A week ago, I wrote about the snubs and surprises of the Golden Globes; a much trickier proposition than I was anticipating because all the nominees I wanted to win won. Succession cleaned up in the drama categories, The Bear cleaned up in comedy and Beef cleaned up basically everywhere else, which was good for television but bad for my specific assignment. Today I am writing about all the snubs and surprises of Monday night’s Emmys. And guess what? It has happened again.
Succession won best drama series, best lead actor (Kieran Culkin), best lead actress (Sarah Snook), and best supporting actor (Matthew Macfadyen). The Bear won best comedy, best lead actor (Jeremy Allen White), best supporting actor (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and best supporting actress (Ayo Edebiri), best directing (Christopher Storer) and best writing (also Christopher Storer). Beef won best limited series, best lead actress (Ali Wong), best lead actor (Steven Yeun), best writing (Lee Sung Jin) and best directing (also Lee Sung Jin). And now, somehow, despite singing the praises of all these three shows frequently over the last year, I have to make out that they’re wrong. Good luck to me, I guess.
Actually, in truth, it won’t be too hard, for a few reasons. We’ll start with the most obvious: what on earth is going on with these categories? To be fair to the Emmys, it has never been more difficult to assign genre to television. In the old days it was easy to tell what a comedy was, because it was shot with three cameras in front of a live studio audience and you could hear people laughing. Things have been growing more nebulous for years but, if anything, last night perfectly demonstrated how much we need an overhaul.
Succession won best drama and The Bear won best comedy, even though Succession is in my opinion much funnier than The Bear. The Bear is a show about a man trying to cope in the immediate aftermath of his brother’s suicide and Succession, you’ll remember, is a show so rooted in sitcom that it got an entire storyline out of someone arriving at a party holding an enormous bag. Also, it seems a bit of a cheat for Beef to win in the limited series category when its creator is telling everyone about the ideas he has for a second season. It’s nobody’s fault, but none of it makes sense.
Fortunately (for me, at least) beside these winners the Emmys contained one big snub and one big surprise. The surprise was that Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story won anything at all. Dahmer was a very bad show that represented the nadir of the true-crime genre, taking a real-life atrocity and turning it into weird campy entertainment without any real thought for the victims. It was terrible. Niecy Nash-Betts (who won best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series) was easily the best thing about it, but this was a crowded category and it hurt to see Claire Danes – who deserved to win purely for the hour-long scream she delivered in Fleishman Is in Trouble – shut out for a show that categorically does not deserve any silverware.
And now the snub. The snub of all snubs. The snub that will reverberate throughout history. Better Call Saul did not win a single Emmy. Not one. This is plainly ridiculous. The final season of Better Call Saul will be remembered as one of the finest accomplishments in all of television. It was sophisticated, funny, formally daring and utterly heartbreaking. It was magnificent from start to finish, and it won nothing.
This is largely to do with the strikes. The Emmys were due to be held last year, but were postponed due to the Sag-Aftra strikes. And this meant that the eligibility period for the awards took place a million years ago. Better Call Saul was last on TV in 2022, and so perhaps voters forgot what a stunning achievement it was, or got distracted by all the newer offerings. But nevertheless, they didn’t give anything to Better Call Saul, and this is ridiculous.
Bob Odenkirk didn’t win anything, despite the pure gymnastics he needed to simultaneously play all three of the identities that Jimmy McGill had picked up over the course of his life. Rhea Seehorn didn’t win anything, despite giving one of the most nuanced, layered performances by anybody ever (but she’s the lead in Vince Gilligan’s next series, so hopefully her Emmy day will come). The show itself deserved more. It deserved to be encased in gold. Better Call Saul not winning an Emmy is a wild injustice. It is bad for television, But, you know, quite good for this article, so at least that’s something.
