Ripping Good Yarns: Emmy Short Series Victory Parade

Well, the Emmy nominations were released earlier this week, and what an amazing mess they were!  They confirmed some of my worst complaints about the Emmy's and the problem between short form and long form.

I know that concept leaves some baffled.  But what we've  got are shows that have 13 or episodes or less competing against shows that run full seasons (usually 22 episodes).  How can the full season shows compete with programs where writers, producers and performers can concentrate their quality over a smaller range of episodes.  Not to mention that many of these programs are on premium channels that are available to fewer people, and where greater artistic license is given.

So here are the Emmy nominees for Outstanding Drama:

Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
Homeland 
Mad Men


Please note that every single program here is a short series program.  They all ran 13 episodes or less.  Three of the six ran on premium channels, two on HBO and one on Showtime.  Two others ran an AMC, a basic cable channel that has less censorship and allows for greater range of artistic impression.  Downton Abbey is on PBS.  Neither of our two long form winners, The Mentalist and Fringe were nominated.  One of our short form nominees is on here - A Game of Thrones and the other, Falling Skies, is not.  None of the shows nominated are bad shows - they are just not representative of the board range of television.  There is no major broadcast network show (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CW) on this list.  My favorite is obviously  A Game of Thrones.  The winner is likely to be Mad Men.

Outstanding Comedy Series:

The Big Bang Theory
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Girls 
Modern Family
30 Rock
Veep


This list has three long form shows, which includes our Comedy Series winners, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.  The other three are from HBO - Curb Your Enthusiasm (Seinfeld with swearing and partial nudity), Girls (couldn't stand this - but I'm not a privileged twenty-something white girl living in New York City), and Veep (not very funny, and politically tone deaf).  My favorite is Modern Family, and I think it is the likely Emmy winner, although tragically I would not discount Girls.


I won't list other awards this time, but just to show the imbecility of some of these categories, The Outstanding Mini-series or made for TV movie category includes American Horror Story.  This was a fine program that I really liked, but what is it doing in this category?  It ran 12 episodes, two more than A Game of Thrones!

Hollywood...it's a special place!