That’s right: A whopping eight months after the last Emmy ceremony, the luminaries of the small screen gathered once again in Los Angeles to do bits, ugly cry, and celebrate The Bear (as well as a couple of other shows). Let’s dive into this year’s—er, season’s—winners and losers.
Winner: Shogun
For a while, Shogun looked like a lock for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series—after all, the show runs through the entirety of James Clavell’s novel and tidily closes the plot’s loop, complete with a flash-forward to the distant future and a now-geriatric main character, so it made sense that it would be a single-season affair. Then Shogun premiered, the raves were published, and the viewing public began thirsting for more Shogun with all the ferocity of a Portuguese missionary. And so now we have two more seasons of Shogun in the works, which is good (more Shogun!) and also mildly concerning (with what plot?). Also: It meant that Shogun moved over to Outstanding Drama Series, where the competition was decidedly fiercer.
The series missed out on some early awards, and it seemed like all the prognosticators who’d predicted a Shogun sweep might have missed the mark and the sumptuous Japanese-language period piece would go tragically unheralded. Then Frederick E.O. Toye won the award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for “Crimson Sky,” an episode I am surely not alone in adoring and also wishing I could permanently wipe from my memory.
Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga and, especially, Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko delivered some of this year’s most memorable performances, and they were rightly feted with the Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress in a Drama Series awards, respectively. From there, the conclusion seemed inevitable, with the cast of The West Wing naming Shogun as the winner of Outstanding Drama Series.
What comes next? It’s hard to imagine what more Shogun could have done to secure support from studio bosses at Disney, which the show—FX’s most expensive series to date—will sorely need as it looks to a future with no more source material and at least one main character no longer among the living. For as much as Shogun got right in its first season, there’s still the example of Game of Thrones—a sprawling, beloved, big-budget epic that went off the rails just as soon as the showrunners passed beyond the plot in George R.R. Martin’s published works. Does Shogun need Clavell’s scaffolding to work? Either way, we’ll find out.
Loser: Categories
Much was made in the wake of the last Emmys about the seeming miscategorization of shows like Succession (which won Outstanding Drama Series) and The Bear (which won Outstanding Comedy Series). What do categories mean when The Bear nabs the top honor with nary a laugh in sight?
It was more of the same on Sunday, with The Bear—which was up for its critically heralded second season, not its more recent and notably uneven third chapter—once again picking up a slew of awards. On the red carpet before the ceremony, Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang made light of the state of affairs, which saw him up for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series against the clear-cut comedic performances of Paul W. Downs (Hacks), Paul Rudd (Only Murders in the Building), and Tyler James Williams (Abbott Elementary)—as well as The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Lionel Boyce, whose roles skewed heavily toward the dramatic. “There’s such a multitudinal, pluralistic thing that’s going on in TV right now where it’s like, it doesn’t matter what the categories are,” Yang said.
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That’s one way of looking at it. A less rosy one is that actors and series that at another time might have been celebrated with a statuette are instead getting blown out of the water by entries that feel obviously miscategorized. How do you compare Yang’s SNL high jinks to Moss-Bachrach’s soul-searching and self-discovery in “Forks”? Or Jeremy Allen White’s whole frantic Carmy deal to Matt Berry’s vamping in What We Do in the Shadows, or Liza Colón-Zayas to, uh, Carol Burnett? All three Bear performers won in their categories, every one of which was under comedy. (In Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, Ayo Edebiri lost out to Hacks’ Jean Smart.) As host Eugene Levy put it in his opening monologue, “In the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes.”
But one of the big surprises of the night might suggest that the Television Academy voters are looking to rein in the category chaos. Many expected The Bear to pick up a second straight prize for Outstanding Comedy Series. That honor went instead to Hacks, whose comedy bona fides are much more obvious. Was that due entirely to Hacks’ strength, or could voters have picked up on the umbrage over the last go-around and ultimately agreed?
Winner: Baby Reindeer
All publicity is good publicity … right? Baby Reindeer was a hit on Netflix when it dropped back in April. More recently, it’s made waves for ongoing litigation pertaining to the identity of the real Martha. Far from hurting the series’ odds, the stalker caper was the Emmys’ breakout winner, pulling in the prize for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series and Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Its leads, Richard Gadd (who has said he wrote Baby Reindeer about a real encounter with “Martha”) and Jessica Gunning, also nabbed top honors for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, respectively.
Loser: Reservation Dogs
Across three seasons, Reservation Dogs has proved to be one of television’s loveliest, smartest, weirdest, and biggest-hearted programs—an especially amazing feat given that its lead actors are mostly teenagers who often don’t really do all that much. It’s a tragedy that the series pulled in only five Emmy nominations during its run, and an outrage that its gorgeous final season won nothing. There isn’t a person involved in Reservation Dogs, on camera or off, whose future doesn’t look radiant. Still, it’s a colossal bummer to see a show this special get overlooked over and over.
Winner: Hacks
This year’s Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series category was stacked: reigning winner Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary) vs. looking-for-a-comedy-actor-sweep Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) vs. the delightful Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building) vs. Maya Rudolph (Loot) vs. Kristen Wiig (Palm Royale) vs. Jean Smart (Hacks). Smart topped them all, winning her third prize in that category for her portrayal of everyone’s favorite salty, sadistic boss.
Hacks went on to win for Outstanding Comedy Series as well, saving us all from another round of award category hemming and hawing (my own notwithstanding), and Outstanding Writing honors for “Bulletproof.” Keep making Hacks forever, please and thank you.
Losers: People Who Do Not Like Sponcon
Why was there a live whisky ad posing as a cringe sketch featuring Ebon Moss-Bachrach in the middle of the program? There are already normal ads during the normal ad breaks! I now know so, so much about network dramas I will never watch! We do not need bonus ads!
Winner: Ripley
Steven Zaillian took home the prize for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series for Ripley, a dreamy, black-and-white, oh-so-murdery reinvention of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s a show that somehow managed to fly relatively under the radar despite its Netflix placement and the aforementioned dreaminess and murders. If you missed it, now is your chance to fix that oversight. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll feel the dappled rays of midcentury Italian sunshine; you’ll revel in crisp tailoring like you’re the Twitter menswear guy; you’ll wonder whether, on balance, going on vacation with Andrew Scott’s Tom Ripley would really be so bad. Also, there’s a beautiful cat that makes out much better than the one in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (which went home empty-handed, a fate I am willing to posit was sealed by the Television Academy’s cat lovers).
Loser: Fallout
Look: It has been well documented that betting against Toranaga-sama is not a recipe for success. But come on—Fallout saw Walton Goggins play a 200-year-old irradiated monster-man with no nose, who is, in the way that few but Goggins have ever pulled off, a loathsome villain who is also completely charming. If not Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, surely we could have honored him somehow. A lifetime achievement award? A ghoul trophy?
Fallout was one of this year’s quirky delights. To see it whiff on all its prime-time nominations (it picked up a couple of prizes at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards earlier this month) is a darn shame.
Winner: “Fishes” (and The Bear)
Thanks in part to the wonky vestiges of the WGA strike, The Bear’s second season debuted a full 15 months ago, so you could be forgiven for forgetting what a splash “Fishes” made when it first debuted. The episode is a 66-minute, star-studded, rapid-fire meltdown in which the extended Berzatto clan—featuring, in addition to The Bear’s usual standbys, Jamie Lee Curtis as the family matriarch, Bob Odenkirk as an ornery uncle, and Jon Bernthal as a rapidly descending-into-freefall Mikey—gathers for a holiday meal that sees the family cooped up and simmering like so many lobsters in a pot. It was the season’s defining episode and an encapsulation of the watch-through-your-fingers love-hate experience of The Bear at its best.
Even with Hacks nabbing the award for Outstanding Comedy that many expected to go once again to The Bear, the FX series still had an amazing night, picking up three major acting awards. Still, it was hardly the coronation seen at the last Emmys, and some of those comedy award lanes might finally clear by this time next year, when the Academy will weigh in on The Bear’s much-less-praised third season.
Loser: Dogs
During his acceptance speech for Outstanding Scripted Variety Series, John Oliver thanked his family and then took a moment to shout out his dog. “She was at our wedding,” he said. “She got us through a pandemic. She was with us for the two pregnancies.” It was at this point that the powers that be decided to launch into loud, somber music to play Oliver and his team off the stage—only for the comedian to reveal why he brought up his dog. “Perfect music,” he quipped. “We had to say goodbye to her. Fuck you! I feel like Sarah McLachlan right now. She was an amazing dog. Ouch.” He dedicated the prize to “all dogs.”
Winner: Lamorne Morris
LAMORNE MORRIS SZN, BABY! Morris was a standout even on a standout season of Fargo as the delightfully sincere state trooper Witt Farr, for which he picked up top laurels for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie—his first ever Emmy nomination, to boot. New Girl hive, stand up.
