is not a review of the Emmys in that sense. With that being said, a minor point to the producers.

Considering that even with that ridiculous SVU-Taylor Swift sequence the broadcast was actually running short take the hint and put all of the awards for Limited Series you put in the Creative Arts ceremony this year back in the main broadcast.

 

If I had ever been inclined to use a hashtag about the Emmy winners during the 2010s there's one I would've used over and over.

#EmmysSoPredictable.

I'm not just talking about the fact that year after year some of the greatest shows of the decade such as Jane The Virgin or Parenthood or Billions couldn't get nominated at all or shows like Justified or Episodes never got enough respect. I'm talking that even when the Emmys were nominated shows and performers who deserved it – and to their credit the vast majority did – every year like clockwork they honored the same series and most of the same actors.

This was particularly true in comedy. 30 Rock would win year after year, then Modern Family, then Veep. Jim Parsons and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were always winning, and so were Eric Stonestreet or Julie Bowen. There was some movement in the right direction by the end of the decade, particularly with shows like Barry and Atlanta but it was the same old most of that decade.

For drama, they would coronate Mad Men or Breaking Bad and most excruciatingly for me Game of Thrones, year after year. I'll admit there was more variety in the acting awards during that decade and I was fine with the majority of them – with the exception of Peter Dinklage – but it was getting monotonous. I was relieved more than anyone that Game of Thrones came to an end, if for no other reason then I thought it would give some breathing room to other actors and actresses in drama.

(On a side note, that's probably why I increasingly engaged with the Limited Series era – and why I took it so personally that so many awards were shifted to the Creative Arts this year.)

Then this decade things began to change at the Emmys and its become more prevalent the last three years. Diversity has come. I'm not talking necessarily about the race of the winners (and yes I'm painfully aware that #EmmysSoWhite is circulating again; I'll deal with that in a separate article) but in the fact that increasingly each year there are fewer back-to-back winners in almost every category for acting and in the last several years drama or comedy. More than the Emmys increasingly have the possibility to surprise in a way they didn't five years ago.

And now when history happens – and last night's Emmys was historic – it's historic in a way that seeing Bryan Cranston or Julia Louis-Dreyfus win year after year just isn't. There's meaning and significance attached to it in a way that wasn't there before.

So let's look at how so many of last night's winners made history in a truly incredible way.

The most historic night was held by Matthew Rhys. He became the first actor in the history of the Emmys to win Best Lead Actor in two different categories on the same night. The one he got for Widow's Bay was expected; the one for The Beast in Me absolutely was not yet delighted me more. It demonstrated, as if we needed proof that Rhys is one of the greatest and most versatile actors in TV history up their with such recent 21^st century masters as Bryan Cranston, Jon Hamm and Damien Lewis. (I'll be getting to the actresses in a bit.) He became the first actor of all time to win Best Lead Actor in all three categories: Comedy, Drama and Limited Series. And I think few people could be happier for it then me, save perhaps his wife. (Next year Keri Russell has to win herself by the way.)

Widow's Bay's triumph would be more historic if we weren't seeing history made in Comedy every year. Its 14 wins were an all-time record for a comedy series breaking last year's record set by The Studio with 12, breaking last year's record set by The Bear with 11.

But let's not kid ourselves, even a rabid Hacks devotee like me was overjoyed with most of the winners. This spoke to Kate O'Flynn who deservedly triumphed for her work in 'Beach Reads' and for Katie Dippold who took two Emmys and was delightful in her acceptance speeches. For writing she made it clear that while she had planned to be humble and if she ever won an Emmy she'd keep in the garage she now intended to build a spotlight around it and a mirror that you could see it from every room in her house. I also loved how she said Matthew Rhys' Welsh accent was fake. When she took the prize for Best Comedy she went out of her way to thank her entire crew, the evil entity that allowed them to tell its story and finished her speech with 'Serve The Punch NOW". (Really if she'd been wearing antlers on her head no one would have told her.)

The other records this night were set by two of the greatest actresses in the history of TV. The first was expected as Jean Smart went five for five with her Best Actress in a Comedy for the final season of Hacks. She was humble telling all the women to sit down because "you have to be tired of this saying "She's not that good." Trust me Jean you absolutely are. Combined with her three other Emmys Smart has a total of eight wins which ties her with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Cloris Leachman and one other actress whose victory was a shock even to her.

Alison Janney's win for The Diplomat was her eighth Emmy win and her sixth win in drama. This is also the fourth series she has won an Emmy for in her impressive career: four for The West Wing (two Supporting Actress, two lead actress) two for Mom (Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy in 2014, Best Actress in a Comedy in 2015) and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama for Masters of Sex (also in 2014). Combined with her superb work this year in both Palm Royale and Miss You, Love You she remains one of most versatile actresses in the history of TV.

The other historic record was one, honestly, that shouldn't have been one. Stephen Root, who managed to win Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for his work in Widow's Bay, at 77 became the oldest actor to win in that category. And that's nearly as big a travesty as Harrison Ford losing again. Because Root has been one of the greatest actors in television for decades, no matter which genre he chooses to act it, drama, comedy, horror or animation. I was appalled to learn that this was only the second nomination in his entire career and that his first was for Barry back in 2019. I don't know who would have been more pissed if he'd lost: the Sea Hag or the Raven.

Just as significant, I'd argue, were all of the rewards for actors who've been in the business a very long time but haven't until now gotten the awards they deserve. The most deserving, of course, was Rhea Seehorn and I suspect the cheer I let out when she finally won an Emmy for her incredible work in Pluribus could have been heard from space. My admiration for her work in Better Call Saul is well documented and of course nothing new. And it was a glorious victory.

Just as deserving was Vince Gilligan's, who despite having created two of the greatest shows in TV history, somehow had not yet won an Emmy for writing. He finally did on Emmy night for the Pilot of Pluribus and continued to enhance his reputation for being one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. He thanked his fellow writers and said he was especially proud of Valerie P. Chu, who'd been nominated for The Pitt this year. I didn't know that Chu was the writer's assistant in Better Call Saul and the way she smiled made me love both her and Vince all the more.

Perhaps the most enduring win was Tom Pelphrey for his incredible work in Task. Arguably one of the great performances of 2025 Pelphrey like the show he was part of it seemed determined to be the bridesmaid. After losing to Patrick Ball in the Astras it seemed he would go home empty handed. But the split in the nominees in The Pitt worked for Pelphrey just as it almost certainly benefited Janney for Supporting Actress but you'd never know that given how Ball was more then willing to stand for one of the great actors of our time.

The wins of Seehorn and Pelphrey combined with several deserved first time winners who have short-changed despite decades of great TV. These include David Harbour and Linda Cardellini's deserved wins for DTF St. Louis which completed its sweep of the Emmys by winning Outstanding Limited Series. And the victories of Betty Gilpin and Shailene Woodley for Widow's Bay and Paradise were equally rewarded for two of the most versatile actresses in TV who've done multiple shows and gotten so few nominations for their work. All of them meant as much to me as Noah Wyle's second consecutive win for The Pitt.

With all of these wins it's now clear I'm picking up five trends looking at the Emmys over the 2020s, all of them encouraging.

1. Every year comedy's are sweeping the Emmys.

The decade began with Schitt's Creek winning all seven Emmys in competition: all four acting awards, writing, directing and best series. Since then three different years have managed to earn six out of those seven awards: Ted Lasso in 2021, The Bear in 2023 and Widow's Bay yesterday. Throw in the fact that The Studio set a record last year and you have trends were comedy has become as dominant every year in the way shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad could be in drama.

This might lead to dullness were it not for the fact…

2. Six different comedies have won the grand prize this decade.

Save for Ted Lasso going back-to-back in 2021 and 2022, each year this decade has brought a different winner that usually sweeps. This was proved in what was arguably one of the biggest surprises in Emmy history in the fall of 2024 when The Bear managed to win eleven Emmys but lost Best Comedy to Hacks.

And it's not like there haven't been room for surprises within these sweeps. Hacks came away with twelve Emmys during this decade, including two for writing, one for directing and one for Hannah Einbinder for Supporting Actress. We've also seen room for several individual surprises for shows like Abbott Elementary and Somebody Somewhere. And there have been room for differences. So far in the 2020s a different woman has won in Best Supporting Actress in a comedy every year.

3. Drama is becoming more balanced then it was in the 2010s.

Aside from The Crown sweeping every major award in 2021 and Succession doing close to the same thing in 2023 (I guess I can forgive Jennifer Coolidge now) there's been quite a bit more division in the Emmys that get given out in drama.

In 2022 Succession managed to win Best Drama and three other Emmys but finished behind Squid Game in total Emmys won which won six Emmys. Euphoria and Ozark have done decently during this decade (I can acknowledge that without being a fan of the show.) Last year Severance was the big winner in terms of total Emmys including acting awards for Tramell Tillman and Britt Lower but it lost Best Drama to The Pitt that won five. The Pitt actually tied for second that year with Andor which also won Best Writing in a Drama.

This year we had even more suspense when it came to drama. Both The Pitt and Pluribus had won four Emmys in the Creative Arts category. But last night it didn't win either Supporting Actor award (we'll get to that) and Rhea Seehorn and Vince Gilligan took two awards while Noah Wyle won Best Actor. So when The Pitt managed to repeat as Best Drama, I suspect Wyle and John Wells breathed a sigh of relief. The Pitt tied with Pluribus for most wins for a Drama with six apiece.

Which brings me to the next point.

 

4. As opposed to comedy, in Drama the Academy is sharing the wealth more than it used to.

In 2024 Shogun did set a record for most wins for a Drama for an Emmy with 16. But on Emmy night itself the Academy did give some credit to others. Billy Crudup took his second Emmy for The Morning Show and Elizabeth Debicki won for The Crown. And of course Slow Horses stunned everybody when it managed to win Best Dramatic Teleplay.

The slow but steady success of Slow Horses may be the biggest sign yet of the Emmys willing to give recognition to less flashy shows. For the second consecutive year it won Best Director for a Drama and its third consecutive Emmy in a major category. (Small plug: I predicted that win.) This year was saw a similar trend with Paradise and The Diplomat each winning their first Emmys in competition. Throw in Tom Pelphrey's victory and its clear the Emmys may be willing to share the love in a way in drama in a way it wasn't before.

 

5. In Limited Series, the battle between Netflix and HBO continues.

These two powerhouses have been battling for contention throughout the decade. In 2020 Watchmen managed to deservedly take all comers. In 2021, it was more of a stalemate: The Queen's Gambit took Best Drama and Best Directing from Mare of Easttown took three of the four acting awards while I May Destroy You took Best Writing. In 2022 Season 1 of The White Lotus not only took all comers but Netflix could barely field a contender as Hulu managed to get three of the four remaining nominations for Limited Series and won Best Actor and Actress for Michael Keaton and Amanda Seyfried respectively.

In 2023 the movement shifted back to Netflix when Beef took all comers and HBO wasn't even in that particular category. In 2024 Baby Reindeer managed to take most of the major awards as Night Country was basically left out in the cold. In 2025 Adolescence ran roughshod over everybody.

But this year when the second season of Beef was the heavy favorite DTF St. Louis won the hearts and votes of Emmy voters. Netflix could take solace in Matthew Rhys win for The Beast in Me and Sally Field's surprising upset for the TV film Remarkably Bright Creatures. (This would have meant more if, well, you know.)

 

I don't know if the era of Prestige TV is over. (This year I saw yet another obituary for it because The Bear had ended. Which is odd as I thought it had ended after Succession ended, and then Better Call Saul..) My feelings on that are already noted for the record and considering that many of these critics are still trying to review the Emmys as if they were binge watching the most recent season of Heated Rivalry  I'm not sure how much I trust them.

What I do know is that having seen the last three years of nominations and winners the Emmys are becoming better at both, more capable of surprise and more gratifying for me to enjoy when it comes to honoring the best in television then they may have been when we were in the Golden Age of TV.

In other words #EmmysSoPredictable is dead and I couldn't be more thrilled. Time to get ready for the fall season and see what contenders and new faces await.

 

My Reactions to the 2026 Creative Arts Emmys

 

I always watch the Creative Arts Emmys that are aired on FXX on the Saturday before the broadcast. Technically they are two nights of awards edited into one 2 and a half hour broadcast but that doesn't mean they're any less fascinating.

Sometimes they can foreshadow what will happen on Emmy night. Other times they can mislead. Last year, for example, Severance was the big winner in drama taking seven Emmys. However Andor won five and The Pitt took 2. Severance managed to win two more Emmys that were somewhat surprising – Britt Lower for Best Actress and Tramell Tillman for Supporting Actor – but of course the big winner was The Pitt.

As for comedy two years ago The Bear had an incredible night winning seven Emmys, trouncing all comers. On Emmy night it won four more but in what was the biggest upset in recent memory Hacks took Best Comedy.

The Creative Arts Emmys naturally deal with the kinds of awards that are more technically elaborate and despite noble efforts to divide the awards among genre and period pieces those are still the shows that generally do the best among them. It's rare to see that correlation play out on Emmy night. This was true in Limited Series last when The Penguin took seven Emmys in the Limited Series category to Adolescence's three but Adolescence essentially won everything in sight Emmy night. We've seen shows like The Last of Us do very well here and then Succession do big on Emmy night.

So before we go any further let's see if the actual awards may have helped clarify things.

For Comedy, perhaps not unexpectedly, the big winner was Widow's Bay which took seven Emmys: Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Music (half-hour) Music Supervision, Casting and Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Betty Gilpin. (I will get to that one)

This would seem to give the edge of Widow's Bay but remember what I said about two years ago The Bear. Hacks only won for Picture Editing in a Comedy but this has never been a show that has a great history with creative arts. Until now it's only won two others both for Guest Actress in a Comedy: Laurie Metcalf in 2022, Julianne Nicholson, 2025. I admit odds have shifted in Widow's Bay favor but it was always going to have a good night on Emmy night regardless: it was a lock for Matthew Rhys for Best Actor in a Comedy, I was pretty sure Kate O'Flynn was going to win for Best Supporting Actress and Hiro Murai seemed certain for direction. Jean Smart is certain to win her fifth Best Actress and its still heavily favored to win Best Writing. I still think the stars are in its favor. Not that I'd be disappointed if Widow's Bay won.

For the record I was also glad to see Margo's Got Money Troubles take three Emmys for Contemporary Costume, Hairstyle and Makeup. Because honestly given what that show looked like it deserved it. And I was also thrilled to see the Emmys give Palm Royale three Emmys before it was canceled, including period costume, makeup and choreography.

It was also profoundly moving to see Rob Reiner awarded posthumously for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy for what was his final performance in The Bear.

 

For Drama this was always going to be a fight between Pluribus and The Pitt and it still is. Both won four Emmys.

For Pluribus, as you'd expect, they were all technical: Production design, picture Editing for a Drama, sound mixing for a Drama, Main Title Theme. For The Pitt, there was best Music and Lyrics (for one of their songs) best prosthetic makeup, casting and Best Guest Actor in a Drama for Ernest Harden.

The big winner among dramas, however, was the recently cancelled Spider-Noir which took five technical Emmys, including cinematography, sound effects, visual effects and stunts, a good showing.

As for the other contenders Knights of the Seven Kingdoms won for Best Episodic Stunt performance while Paradise took Best Guest Actress for Shailene Woodley.

I think both shows will divide many of the awards: The Pitt will take Best Drama and Best Actor, while Pluribus will take Best Actress and Best Directing and probably Best Writing. I'm still not ruling out the possibility that Slow Horses will pull an upset in either of those categories just like it has the last two years. I remain convinced Tom Pelphrey will win Best Supporting Actor but I still think Supporting Actress in a Drama is up for grabs. Don't rule out the possibility of either Julianne Nicholson or Karolina Wydra managing an upset over one of the performers from The Pitt.

 

Okay you know what I think about Best Limited Series and for the record I'm now doubly angry. David Harbour and Linda Cardellini's acceptance speeches for Best Supporting Actor and Actress were both in their own ways profoundly moving and they deserved to be part of the main broadcast. Again you screwed up Emmys.

Momentum has now completely shifting to DTF St. Louis which won six Emmys, including directing and writing for Steven Conrad. (He deserved to give his speech in prime time, academy!) That said, it should be noting that the award for Casting was one of the few it didn't win, going instead to Love Story.  Considering every lead in DTF was nominated and it still didn't win and how important casting has been overall, its striking.

Beef prevailed for Contemporary Costume, sound editing and sound mixing in an Anthology so it could still manage an upset. And I was glad to see one of my favorite composers for Sean Callery win another Emmy for The Beast in Me.

 

As to the ceremonies themselves I always take a certain pleasure out of them that is often equal to the prime-time broadcast. These are the unsung heroes and heroines of television, who give as much to the world as the writers, directors and on-screen talent and I have a fondness when they are recognized.

I'll confess I care more about that then some of the awards for shows that are given more coverage such as reality TV or live performances. That said it did my heart a world of good to see Jeopardy win best game show and that the most awarded Variety special even more than late night was the reimagined version of The Muppet Show which won five Emmys, including Best Variety Special. This meant a lot to a great many people, including those who worked on it. One winner brought out a VHS recording of one of the original episodes and Seth Rogen said how wild it was they were honored on the 50^th anniversary of the debut. If that's not a reason to get things started and bring it back full time, I don't know what is.

There are some series, especially those such as Widow's Bay and Beef that really are nothing without the technical masters who do their work and they deserve more credit then they got. I'll be honest, I wouldn't mind if at least a couple of these awards were added to the primetime broadcast because they deserve more than they get.

But for me one of the great rewards in the 21^st century often is the Guest Actor and Actress in either comedy or drama.  Far more often these awards give recognition to some of the best actors who never get their due and they should. I've been overjoyed to see such favorites as Jeremy Davies win for Justified and Margo Martindale for The Americans, Reg E. Cathey prevail for House of Cards, Gerald McRaney's win for This is Us and Alexis Bleidel winning for The Handmaid's Tale. Even if it didn't like the shows in some cases, these are some of the greatest actors of TV and they deserve their moment.

In recent years its been paying off for veterans who never got their due from the Emmys. I've seen such talents as Nick Offerman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Bernthal and last year Shawn Hatosy finally get their due. And this year it was just as rewarding as two of my all-time favorites actresses: Shailene Woodley and Betty Gilpin, after each having been ignored by the Emmys for over a decade despite having starred in some of the greatest shows of that period (including when they  co-starred in the incredible Three Women two years ago) finally got their first Emmys for Paradise and Widow's Bay, respectively.

Gilpin's speech, the last of the night, brought the house down because it was delivered as a poem she wrote. It was both hysterically funny, incredibly moving and briefly a call to arms. It also brought me joy to know Gilpin's 'date' to the Emmys was Allison Brie. I'm so glad to know the 'GLOW-mance is still going on. (Now can we get an Emmy for Alison too?)

By the way I made some predictions going into this night. I was right that Harbour and Cardellini would win, right that DTF St. Louis would win for writing and wrong about directing. I correctly predicted Woodley would win Best Guest Actress in a Drama and I did predict that a Guest Actor in a Drama would go to someone from The Pitt – though my guess was Jeff Kober rather than Ernest Harden, Jr. Considering Gold Derby was betting on Colman Domingo, I did better on that. I was wrong about Best Guest Actor in a Comedy and a Drama. I thought Michael J. Fox and Kaitlin Olson would prevail. But I'm totally fine with Betty Gilpin winning.

How will it play out tomorrow? We'll see. Looking forward to it.

You Can't Force People To Watch An Awards Show. Whatever Decision The Emmys Makes This Year Won't Change This Fundamental Issue

 

 

I've noticed certain patterns about the awards shows I watch in regard to TV. Let me share them.

For years the Golden Globes had no hosts, then it had Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-host, then it had a group of late night people hosts. It has controversy over its voting members; it had to complete rebrand three years ago. It changed networks from NBC to CBS two years ago.

In all that period there were three constants. The first is subjective but in my opinion the awards they gave for TV were top-notch and frequently were superior to the Emmys. The second was that critics almost always gave the ceremonies pans most of the time and damned with faint praise the rest. The third was the ratings either went down or were essentially the same.

Around 2010 the Broadcast Critics Association started giving awards for TV. At first it had a separate ceremony in the summer, then it merged with film and now gives all of them at an end of year ceremony. It has aired on A & E, the CW and now airs on E! Again there are two constants: the nominations and awards are arguably the best in the industry and the ratings have essentially all stayed the same - which is next to non-existent. As for reviews of the ceremony this is an awards show that is so relatively small that I've rarely seen reviews of the ceremony at all.

Finally there are the SAG-AFTRA awards. For the first quarter of a century it aired on TNT. In 2022, it moved to YouTube, it's now airing on Netflix. It had no host for nearly fifteen years, it's had a few for the last three. It's format has barely changed at all in thirty years. The two constants: the reviews of the ceremony have never been that good and by and large the ratings having changed that much. The latter is more subjective then the other two awards shows as the metric for how many people watch a live event on streaming is different then the ones on cable. But given how inside baseball it is, I'm skeptical that thirty million people are tuning into Netflix on a Sunday night in March to see if Timothee Chalamet is going to win for Best Male Actor because nobody ever tuned in when it was on TNT to see if Leonardo DiCaprio was.

All of these were constants in Hollywood before streaming became the center of every aspect of our lives as well as the polarization of Hollywood's place in the universe. And that's because of the common thread between all of these groups: you can't force people to watch an awards show. As I've written before and will write again, awards show are for the nominees and the industry infinitely more than they are the viewer at home. Compared to the TV shows and films that they are commemorating they're not as entertaining or spontaneous as live events and they're not really supposed to be.

There's also the issue that I think would be the constant even if we weren't living in an era of cable and streaming. Unless you have a vested interest in the nominated shows or films as well as the actors, there really isn't a good reason to watch them. I've been doing it for more than a quarter of a century because I have both a professional and personal interest, which is different then both those who review the ceremony. And I completely get why, with so many choices before you on a night for entertainment, you might not want to spend three hours watching a bunch of celebrities giving speeches and hearing remarks about how important the work in Hollywood is.  I care about who wins or loses because I've seen many of the shows and admire much of the talent. I understand that puts me in a niche very few other people have and I completely get why others would want to do something else. I don't judge them.

On the business side, however, Hollywood seems either unwilling or unable to accept this basic fact. I honestly think the main reason viewership for awards show has dropped in the last decade has less to do with the increasing politics of the industry or even the kinds of shows the industry recognizes then the simple fact that there are now dozens, if not hundreds, of things you can be watching at any given day. There was a period in my lifetime when networks wouldn't run live programming against the Oscars or any awards show and they don't any more, in large part because cable isn't either and streaming is always there.  So naturally the ratings for awards shows would drop the exact same way ratings for everything on network and cable have dropped in the last decade. There are so many options that many people, young and old, of all races, genders and sexual orientation, are choosing to watch something else. That is their right.

The main reason ratings for awards show like the Emmys were always high during the 20^th century was because there were only three channels and nothing else was going on against them on those Sunday nights. The shows weren't necessarily better  (indeed I'd argue the shows nominated today are on average exponentially better than they were during the 1980s and 1990s) but they had been seen by more people and there were fewer alternatives. Now there are many alternatives.

On Monday night I have no doubt that millions of people will not be watching the Emmys. Indeed I'm willing to bet Monday Night Football will probably get higher ratings. The only reason this is significant is because the pattern of watching the Emmys is changing. The contract of rotating the Emmys between all four major networks is up and there's debate whether a streaming platform will take over broadcasting it, much like YouTube will be taking over the Oscars in two years' time.

The argument for shifting to a streaming service is an attempt to reach a broader audience, which means younger. This is yet another case of Hollywood missing the forest for the trees. Several awards shows, including the Astras, have been broadcasting on YouTube channels for five years and honestly I seriously doubt anybody but me has been watching them.

The problem is that no matter where you put an awards show, whether on network, cable or streaming, it's still an awards show.  As I mentioned the SAG-AFTRA did the same thing five years ago, and I'll be damned if I've noticed any change in viewership. Does Hollywood really believe that if you move the Emmys to Netflix or Amazon or any streaming service, the millions of people who have been watching other things when it was on networks or cable are going to just go to it because its now on Netflix or Amazon?

Of course not. The people that you're trying to reach will still end up watching clips of it the day after or the week after. They're not going to start caring about seeing the Emmys just because its on a streaming service that they can see on their phones now. Most of them don't have the attention span to watch shows as long as Ted Lasso anymore. You really think they'll sit through a three hour awards show because it's on TikTok?

What it will do is drive away the older audience that is still watching it on network and cable. We all know that this is part of the endless drive or television to try and reach 'a younger audience'. You know, the people who already think institutions like the Emmys and the Oscars are outdated anyway. Not to state the obvious but everybody gets old and at this point most of the people who once watched streaming are essentially starting to get tired of the model and now appreciate the way its being dropped weekly. You know, like network and cable are doing.

To be fair most seniors don't watch these shows either because most of the shows aren't on platforms they watch or can even find. But that's not the Emmys fault either – entirely. (I've had this debate about how the Emmys has been short-shrift network and cable for over a decade but this isn't the time for it.) They still have the patience to watch your ceremonies. That you're cutting off an audience you still have for one that has never been part of your bailiwick and never will be shows yet again the short-sightedness of Hollywood.

The other argument for doing this is that the Emmys must be 'relevant'. But 'relevant has always meant different things depending who you ask.

To an older viewer 'relevant' refers to a time of nostalgia when the family all gathered around the set and where we all watching the same program as a country. The bigotry is not always overt but considering that so much of television during the 20^th century was built on censorship and putting together a homogenous view of America where 'everybody knew their place' its clearer than other institutions.

To someone younger its another one of those hazy terms they just can't define but they know that it isn't something that it's older than them. This has always been the case even before the internet existed and its just as true today.

To women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ and other people of that level in the industry what is 'relevant' is how many of the nominated shows, performers and creatives are women, people of color, etc. They see this as a societal issue rather than simply being an industry matter. Systemic racism won't be fixed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield winning a Best Director Emmy this year any more than it would effect the patriarchy. Thinking does not make it so despite what the people in the industry believe.

And of course we've discussed what the critics need to believe in order for it to be relevant, but in this case they're more clueless than usual.

Personally much as I respect and admire the work the Emmys have done in the 21^st century I can assure the vast majority of Americans don't take it seriously or think about it much. At best they might focus on it the night it airs but that's it. I'd say at most the Emmys is like every other TV awards show: it's relevant to the industry in general and the nominees most specifically. It's never been one of those subjects that people who are invested in heavily about focus on more than the weeks leading up to it and then only a few days afterwards.

I've had my issues about shows that have been nominated and won over the years and I do hold some grudges. But there comes a point when it's not relevant to focus on it. Am I still upset that Better Call Saul never won a single Emmys while shows such as Succession, Ozark and Game of Thrones which I truly found lacking in comparison received so many? Yes. But I'm not going to spend the rest of my life holding a grudge. There's always next year, another show and in many cases the nominees will get another chance, even if it doesn't work out. But just because I think they have given the awards to the wrong shows and actors doesn't make them irrelevant. It makes it a subject for lively debate. The awards matter at most to the nominees and the shows. That's it. Putting the Emmys on a streaming service isn't going to change that nor is going to make any more people watch then it did whenever another awards show changes networks or moves to streaming. It's a niche audience and that's not going to change no matter what Hollywood does.

For what it's worth I do understand the position the industry is in right now and I get the lack of stability. But I also know that with everything else today Hollywood is forgetting the simple moral that if you try to please everybody you're not going to please anybody. And you're a business so you have to try and get as many people to come to the same place and offend the fewest number of people.

Here's my nickel's worth of advice: keep the rotation in play and show the Emmys on a streaming service every year. Will it improve the ratings? No but neither will moving it permanently to a streaming service. You're still going to be faced with the problem that people have free will and that awards shows are long and arduous. That's always going to be a feature and not a bug.

Will the industry grouse about being relevant? That is the same argument Hollywood always makes. To be clear relevance, like everything else, is on a sliding scale and the people who make the argument that something like the Emmys are irrelevant today are the same people who were making those arguments thirty years ago: young people and critics. That they're doing it on social media and the internet only means the methods have changed, not the tenor of their complaints or their logic.

And for the love of God stop holding awards shows to the same metrics as TV and movies when it comes to critical and rating responses. I don't know now many times I have to keep saying this, so I'll keep saying until somebody who actually is in the industry gets it. The awards shows are for the nominees and the industry first and foremost, the viewer and the critic a distant second at best. The former rarely gets this fact, the latter never does. If they haven't realized it after nearly 80 years of them being broadcast, they're not going to get it if you move it to a streaming service. All you're going to accomplish is make it harder for those who do care to find it and they will take it harshly. That will make your industry irrelevant far more then trying to reach the people who consider it a given.

That's all I have to say. I'll see you Monday.