Emmy Pre-Watch for 2023 Resumed (And We Begin The Pre-Watch For Next Year)
Results of the TCA Awards: A Taste Before We Get Started Again
For those of you who have been following my blog for a while, you are very aware of how I follow the leadup to the Emmys with breathless anticipation. Well, sit tight loyal readers cause the next couple of months are going to be going from zero to ninety in a few weeks.
Now that the labor stoppage in Hollywood is finally over and we know the Emmys will be coming for certain next month, I am ready to resume the play by play for every awards show. The one benefit of these strikes was that I was able to get caught up on quite a few of the series that were nominated in all of the major categories I cover and can therefore talk about them with a certain greater level of certainty that I wouldn’t have been able to do had it happened in September as scheduled. (Thanks I guess, various guilds.) Starting tomorrow I will begin that coverage on a regular basis.
In addition as those of you know, next week my two other favorite awards shows the troubled Golden Globes and the always incredible Critics Choice will give their nominations for the year just past. How they will be covering this year given how few new shows there have been the past five months remains to be seen but both groups have been able to adapt to this over the years and I look forward to seeing what happens. And the HCA has finally announced that it will be airing its awards for this year on January 8th of 2024, so I will go into great detail on that group of awards perhaps with the most pleasure. (This January will be the winter of my content.) Of course though I’m never satisfied with them long term, I will also cover the SAG awards for TV when they come out.
But to start this up, I will begin with covering an awards group that I missed. In my last post in this series way back in July I covered the nominations for the TV critics awards. In the aftermath of the strike I did not know when they would take place and I wasn’t sure they would happen until last month. So I was surprised to find out that in fact, they had taken place in August.
Once I got over the fact I dropped the ball I actually looked at the results and while some of them were not surprising, many of them were very pleasing.
For one I was overjoyed to see that the winner for individual achievement in Drama was not one of the men from Succession but Rhea Seehorn for Better Call Saul. Will this mean she finally gets the Emmy she deserves next month? I can only hope. It did not surprise me nor upset me that Succession took the prize for Best Drama (for the third time) and won Program of the Year. I have realized its brilliance and I’m fine with it, if not overjoyed
Similarly I was delighted to see The Bear take both Best New Program and Best Comedy Series, both of which it more than likely earned. (I’m not convinced it can triumph over Abbott Elementary next month.) And I was overjoyed to see Natasha Lyonne take home the prize for Best Achievement in Comedy an award she has been long overdue since the first season of Russian Doll. This might improve her chances at the Emmys against Quinta Brunson, the heavy favorite.
Having gotten the chance to see it, I fully appreciate the decision to give Jury Duty the prize for Best Achievement in Reality Programming, where it is frankly a better fit than Best Comedy. I also think the TCA made the absolutely right call by giving Beef the prize for Outstanding Achievement in a Movie, Miniseries or Special. And I’m actually okay with Ms. Marvel taking the trophy for Outstanding Achievement in Family programming. Perhaps we should not be shocked that I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson repeated as Best Variety Sketch Show as it did last year.
Overall, I’m satisfied with most of the winners: Seehorn would have been my first choice in Drama and of the seven nominees for Best New Show the only one I would have preferred over The Bear was Poker Face. Beef was by far the best choice among the six nominated miniseries and while I would have preferred Abbott Elementary or Barry for Best Comedy, The Bear was at their level. I would have preferred Better Call Saul and Yellowjackets over Succession in Outstanding Drama and Saul and Abbott for Program of the Year, but I can’t pretend Succession isn’t a worthy choice anymore. I
And its worth noting the TCA record with nominations was fairly good in comparison with the Emmys. Six of their eight nominees ended up in Best Drama and The Crown and House of The Dragon didn’t make the bells ring the way they were predicted. Abbott, The Bear, Barry (and if you want to count it) Jury Duty all made it here and honestly Poker Face probably would have been a better choice than Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. (The other three choices were bound to show up.) I really wish someone other than my fellow critics could acknowledge how great Reservation Dogs is. As for Limited Series: they were right about Beef, Fleishman and Daisy Jones as their choices and despite my thoughts on Dahmer, I still think Black Bird and The Patient should have been nominated in its stead. No Love and Death, but you can’t have everything.
Well that’s it for this group. Tomorrow I will get started with my Emmy recommendations in earnest. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a busy couple of months.