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Anonymous
YES, yes, a million times YES!!! That is exactly what I was saying on another thread. We do have vote-splitting now, and even with someone like Ron Cephas Jones he was still playing a sympathetic character the Emmy voters knew and loved from Season 1 of This Is Us. I suspect quite a few tears were shed at that scene with his daughter-in-law. There was no Margo Martindale kind of WTF wins which made no sense under any circumstance, all the episodes made sense to varying degrees as Emmy winners, whether they were seen as part of the season as a whole (Borstein and Daniels) or watched on their own (Newton).
ReplyCopy URLAlso I heard Riley make this point in a slugfest, about how if episodes mattered we would have seen Sterling K Brown or Elisabeth Moss win.
But I just want to point out that our knowledge of what have been Emmy winning submissions has to take into account the fact that those voters voted using a Preferential ballot and they were just 70-80 voters who mostly skewed older, whiter and straighter. So it’s probably not fair to compare what they awarded Emmys too (speeches, broader comedy, more baity) to a wider, younger more diverse voting pool of thousands that uses a plurality vote.
What constituted the best episode has itself changed, and in this new system I can see how Rhys, Foy and Newton would be considered to be the best tapes, unlike the older systems that would have given it to Brown, Moss and Dowd.
I thought Brown honestly had a terrible tape. Not nearly enough screen time and his tears weren’t moving for me. Rhys had a vastly superior tape and was a more deserving winner in every regard in my opinion. Ditto Moss and Foy, where I didn’t predict the former largely because I found her acting so “waaahhh” stale in “The Last Ceremony” compared to Foy’s elegant and believable work in “Dear Mrs. Kennedy.” Russell was my favorite episode performance in that category, but I get someone disagreeing with me there and simply preferring Foy in her episode.
I feel like much of the time people will blame Emmy voters for not watching the episodes too often under the current system for when their favorites and who they subjectively perceive as the best don’t win. I feel like sometimes people forget the so-called “inspired” winners under the so-called “tape system” only embarrassed the Emmys by making them look out of touch.
Also, unpopular opinion here. I think in hindsight Ben Mendelsohn had a better episode submission than Michael Kelly and Johnathan Banks had that year he won. Harington was my #1 favorite but had more of a physically impressive performance in his episode while Mendelsohn had much more of an emotionally subtle and nuanced one.
ReplyCopy URLHaving seen all of the Emmy winners, I am wondering if Episode submissions played a greater role this year than in the previous three years. First of all just to be clear, I am not saying that the episodes were the sole deciding factor or even the biggest deciding factor. But I remember Tom saying that voting this time gave you constant reminders of watching the episodes and I’m wondering if that was enough to guilt trip even 20% to 30% of voters into watching the tapes of some of the categories?
It’s also important to not look at what constituted the ‘best episode submission’ the way we used to. For instance, during the earlier voting system where we had a PREFERENTIAL ballot and when smaller panels of 70 – 80 voters decided who would win (voters that were older, straighter and whiter). broader more baity episodes would usually win. But in the new system, perhaps the best episode would be less Emmy-baity? Like Viola Davis losing to Tatiana Maslaney?
I mean let’s look at the 8 acting winners from Comedy and Drama on Primetime Night:
1. Claire Foy – she was absolutely riveting in her episode. Dear Mrs Kennedy is possibly her best performance in both the seasons of the Crown and this was a stellar tape.
2. Matthew Rhys – He had the best episode submission of the category and it wasn’t even close.
3. Thandie Newton – I honestly feel Vanessa Kirby had the best episode here, but Newton did speak Japanese in her episode. Maybe that impressed the actors? Also THT ladies splitting the vote becomes more of a reality if episodes mattered.
4. Peter Dinklage – He was \amazing in his tape and again, IMO, his was the best episode of the category.
5. Alex Borstein – Okay this is where things get interesting. For me Mullally should have easily won in the older system – it was the perfect submission. But in this new system, maybe the voters were more receptive to Alex’s tape?
6. Bill Hader – He was simply the best and this category actually makes me most confident about episodes playing some role. Also, if voters saw Teddy Perkins they might not have realized that was Glover.
7. Rachel Brosnahan – she didn’t go with her best episode, but her chosen episode was still the best of the category.
8. Henry Winkler – No one had a knockout episode here except for Burgess, and again Burgess would have been a three to four time Emmy winner in the old system by now, so I guess Winkler’s performance is what they are more receptive to in this system?
Borstein did not have the best submission. The best submission was held by Megan Mullally.
Did the voters get some sort of indication that Donald Glover played another character in his submission?
ReplyCopy URLI also think that tapes still matter, maybe they do not watch all of them again (the episodes that they have already watched), but they checked them and they watch what they have not seen. There is not a single winner with bad tape, the only example that people are capable of giving is Baldwin last year, but this is a horrible example, his impression of Trump is iconic (it does not matter if we like it or not, the vast majority does, it won the vote of the public in all the sites even this year) and would have won under any system.
Also, stop act like it was easy to predict who was going to win with the tape system, it was still very difficult, it was still full of upsets and BAD scores at the predictions. It is really funny for me how many of you ignore that and make statements like you are completely SURE what would have happen. In Lead actress and Supporting actress in Drama it was impossible do predict by tapes, all 13 women had incredible tapes. And Mullally performance feels old, I think that voters have move on with more intelectual and subtle Comedy, because the nominations were made by the same way and we see how they clearly do not like typical sitcoms anymore. So, I am pretty sure that Janney, Mullally, Metcalfe and Anderson do not have a chance anymore.
ReplyCopy URL@riley Just to clarify, I am judging Ben Mendelsohn’s Emmy win off of his performance in the Season 2 finale which was his episode submission. He was impressively sympathetic and subtle and I completely stand by my comments about him having arguably the best tape in that category, given full hindsight of those contenders and their episodes that year. Much more memorable for me than Banks and Kelly’s choices. Season 6 was maybe the weakest ever for Dinklage, who still honorably submitted his best, which isn’t saying much. Harington has the more physically impressive acting but Mendelsohn’s performance resonated well with me due to the realistic nuance he had to pull off. In his episode submission for Season 2 of Bloodline where he is talking with his dad and later says goodbye to his son, he gave by no means a showy baity performance, but that I would argue is what made his win for such solidly low-key acting feel so genuinely inspired and refreshing.
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