That sound you hear is TV fans and critics engaging in their sacred annual tradition of screaming about the Emmy Award nominations.
The shriek of rage piercing your ear is because some of my favorite series and performances didn’t make it in, and I am the indisputable arbiter of taste and therefore all Television Academy voters should be spiraling with shame over their transgressions. (How Fellow Travelers isn’t a nominee for Limited or Anthology Series, I’ll never know.)
That banshee’s wail of joy that immediately followed? That’s me cheering and hollering that contenders I assumed voters would ignore made it in. (Reservation Dogs in Comedy Series?! Hell yeah!)
And the grace note to all that raucous—my laughter—is over some of the truly silly nominations. (Tom Brady is now an Emmy nominee…for getting roasted on Netflix.)
Jeremy Allen White in The Bear
FXWere the nominations good? They certainly weren’t disastrous. More than anything, they were pretty much expected.
Shōgun dominated with 25 nominations, which tracks because it was truly the best program of the year. The Bear followed with a new record of 23 nods in the comedy categories, hinting that voters didn’t really care about the debate over whether the series is really a drama—nor did they pay attention to the light critical backlash to Season 3. (Even though Season 3 just premiered, these nominations are actually for The Bear Season 2.)
You can see a list of all of the nominations here. And if combing through a 66-page PDF isn’t your jam, here’s my version of the highlights: everything you should be yelling about, good and bad, from this year’s Emmy nominations.
Reservation Dogs finally gets its due!
The fantastical series about Indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma routinely topped end-of-year Best TV Show lists. Its final season finally gets the recognition it deserves with four nods, including Comedy Series and Lead Actor for star D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai.
Jeremy Allen White in The Bear
FXDoes The Bear really need all those nods?
Among The Bear’s 23 nods, 10 are in the acting categories. The acting on the show is superb! The guest stars are great! But it gets a little exasperating when one show dominates everything. (And, strangely, Abby Elliott, who was the beating heart of Season 2, was overlooked in Supporting Actress.)
The Gentlemen didn’t pop
The Netflix action comedy was one of the streamer’s biggest hits of the year and was tipped for nominations for Comedy Series and star Theo James. It missed those major categories, but Guy Ritchie managed a nod for his directing.
The expected frontrunners made good on their promise
The major shows that were expected to do well on nomination morning pulled in big nomination tallies: Shōgun (25), The Bear (23), Only Murders in the Building (21), True Detective: Night Country (19), The Crown (18), and Saturday Night Live (17).
Maya Rudolph dominates
There were several double nominees this year: Quinta Brunson, Jodie Foster, Richard Gadd, Donald Glover, Jon Hamm, Brie Larsen, Jonathan Pryce, Paul Rudd, Andrew Scott, and Kristen Wiig. But the real feat of the morning belongs to Maya Rudolph, who was nominated four times: in Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (Loot), Guest Actress in a Comedy Series (Saturday Night Live), Character Voice-Over (Big Mouth), and Original Music & Lyrics, for her opening monologue song on SNL.
“I’m Just Ken” is still getting award nominations
One of my favorite nominations is Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance at the Oscars getting a mention in Outstanding Choreography for Variety or Reality Programming.
The Idol is an actual Emmy nominee, lol
Despite being ruled one of the biggest flops of the TV season, The Idol managed one nod: Outstanding Choreography for Scripted Programming.
This TV Movie category is a hot mess
This category is typically chaos, but it’s not usually this cringe-worthy. Options are so slim that Jerry Seinfeld’s abysmal PopTarts movie, Unfrosted, is a nominee, as is a spinoff movie of the TV show Monk. Queer rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue also snuck in. The movie is charming…but award-worthy?
The cast of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
BravoJustice for the Real Housewives!
While Bravo is starting to make inroads with the Emmys, it’s still baffling that a stigma against the Real Housewives means no iteration of the franchise has been nominated in the Unstructured Series category. That’s especially egregious in a year when The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City gave us a masterpiece season of reality TV. The mediocre season of Vanderpump Rules chronicling the Scandoval fallout was nominated instead, as well as Below Deck Down Under—the best of the Below Deck shows, but not necessarily the one I thought would get in!
Baby Reindeer wasn’t affected by the controversy
Despite a massive lawsuit filed against Netflix, the zeitgeist-seizing series got 11 nods, including Limited or Anthology Series and mentions for stars Richard Gadd, Jessica Gooding, Nava Mau, and Tom Goodman-Hilll.
Girls5eva gets some love
That Girls5eva’s move to Netflix didn’t spark a massive influx in popularity for the series will forever depress me. I would’ve nominated the series and its four main actresses in their respective categories. But I’ll settle for the fact that it did get a Original Music & Lyrics nod, as well as a mention in Writing for a Comedy Series.
Where is Fellow Travelers?
In my opinion, this was the best Limited Series of the year, so it is disappointing night to see in that category. I am thrilled, however, for my husband Jonathan Bailey, for his Supporting Actor nomination. (Congrats to Matt Bomer for his Lead Actor nod, too.)
Tom Brady
NetflixTom Brady, Emmy nominee
I found Netflix’s roast of Tom Brady to be frustratingly sanitized and unexciting, so I wasn’t thrilled that it made it into the competitive Variety Special (Live) category. But congrats to Brady, I guess, for now counting Emmy nominee among his many accomplishments.
The Morning Show is, apparently, an acting showcase?
The Morning Show matched The Bear with 10 acting nominations in the drama categories, taking over the supporting races, particularly: three cast members in supporting actor and four in supporting actress. I guess voters were impressed by how much talent it takes to sell that show’s bonkers storylines.
Idris Elba in Hijack
Apple TV+Idris Elba!!!
Awards pundits didn’t have Idris Elba in Hijack on their prediction lists for Lead Actor in a Drama Series, but there will never be a time when we don’t celebrate good things for Idris Elba.
FX must be popping bottles of champagne right now
In addition to Shōgun’s stellar nomination tally and The Bear’s new record for a comedy series, the network’s other series overperformed expectations. (And, mostly, that’s a great, deserved thing!)
Reservation Dogs getting into Comedy Series has to be the nod they’re most ecstatic about. That What We Do in the Shadows also got in—meaning three of the eight nominees are FX comedies—and star Matt Berry got his first nod in Lead Actor must be making the team pretty happy, too. Add in the 10 nominations for Feud: Capote v. the Swans and six for Welcome to Wrexham, and I imagine they’re throwing a rager over at the FX offices right now.
This is nice…
Among the nominations for Feud: Capote v. the Swans is a posthumous Supporting Actor nod for Treat Williams, who died in June of last year.
An Oscar is no longer an Emmy guarantee
Emma Stone missed out on a Lead Actress in a Drama Series nod for The Curse that she definitely deserved. (That the show was shut out completely is shameful.) Kate Winslet (The Regime), Julianne Moore (Mary & George), and Nicole Kidman (Expats) all missed out in the Lead Actress in a Limited Series category. Though it’s not like an Oscar is a liability; both Jodie Foster (True Detective: Night Country) and Brie Larsen (Lessons in Chemistry) are nominees in that category, while Reese Witherspoon (The Morning Show) got a Lead Actress in a Drama Series nod.
Selena Gomez gets in
It took three seasons, but Gomez now joins her legendary co-stars as an Emmy nominee for her work in Only Murders in the Building. To each their own.
Palm Royale is way more popular than we thought…
Or, at least it is with Emmy voters. Reaction to the campy Apple TV+ soap opera/comedy was polarized, which you wouldn’t know from its 11 Emmy nominations—including a surprise Comedy Series mention.
The Traitors was betrayed in one major category
The Traitors got its much-earned nominations in Reality Competition Series and for its host, Alan Cumming. But it strangely wasn’t mentioned in Casting for a Reality Programming. A show that brought together all those reality stars for such delicious scheming should’ve been a shoo-in for that category.
