“Severance” is an outie. “The White Lotus” has the no-vacancy sign up. “Andor”? RIP. “The Last of Us” is in absentia, getting ready to tee up an Abby-focused third season. Nathan Fielder is missing, probably up there somewhere, flying the friendly skies. And last year’s comedy series winner, “The Studio,” is away too, preparing to unleash a Madonnaissance for its second season.
Which leaves the 78th Emmy Awards feeling a little … underwhelming.
The field for this year’s Emmys probably won’t produce any series nomination as egregious as “Emily in Paris” earning a comedy series nod largely as a result of pandemic-addled voters craving escapist comfort, dreaming that they too might be able to visit the City of Light and cause a power blackout by plugging their American vibrator into a French electrical outlet.
But … and how can I put this without offending the creators of some perfectly fine television that has, at times, delighted me and, at the very least, kept me company while I folded my laundry, brushed my dog and searched online for deals on airline flights?
Things are looking a little stale this year. Granted, the Emmys have made repetitiveness its bread and butter for decades now. Julia Louis-Dreyfus won six consecutive trophies for playing Selina Meyer in “Veep.” This year, Jean Smart will (spoiler alert) win her fifth straight Emmy for “Hacks.” Smart would probably equal Louis-Dreyfus’ run if “Hacks” wasn’t ending with its fifth season.
And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with many of the shows likely to run back their nominations. “Abbott Elementary,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Slow Horses” remain enjoyable enough. “Shrinking” still delivers warm, gooey vibes, much like newcomer “Rooster,” the Steve Carell comedy that shares the bland sad-com DNA of co-creator Bill Lawrence. “The Diplomat”? Fine, though I still can’t shake the feeling that I’d rather be rewatching Keri Russell in “The Americans” than grinding through this soapy drama, particularly since the series now seems more interested in the wrong Wyler — Rufus Sewell’s Hal and not Russell’s Kate. (Reminder: It’s called “The Diplomat,” people.)
That nostalgic longing, a sort of “Where have you gone Tony Soprano / Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you (woo woo woo)” creeps up on you watching TV these days, particularly if you’re old enough to remember when shows had ambitions that aimed for something beyond mere diversion. There are exceptions — “Pluribus,” Vince Gilligan’s unnerving cautionary (?) tale about the hive mind, being the standout, its debut episode rating as one of the best pilots in television history, setting an impossibly high bar for what was to follow.
If “Pluribus” can be read as a warning about AI’s encroaching presence in our lives, the new season of “The Comeback,” the Lisa Kudrow comedy returning after a dozen (!) years for a final go-round, views it in more serious terms. “Just as reality TV was the ‘almost extinction event’ for scripted television at the time, it’s the same feeling now about AI,” Kudrow said at a news conference promoting the show. No wonder “The Comeback” felt like one series this year immune to producers using AI to give script notes.
In that respect, the long gap between seasons of “The Comeback” seemed time well spent. For other shows, including some mentioned at the outset, you can be forgiven for wondering why you have to wait so long for new episodes and then, when they arrive, whether you still care enough to take the time to watch.
“Audiences invest their valuable time in a show and its characters, and when you have to wait two years or more for it to come back, you forget what happens, forget who they are, forget they were married to this person. ‘Oh, they’re cousins?’ ‘So that’s his son, isn’t it?’” “Slow Horses” star Gary Oldman told me recently, talking about his show’s commitment to “keeping the factory open” and returning each year.
Certainly, the Emmys feel the absence of these shows. That original “extinction event” Kudrow mentioned, reality TV? That’s what’s generating the cultural conversation right now. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more irresistible character on television than Cirie Fields on the 50th edition of “Survivor,” or one more discussed than “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul.
There was one series that could have given the ceremony a lift, a show that sparked so much passion from its audience that the Golden Globes leaned into it earlier this year to convince people to ignore its irrelevancy and boost its ratings.
Unfortunately, HBO Max’s hockey romance drama “Heated Rivalry” is not eligible for the Emmys, so we won’t be seeing Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams among the acting nominees or engage in what assuredly would have been a fierce debate about whether they — and the frothy series — were worthy of such an honor. (The Peabody Awards believed it had plenty of merit.)
“Heated Rivalry” isn’t eligible because it’s a production of the Canadian TV network Crave, and Emmy rules state that “foreign television is ineligible unless it is the result of a co-production (both financially and creatively) between U.S. and foreign partners, which precedes the start of production.”
And while you can’t begrudge any Canadian not wanting to be associated with America right about now, I’m sure the good, undoubtedly polite folks behind “Heated Rivalry” would have attended, if invited, as long as they didn’t have to give up creative control of the series. (Which they aren’t going to do — Season 2 will not be eligible for the Emmys, either.)
Yes, rules are rules, and there’s a whole separate ceremony, the International Emmy Awards, for shows like “Heated Rivalry.” We wouldn’t want the Emmys to turn into the Oscars and let in a bunch of international interlopers and become a global event, would we?
Honest answer: Probably not. We have enough television to wade through as it is. But at the moment, it’s hard not to wish that some of it were better.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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