Emmy Noms Analysis: Reading Between the Lines of Tuesday’s Announcement

On one level, the biggest surprise about Tuesday morning’s Emmy nominations was how unsurprising they were — indeed, my final pre-noms forecast correctly projected, of the eventual nominees for best series, seven of eight dramas, eight of eight comedies and five of five limited/anthology series. But when you put them under a microscope, I think they tell an interesting story about today’s TV landscape.

HBO/HBO Max collected a platforms-leading and company-best 142 noms. Meanwhile, the biggest hauls for individual shows all traced back to Apple TV+ (which had its best year yet with 81 overall noms) and HBO/HBO Max, with the leaderboard topped by Apple’s sophomore drama Severance (27, up from 14 for its prior season), HBO’s limited series The Penguin (24), Apple’s rookie comedy The Studio (23, matching the comedy series record set last year by FX’s The Bear), the third installment of HBO’s drama franchise The White Lotus (23, up from 20 for season one and matching the figure for season two) and the second season of HBO’s drama The Last of Us (16, down from 24 for season one). Not far behind were Max’s returning comedy Hacks (14) and rookie drama The Pitt (13).

And yet, in a sense, Netflix — which finished in second-place with 121 noms, led by Adolescence (13) and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (11) — had as impressive a morning as anyone, landing at least one nom for 44 programs (next-best was HBO/HBO Max with 23 nominated programs) across 69 categories (bested only by HBO/HBO Max’s 73).

What does that tell us? Like everyone else, the roughly 24,000 TV Academy members have limited bandwidth. They check out the buzzy shows that everyone is talking about (with the exception of Taylor Sheridan’s, which were yet again totally ignored), wherever they may be. But, beyond that, it seems that their reflexive move is to check out what’s on Netflix. It’s not that Netflix’s shows are consistently stronger than other platforms’ shows — they aren’t. And Netflix didn’t get noms for every show that it was pushing — see the underperformance of Squid Game and Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. But Netflix simply has more — and a wider variety of — offerings than anyone else. And yes, also devotes more personnel and resources to campaigning than anyone else.

As a result, it seems to me, wherever a category’s presumptive final slot was up for grabs, it broke for Netflix — see: acting noms for The Residence (Uzo Aduba), which has already been canceled; Sirens (Meghann Fahy), which is pure popcorn; anthology series Black Mirror (Rashida Jones); the critically polarizing The Four Seasons (Colman Domingo); etc. These ran up the streamers’ numbers, as did strong showings in variety (Beyoncé Bowl, Conan O’Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and stand-up specials from Ali Wong, Sarah Silverman and Adam Sandler), nonfiction (Will & Harper, Martha, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, Our Oceans, Chef’s Table and Simone Biles Rising) and below-the-line categories (Bridgerton, Cobra Kai and Emily in Paris).

​One platform that punched above its weight was Hulu/FX on Hulu, which certainly didn’t have as great a morning as it had a year ago, but still landed at least one nominee in each of the top three program categories: best drama (Paradise, for which Sterling K. Brown, James Marsden and Julianne Nicholson also landed far-from-assured noms), best comedy (The Bear and What We Do in the Shadows) and best limited/anthology (Dying for Sex). The only other platforms that can say the same: HBO/HBO Max (The Last of Us, The Pitt and The White Lotus for drama, Hacks for comedy and The Penguin for limited/anthology) and Netflix (The Diplomat for drama, Nobody Wants This for comedy and Adolescence, Black Mirror and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story for limited/anthology).

The broadcast networks — CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and PBS — had far less cause for celebration, given that they landed only one series nom (ABC’s Abbott Elementary for best comedy) and only five acting noms (Kathy Bates for CBS’s Matlock, Bowen Yang for NBC’s Saturday Night Live and Quinta Brunson, Janelle James and Sheryl Lee Ralph for Abbott Elementary). And for the first time in recent memory, not a single host of SNL was nominated in the comedy guest acting categories.

However, a so-so haul for SNL’s 50th season — seven noms — was boosted to an SNL season-record 31 if one also counts its noms for SNL50: The Anniversary Special (12), SNL50: The Homecoming Concert (six), SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night Live (three), Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (two) and SNL 50th The Anniversary Special: Immersive Experience (one). And the networks did claim two of the three talk series slots, for ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and CBS’ The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (which are both underdogs to the defending champion, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show).

But if they are going to continue to take turns broadcasting the Emmys, then, as I have been saying for years, they really ought to insist of having separate categories for their programming, or else all they are doing is promoting their edgier competition and putting themselves out of business.

In any event, I suppose I was most surprised by the underperformance of Apple’s rookie drama Your Friends & Neighbors (not even a mention for TV Academy favorite Jon Hamm, and just a single nom, for its title theme music?); the overperformance of Apple’s limited/anthology Presumed Innocent (which rolled out a full year ago, but still scored noms for not just Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, as I expected, but also Bill Camp and Ruth Negga); the fact that Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which won best drama for its first season, ended its run with just one nom, for guest acting; and the out-of-nowhere best comedy supporting actor nom for Jeff Hiller for the final season of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere.

I was pleasantly surprised to see noms for Brian Tyree Henry (best limited/anthology actor for Apple’s Dope Thief) and Sharon Horgan (best drama actress for Apple’s Bad Sisters), and bummed by the misses of Patrick Ball (best drama supporting actor for The Pitt), Chase Sui Wonders (best comedy supporting actress for The Studio) and Diego Luna (best drama actor for Andor), each of whom were eminently worthy. Alas, no one gets everything they hope for.

Phase two of the Emmy season has officially arrived, and the next month or so, leading up to the Aug. 18-27 window for final voting, is going to be a mad dash to the finish, given that many of the highest-profile categories are still up for grabs. In the best comedy race, can one of two past winners, The Bear or Hacks, hold off one of two popular rookies, The Studio and Nobody Wants This? Which of the eight nominees for best drama — none of which have won that award before, but which include fan-favorites The Pitt, Severance and The White Lotus — will prevail? And can anything stop Adolescence in the limited/anthology race, or does Netflix have a third consecutive juggernaut, after Beef and Baby Reindeer, on its hands?

Only time will tell. Let the games begin (again)!