If you are one of the many people on this Earth who have never heard of – let alone seen – half the shows that received Emmy nominations recently, don’t worry. You’re not a philistine. Similar to the Oscars, the Emmys are out of touch with the tastes of the general public. However, the Emmys are even worse, because the Emmy voting body (who is, in my imagination, a circle of shadowy figures sporting top hats, inky black trench coats, and canes, quietly sipping tea) is afraid to take risks. The moment they collectively enjoy a show, even for five minutes, they nominate it for the rest of eternity, preventing any of the other 500,000 series on TV from ever getting a chance. They also love to nominate big budget shows that have the money to court Emmy voters, which is how Palm Royale and the painfully dull 3 Body Problem are now Emmy nominees for Best Comedy and Drama.
In any case, the result of all this politicking is that a plethora of brilliant TV shows never grace Emmy’s lips, or at least never nab a Best Comedy or Drama nom. With that in mind, here are some shows without Best Comedy or Best Drama nominations that prove, definitively, that the Emmy nominations are irrelevant to real, breathing human beings.
What I’m about to say may anger a large sect of Very Online bearded men whose claim to fame is going viral once in 2019. The Bear is not that great. After seeing this show win Best Comedy Series at the Emmys, I watched a few episodes of it expecting a hilarious, edgy, slice-of-life prestige show with one-liners that I’d be quoting for days. I chuckled twice. Basically, The Bear is a wry, slick, fast-paced drama – not my cup of tea.
That said, if you want a show with jokes that land and absurd situations that satirize multiple aspects of society, then you should watch an actual comedy – like The Other Two. In its final season, this show took big creative risks and pushed its characters to their limits, all the while skewering queer millennials and Hollywood narcissists. Oh, and it was hilarious! But it never got a Best Comedy nom – just a consolation nom for Writing. Watch it on Max.
Speaking of actual comedies, Bojack Horseman had the same brilliant satire as The Other Two, plus a talking horse and insightful storylines about depression and asexuality. And yet, it got exactly three Emmy nominations, which were all “Creative Emmys” (or, as Kathy Griffin once called them, the Shmemmys.) Watch this on Netflix.
This series has some of the silliest one-liners I’ve ever heard, but I would argue that crafting a good original dad joke is an art deserving of Emmy nominations. Also, the acting here is gloriously arch – only Sara Bareilles keeps it from straying into absurdist territory. That allows for some unexpected pathos to sneak into this otherwise unhinged musical comedy parody series. Oh, and this show’s theme song has the stupidest joke in all of television history; I laugh literally every time I hear it. Watch this on Netflix.
The Emmys would’ve probably bungled this series, too, moving it to the Shmemmys or “accidentally” nominating it as a Comedy instead of a Drama. Thankfully, we’ll never have to worry about that, since La Casa de Las Flores never got a nomination in the first place. Perhaps the Emmy voters don’t appreciate a good telenovela. Meanwhile, this Mexican Netflix series gathered the children throughout its run, handling multiple concurrent storylines with grace. But it also made me laugh! Maybe there should be a new Emmys category for Best Dramedy. Watch this on Netflix.
This show started as a sitcom, morphed into cringe-com, veered into drama, and ended as a meditation on life. How to describe it, though? On paper, it’s a social experiment about a man, Nathan, who helps people “rehearse” important moments in their lives before experiencing them. In this way, he ends up becoming a live-in fake husband for a young woman who wants to practice living with a man and raising a baby with him before tackling motherhood. But the woman quickly reveals herself as a vehemently anti-Halloween enemy of Satanism, leading Nathan to question his project and, ultimately, his existence. How did this not get an Emmy nomination? The Emmys are useless. Let’s just start our own Emmys. We’ll call them the People’s Choice Aw – Oh. Anyway, watch this on Hulu.
