Fans of The Americans might have to start taking it personally.
It’s one thing for the Emmys to all but completely ignore the series that won Best Drama at this year’s Critics Choice Awards and Television Critics Association Awards, and whose most recent season was hailed an all-out “masterpiece” by several top critics. It can be forgiven, especially in this era of Too Much TV – The Wire never won a major Emmy, right? Awards are far from the end-all be-all.
But as an industry standard, there’s something especially troubling about the fact that the Television Academy is, at this point, intently proving they don’t even watch the thing. It’s not exactly unexpected – if they were, the show would be far more competitive – but it’s as if they’re throwing it in our faces.
At last night’s Creative Arts Emmys – the ceremony in which craft, miscellaneous and guest acting categories are decided – Margo Martindale won Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. It’s the first time The Americans has won an Emmy.
Here’s the problem, though: Martindale’s nomination alone was considered a joke, especially to Americans fans. In the season – or episode – for which she’s competing, and for which she’s now won, she appears in only one scene. It amounts to nothing more than a cameo, and I use that word generously.
Martindale is an actor’s actor. She’s a deserved Emmy winner for her brilliant villainous turn in Justified, and she very deservedly competed for The Americans back when her character was more central to the show. She’s a great actress, and she’s a beloved presence on the FX Cold War drama.
Undoubtedly, her reputation thrust her to this win. Cicely Tyson and Allison Janney – not strangers, exactly, to the Emmy game – competed with stellar episodes and meaty roles. (Janney, for a role that won her the award just last year.) They were heavily handicapped, and for good reason. Martindale’s episode submission is laughably thin by comparison, and Americans fans will uniformly argue that she didn’t even give the best guest performance on The Americans this year – that honor would go to Lois Smith, but you’d have to watch the show to know that.
Effectively, Emmy voters proved once and for all that they don’t watch The Americans by, in a grandly ironic demonstration, giving The Americans an Emmy.
The implications here are surprisingly broad. Martindale’s win is primarily a consequence of revamped Emmy voting rules, the impact of which were shrouded in mystery until last night. In years past, a small group of voters would be assembled for “Blue Ribbon Panels” of a particular acting category, in which they’d screen each episode submission before ranking them and choosing a preferred winner. The system yielded surprises both good and bad – a great episode from an unknown like Zeljko Ivanek (Damages) could lead to a deserved win, while given the small pool of voters, you might also get some truly strange choices like, say, Archie Panjabi of The Good Wife – but, in any case, the Television Academy decided to democratize the process. Now, anyone can vote, so long as they sign an affidavit affirming they watched each submitted episode in the category. The worry here was that there was no check on whether voters would actually watch them – and the win of Martindale, as well as of others, makes clear that too many people will not.
For Martindale was not the only surprising victor last night. The male equivalent category went to House of Cards’ Reg E. Cathey, a near-identical situation of a post-relevant award. Cathey, who plays BBQ House owner Freddy, submitted a killer episode for the second season of Cards but lost, narrowly, to Scandal’s Joe Morton. He’s barely in House of Cards’ third season, and that goes especially for his submitted episode. Yet he beat Beau Bridges’ sterling work in Masters of Sex, among other more worthy contenders. Why? He’s in House of Cards, among the most popular shows within the Television Academy, and his character – however diminished in screentime now – is a fan-favorite. Like with Martindale, it’s not a merit-based prize. It’s a People’s Choice Award.
Now, like with the Blue Ribbon system, there remain pros and cons to this new way of doing things. Joan Cusack has had better Shameless material to compete with in the past, but goodness was it gratifying to see her win on her fifth consecutive nomination for the show this year. Like with Cathey or Martindale, it’s more a cumulative acknowledgment of her work on the series, but in this case it’s a sweet feeling to see it recognized. (Especially since the category was weak, and Cusack was already thought to be competitive.) Bradley Whitford, meanwhile, rode his multi-Emmy-winning clout and the breakout popularity of Transparent to a very nice, and surprising, win in Comedy Guest Actor. Of course, the caveat to that is that Jon Hamm had the best episode of the category for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but is instead forced to extend his astonishing losing streak. (He’s now 0 for 11 in acting nods.) We’ll see if voters finally grant him the win he’s long deserved for Mad Men next week.
Under-watched series and unknown actors had enough of a problem breaking out with Emmy voters under the old system. And that’s precisely why these results are so unnerving. There’s already too much out there, and as an industry standard it’s the Television Academy’s job to represent the medium’s diversity and creative breakthroughs as best it can. Put simply, we’re headed in the wrong direction if this new system favors veterans and popular shows over bright new talent that doesn’t reach as wide an audience. Emmy voters can’t watch everything, and they don’t have to. But they at least need to make the effort to know who they’re voting for, and why.