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The
Television Academy has overhauled their eligibility rules for the upcoming 2015
Emmy Awards.
The
group behind TV’s highest honor rightly got a lot of flak last year for some
questionable decisions. True Detective
was ruled a drama series while Fargo
was a miniseries – even though the format these two take is nearly exclusive to
them, the TV Academy seemed fine with them competing in completely different
areas. Shameless, coming off of its
darkest season, was allowed to make the transfer to comedy. Orange Is the New Black, initially set
to compete as a drama, switched to comedy where the competition was lighter.
And ongoing limited series including Sherlock
and Luther continued to compete along
stand-alone projects like The White Queen.
What
fascinates me about this conversation is not the Emmys’ struggle to adequately
segment and structure honors for an extremely diverse TV landscape. We’re
seeing everybody do this: the Golden Globes forced True Detective to compete as a limited series alongside Fargo while every other body followed in
the Emmy path; the TCA somehow categorized Rectify
as a miniseries; and the WGA allowed The
Leftovers to compete in longform alongside Olive Kitteridge and The
Normal Heart. In the past 10 years, television has exploded in prestige and
artistic value. In what is nothing short of an honor, we’re seeing TV networks
and producers try to game the system to their advantage, just has been done
with the Oscars for decades. But even though Fargo was no more a miniseries than True Detective, and Shameless’
category jump was an obviously absurd play for more awards attention (and it
worked: William H. Macy just won SAG for Comedy Actor), these issues have
raised legitimate questions. What is a drama series? A comedy series? A
miniseries?
The
new rules restrict True Detective to
a new “limited series” category, alongside Fargo,
following in the footsteps of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (that can’t
feel good). And they now define “comedy series” as half-hours, and “drama series”
as whole-hours – considering Orange Is
the New Black really does toe the line between the two forms, and others
like Jane the Virgin and Glee are obviously comedies, this is
flawed patchwork. But it speaks to the remarkable difficulty that comes with
defining exactly what television is right now – the debate as to whether
online-exclusive content should be judged differently is certainly on the way
as well – and the choices the Academy made are understandable and necessarily
firm.
Movies
don’t have this problem. The Motion Pictures Academy has never differentiated
between comedy and drama, and has never really had to deal with issues of
continuity – though, when they must, they will questionably dub a sequel’s
script “adapted.” Movies are movies: closed-ended and singular. But when I look
at the top Golden Globe contenders last year for Comedy Series, from Jane the Virgin and Orange Is the New Black to surprising winner Transparent, I see shows that fit into a “drama” label as much as a
comedy one. And, moreover, it’s safe to say that the big TV Comedy acting
winners of January – Uzo Aduba and William H. Macy at SAG; Gina Rodriguez and Jeffrey
Tambor at the Globes – uniformly do equally funny, poignant and dramatic work
that would be competitive with performances in “drama” series. Macy has, in
fact, already competed as a Best Drama Actor nominee with the Critics’ Choice
TV Awards.
Television
has a different history than movies. Fifty years ago, half-hour comedies and
hour-long dramas served completely different functions. While traditional
sitcoms and procedurals still exist, they have fallen almost completely out of
favor with awards bodies. The Big Bang
Theory began its run in the fall of 2006; it has been the only multi-camera
nominee in Outstanding Comedy Series for the past five years. I don’t need to
document just how many multi-cams have come on and off the air in that span of
time – and none of them even came close, by the way – but that’s a striking
statistic on its own. Dramatically, meanwhile, The Good Wife is the only old-fashioned network drama to really find
favor with critics, but at this point, it’s getting a lot more love from cable-loving
journalists (and the Globes) than the industry.
Should
the Emmys combine comedy and drama, as the Academy Awards do? Another rule
change made today includes the expansion of series categories to seven
nominees. That means that an astonishing 14 programs will be nominated as Best
Drama/Comedy alone. TV is good right now, but is it that good? The Oscars
decided that 10 Best Picture nominees was excessive after a two-year trial, and
yet the TV Academy has steadily built from 10, to 12, to now 14. The American
Film Institute (AFI) rules on the 10 best TV programs of the year without
regard to form or genre. Included were “comedies” Transparent; Orange Is the New
Black; Jane the Virgin; and Silicon Valley. Some great comedies
(notably Louie and Veep, both of which made the cut last
year) missed out, but so did some acclaimed dramas (True Detective and The Good
Wife) – and isn’t that the point of awards? Not every good show is
supposed to get in, right?
To
get back to the changes, though, the Emmys improved an unsolvable system. They
also addressed the ridiculous state of guest acting categories – in last year’s
Comedy Guest Actress field, every single nominee was actually a regular
on their respective show – by forcing all actors that appear in over half of
the eligible run of episodes into supporting/lead categories. So, if you want
to sum up the changes, go with this: it’s not a good day for Orange Is the New Black. Jenji Kohan’s
Netflix series earned a healthy amount of nominations by going comedy, and by
slotting regular actors in guest categories on a contractual technicality.
Expect its dozen nods to roughly slice in half next year.
There
were some other notable changes, which you can read about here.
And we’ll get into talking Emmys – contenders, predictions and all that – beginning
next month. As for now, though, the ever-evolving conversation about what constitutes
television, and what constitutes specific types of television, rolls on.