Right up until the very end, it was the prevailing question of Emmys night, and, appropriately enough, it came down to the final award.
Would Severance or The Pitt take home the prize for Best Drama Series?
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No matter how the prognosticators dissected it—precursors or precedents—nothing seemed to make the race between Apple TV+’s surreal mystery and HBO Max’s realtime medical drama any clearer. Even the awards leading up to the ultimate reveal (like Katherine LaNasa‘s or Britt Lower‘s acting wins) didn’t indicate fortunes going one way or another. (Andor and Slow Horses sneaking off with the writing and directing trophies didn’t help matters.)
But with the final two categories of the night, Best Drama Actor and Drama Series, Noah Wyle and The Pitt came out victorious.
So, with the field split for so long, what ultimately tipped the scales in The Pitt‘s favor? Here are a few theories (aside from people, you know, just liking the show a lot).
Fond Memories
Before the revolution that was the Golden Age of Television and the era of Peak TV that followed it, the medium was a simpler place. On the drama side, there were cop shows, lawyer shows, and medical shows. Maybe a young whippersnapper named Dick Wolf comes along and combines two of the three, but in terms of mainstream network programming, that’s about as wild as things got.
The Pitt, while a modern show in its own right, tapped into something essential about the medium, harkening back to the kind of programming that defined it for decades. Add an immensely likable lead actor who starred in one of the medical drama’s most sterling examples and who hadn’t really found his footing in the industry after that show ended, and you’ve got a show that Television Academy members are ready to not only love, but throw their full support behind.
Speaking of those Academy members…
The Pitt Stayed in LA
Productions actually shooting in Los Angeles have been on the decline for a while now—thanks mostly to studios chasing money-saving tax incentives for filming elsewhere—but the wildfires earlier this year drew greater attention to the crisis happening within the industry. With fewer shows made in LA and in general due to a post-streaming boom contraction, jobs for actors and crew members have been frighteningly scarce.
A big, practical show like The Pitt—that films on a studio lot in Los Angeles, employs a ton of local professionals, and runs a now-unusual 15 episodes in its first season—serves as a model for the kind of production that could help the industry in a very real way. The people behind The Pitt have not been shy about their pride about filming in Los Angeles, and that’s a sentiment shared by always-looking-for-work Academy voters.
The Normie Factor
As chairman Cris Abrego mentioned in his remarks during last night’s ceremony, the Television Academy is a group of 26,000 industry professionals. Someone may need to check my math on this, but that’s a lot of people. For a category that all eligible voters get to weigh in on, there’s going to inevitably be some averaging that happens across the body, and The Pitt is simply an easier show to embrace.
The double-edged sword of Severance‘s creativity and subversion is its remoteness. Not everyone in the audience is going to be able to connect with a lore-heavy literalization of work-life balance as easily as they would with a show about doctors helping sick and injured people, as brilliant as the former may be. Simply put, they just get it.
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