Why Do All the Emmy Nominees Feel So Old?

While watching Monday night’s Emmy Awards, you may notice that so many of the nominated shows and actors have a thin layer of dust covering them. No, that isn’t asbestos particles raining down from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. It’s that the nominated shows feel practically prehistoric in the fast-moving age of the streamer.

This disconnect is because the 75th Annual Emmy Awards ceremony had its telecast delayed from its original mid-September airdate due to the then-ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, meaning the telecast is airing more than four months later than planned. As the dog days of summer 2023 dwindled, it became clear that the Emmys were going to be another casualty of the major Hollywood studios’ reluctance to bargain with the unions that keep the town running. So, the telecast was delayed, in hopes that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA would attain a fair contract by the new year—which, thankfully, they have.

While that’s the good news, there’s some worse, stranger news: Everything nominated at the Emmys feels downright ancient. The ceremony is still honoring the same eligibility window as it usually does, and in the case of tonight’s show, that window closed back in May 2023—eight months ago. If you do the math, we’re going to be watching shows from the 365 days between May 2022 (20 months ago!) and May 2023 be honored, while we sit here firmly in 2024, with another summer and fall of TV behind us that the Television Academy has yet to even parse through. This means that there’s a confounding ceremony in store for tonight, and an even more tricky future for the Emmys as the industry recovers from the strikes.

In these modern times—when there are at least 100 new television shows banging down your door like a battering ram every day and famous directors are dropping secret micro-series online for free—it’s not exactly easy to keep up with what’s going on in television. Gone are the days when the average American viewer could easily channel surf a couple of nights a week to keep up with the most popular shows. (Hell, I’m still dodging Sopranos spoilers!) Now, it takes a small fortune, divvied out to 10 different streamers, just to have easy access to the best television at all times.

Because of this oversaturated phenomenon, we’ve all become accustomed to a hyperspeed digestion of television. There’s a reason that “binge” has become such a colloquial term for how we consume TV, and it’s not only because we gorge on shows that we love, but that we rip through them as fast as possible to make way for what’s next. And if you’re the type of person who fits that bill, then good luck: Tonight’s telecast is going to leave you puzzled and stuck in a time warp.

While we’re all trying to contain our thrill and excitement over the possibilities of Parker Posey’s character in the upcoming third season of The White Lotus, the Emmys will still be honoring Season 2. You know, the Italian season that aired practically one million years ago. It’s the same case with House of the Dragon, which is currently hurtling toward its second season but will be competing tonight for the CGI beasts that made up its first. And lest we forget The Crown, up for awards in the show’s drama categories for its fifth season that aired in Nov. 2022: That show’s sixth and final season didn’t just premiere on Netflix two months ago, but it competed for (and won) at the Golden Globes just last week. The Emmys will be considering the season prior to that one.

Here’s where things get particularly prickly. There’s a similar situation happening with The Bear, which is likely to take home some gold tonight for its fantastic first season that boasted a collection of breakout stars. You know, the first season that aired on Hulu in June 2022. I don’t know what you were up to 19 months ago, but I wasn’t even living in the same apartment. I was bald, and now I have a head of luscious, flowing neck-length tresses. Nineteen months is practically a lifetime in television years! And it certainly does not help that The Bear took home three Golden Globes for its second season just a few days back.

Slotting the Emmys telecast to January might have been a necessary alteration given the circumstances, but it paves a tricky road moving forward, one that’s dotted with questions. Will the eligibility window look different for next year’s ceremony? Will the show be bumped up back to September, or stay in January? Are we just going to have to live with this confusion forever, and constantly time travel every year? If you’ve taken a stab at trying to watch the Grammys, which have a similarly wonky window of eligibility, you know what kind of chaos that last option might present. (The Grammys telecast that aired in February 2023 had Adele’s 30—an album from Nov. 2021—competing alongside Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, which dropped in July 2022.)

While it’s hard to predict what route the Emmys might take, it’s almost guaranteed that all of this havoc is far from over. It’s just more work for us, on top of trying not to drown in a sea of TV.