At last night’s Emmy Awards, Game of Thrones won every category in which it was nominated – except one. Peter Dinklage, despite lacking material this season, won Outstanding Supporting Actor over less-known, more-deserving character actors Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline), Jonathan Banks (Better Call Saul) and Michael Kelly (House of Cards). David Nutter’s direction of the finale somehow outranked Steven Soderbergh. Disturbingly, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ uneven finale script was chosen over Matthew Weiner’s terrific Mad Men closer.
But Lena Headey, the standout of a weak season with a knockout submission episode to back her up, lost to Screen Actors Guild Award winner Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black). Go figure.
This year, the Emmys transitioned from a panel-centric system – in which a small group of voters would watch each submitted episode before determining their ballots – to a popular vote. The results, for good and for ill, were starkly reflective of this shift.
I predicted 10 of the 12 acting winners correctly, many of those choices based on the idea that these categories would be as much a popularity contest as anything else. That indeed proved true. (This was probably my best prediction rate for the Emmys in my six years handicapping.) Aduba, as I mentioned last week, has emerged as the sort of “anointed” breakout of Orange, likely due to the heightened material she gets to play as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes.” She has already won an Emmy and managed a lead acting SAG prize, indicating broad support. She wasn’t the category’s strongest competitor (though she’s excellent), but was clearly the populist choice, especially over actors like Christina Hendricks and Lena Headey who have not earned as much industry recognition.
That Dinklage won is more dispiriting. In general, new dramas had a rough go of it this year, but Mendelsohn and Banks represented the only two – Bloodline and Better Call Saul, respectively – to compete in multiple categories at the main telecast. These, the statistic would imply, are the only ones they liked, and these two actors happened to be considered among their most commendable attributes (especially Mendelsohn). So it’s unfortunate that they were still drowned out by the popular vote, along with Kelly, in favor of the Emmy-winning star of TV’s biggest show. That doesn’t set a great precedent for unknown actors giving breakthrough performances – the Aaron Pauls, the Zeljko Ivaneks, etc.
Because to that point, vote-checking went a long way this year. I made a last-minute switch to Tony Hale for Veep for Comedy Supporting Actor, thinking his name along with Veep’s would be enough. It was. Hale is great, and showed some impressive range in this season of the HBO comedy. But Tituss Burgess, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s flat-out hilarious breakout star, should have stood a better chance than he ultimately did. And once again, the more-deserving Veep star, Anna Chlumsky, lacked the name recognition to overtake Allison Janney and win her first Emmy. Those kinds of results seemed a little backwards, but they were easy to see coming nonetheless.
Of course, no system is perfect; each gives and takes. And that was absolutely true this year. Under the old rules, Kyle Chandler would have been a serious threat to Jon Hamm’s chances; the broadening of the system allowed for sentiment and respect to play to Hamm’s favor, and ultimately to lead him to the victory he’s long deserved. Though he was likely a sure thing anyway, you could say the same of Lead Actor’s winner on the comedy side, Jeffrey Tambor, as in his actual submitted episode he’s subtle and nuanced. (As in: not Jim Parsons.) And I think the wins of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Viola Davis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, likely Tambor and even Janney were the favorites under either system.
In the longform categories, we saw long-respected character actors Richard Jenkins and Regina King rightly upset the flashier fare of David Oyelowo and Sarah Paulson, respectively. In that latter category, many feared Kathy Bates would again be name-checked, or perhaps Zoe Kazan would be as part of the Olive Kitteridge wave. I pegged Sarah Paulson to win, as she’s been nominated year after year to no avail. But here was an instance where an actor (King), who for too long had slipped through the cracks, actually benefited from this new system – where the new system proved meritoriously advantageous over the old. Similarly, Jenkins’ SAG win convinced me to predict him, and I’m so glad it did; it’s about time the actor earned some major hardware, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s for one of his best roles to date.
Where I got things very, very wrong was in writing/directing, predicting a measly 1/6 (not including variety). I was resistant to the Game of Thrones wave, but its dominance (as well as Olive Kitteridge’s) in that area proves just how influential the popular vote can be in categories that voters don’t have as much of a grasp on. I ended up getting the Transparent and Veep wins backwards, and in that case, I probably should have gone by merit anyway – Jill Soloway’s direction and the Veep finale script represented the best in those respective categories, and I’m glad they each emerged victorious.
It’s already clear that I wildly overestimated the nostalgia that voters would have for Mad Men, but as I wrote consistently, Game of Thrones was the clear competition. Based on the results last night, the HBO fantasy epic ran away with Outstanding Drama Series – nobody appears to have come close. In Comedy, meanwhile, it was as tight as was forecast. I gave the edge to Transparent, and no doubt the Amazon breakout was in it. But Veep has been building year by year, and with the relevance of its recent storyline as well as the exit of Armando Iannucci, it’s easy to see how it pulled ahead. In any case, a close race is a good race, and you could do a lot worse than Veep versus Transparent. Just remember the last time this race was competitive: it came down to Modern Family versus Glee in 2010. My, how far we’ve come.