Every beginning of the year, during awards season, we alternate our favoritism to immediate rejection, in a complex picture of rooting for the underdog. In English – the underdog of the song by the band Kasabian, which says that “I only lose to win”. We were thrilled with Beef in 2023, singing ever since that the series “closed the Emmys”, but when this was confirmed, we were left asking ourselves ‘But… what about The Crown? What about The Last of Us?’ And so on. Every year is the same thing.

If for us who are at home when the night turns into a party of the same group we just get bored, imagine the famous people who have to become a supporting player in someone else’s victory, maintaining their pose as if they weren’t in a competition and going home as a loser? Meryl Streep, the queen, caught our attention when she joked that she didn’t understand why people considered her so successful for being nominated 21 times for an Oscar if she only won three. She suggested jokingly that she would actually be Hollywood’s biggest loser. It’s a genuine feeling that she had to endure 18 times.

The other side of the coin is that every actress who entered the category ‘against’ Meryl’ felt like they had less of a chance (Sandra Bullock joked about this when she won), but if Meryl actually won every time – and all the nominations were deserved -, from 1979 to 2023, practically no one else would have won. We would be complaining, no doubt.

What happens is that balance, as in everything in life, is tenuous in awards shows. At the Oscars, there is no separation between the Comedy or Drama genres, which reduces the list of nominees and creates comparison problems. To this day, for whatever reason, artists tend to underestimate the art of making people laugh, considering comedy easier than drama when it is infinitely more difficult to make someone laugh than to make someone cry. Drama icons like Robert DeNiro and Meryl herself suffered years before finding their persona in comedy, but, in general, Tom Hanks managed to do the opposite without the same difficulty. Does anyone remember him from the 1980s comedies? But no one forgets him in performances like Forrest Gump or Philadelphia. But I’m diverting the topic. We talk about the injustices of the Oscar for lumping all the performances into the same category, leaving it in the air that the award is for the best of the best. Yes, part of the prestige of the statuette is precisely the fiercer competition. And unfair.

Therefore, when all the other awards expand the categories, in theory, we would have more names on stage, but what has been noticed is that it only means repetition instead of diversity. Of course, we are talking about the “TV Oscar”, the Emmy.

The rules: there are many categories, but the platforms submit the genres

At the Emmys, the party divides several categories: Comedy Drama, Miniseries Film Series, etc. They are nominated more than Oscars, which mathematically increases the chances of different winners, but what we have seen more frequently is that the awards are now parties for just one group: if they gain favoritism, they take “everything”. In this way, Succession gained director, series, script, actor, actress, supporting actor and whatever else it could in 2023. Deserved? Yes, but… what about The Last of Us? In fact, the expectation is that the awards will come in the second season, especially for Pedro Pascal, who is already a more concrete bet and, although it was not televised, Nick Offerman and Storm Reid won as Guest Actors in a Drama Series. There was recognition to the series that it’s not as promoted as it should have been!

I have friends who complained more about Beef winning over Daisy Jones and the Six and even Dahmer, but the problem for me is having The Bear competing as a comedy. Honestly, in the few light moments, we even laugh, but there is no comedy in our Chef’s depression and anguish. I find it offensive that Only Murders in the Building, Ted Lasso, Wednesday, or even The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which were comedies with deeper moments, lost to The Bear. It was obvious that the drama made everything more powerful! And I’ll go further: if they had Jeremy Allen White against Kieran Culkin, Succession would never have won the Best Actor Award. There would even be a risk of greater competition in other categories as well (although I still think it was deservedly Succession‘s year). The joke about Drama being awarded as Comedy is at the Academy, but it doesn’t make us or the comedians laugh, I bet!

The non-recorded awards would give a more balanced look to the Emmy Awards party

In the broadcast of the party on HBO Max in Brazil, the commentator justified the obvious question as if the Emmy rules measured gender by time. As in general, on Free TV, comedy had only 30 minutes and drama in general had 45, automatically The Bear (whose episodes are short) would be included as Comedy. I made a point of reading the 82 pages of the regulations and did not find this information. There is a Short Comedy Drama Series, but nothing referring to running time to interfere with the category.

Comedy, Drama, or Variety, which effectively has an average episode length of between two and 20 minutes. In the rules, Drama or Comedy “has a maximum limit of 11 participants” but “Emmy-eligible producers determine final eligibility”. They just need to have “a minimum of six episodes, aired within the year of eligibility to qualify as a series.” In other words, the platform decides the genre and whether Academy members accept it or not.

Then we return to the chicken or the egg effect: how can we change without being unfair? Perhaps what was aired within the usual 3 hours and eliminating many other award-winning categories would have removed the impression that we were crashing the party of three hosts. Certainly, without knowing who won for Costume Design, Makeup, Guest Actor, and Actress, we are left without understanding that The Last of Us had awards and that House of the Dragon and The Great did too. Perhaps a more serious tribute to the stars of historical shows wouldn’t require boring theater shows for those who didn’t recognize them to save more time. Perhaps the fact that the awards for the 75th Emmy Awards were for 2022 and we have already forgotten that time has passed and that from last year we will still have to confirm the nominees and winners (yes, we will have another Emmy Awards ceremony in 6 months, I’ll tell you about this) and this confused us even more. Many doubts!

What’s the 76th Emmy Awards like?

The fact is that if we put it in perspective, the Best Drama of 2022 was indeed Succession and the Best Comedy was perhaps Abbot Elementary (certainly The Bear and Abbot Elementary make it clear which of the two could not be called a comedy), but to know the ‘best of 2023’ we will have to wait until July. The party shown on January 15, 2024, was supposed to air in September 2023. The Hollywood strikes interfered and delayed the party, and to confuse us even more, the one in 2023, which was supposed to take place in September 2024, will be early! An endless mess of calendars!

To repeat: in a few weeks, we will know the nominees for the 2024 Emmy Awards, which takes into account what was shown between June 2023 and January 2024. In the Drama category, as there is no successor to Succession, I personally bet on The Morning Show’s turn. Billy Crudup comes as a favorite as Supporting Actor (although he was the protagonist), our dear Greta Lee will come strongly as a supporting actor and the series should win for Best Drama. There won’t be an easier year than 2024, as The Crown has lost its strength due to the fatigue of the Royal Family’s royal drama in recent years.

Among the actresses in the Netflix series, Elizabeth Debicki still has a chance to win as Princess Diana in a second nomination for the role and Leslie Manville will certainly be nominated as Princess Margaret. In terms of comedy, Only Murders in the Building will finally be considered for its best season – the one with Meryl Streep as its star – but with no chance of winning precisely because it has the popularity of The Bear ahead of it.

Knowing the reality of how the awards are organized kind of guides how we guess in the eternal pools of “who will win”, which is not always “who deserves to win”. I go back to humming Underdog by Kasabian (the local loves a fighter, Loves a winner to fall ) because having the unanimity that The Bear has at the moment could hurt its fans more than help. We all want a healthy environment with lots of victories and artists thanking us, but not necessarily the same ones for three hours. Therefore, about the next Emmy Awards? I’ll update my guesses later, of course, even my hope for something more fair is minimal. And yours?

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