'THRONES' RULES EMMY NODS
Emmy nods: ‘Thrones’ and newcomers score big
HBO seized the Iron Throne Tuesday when the TV academy handed out its annual Emmy nominations.
The network walked away with a whopping 137 nods, largely due to the overwhelming love for “Game of Thrones,” whose controversial final season received a record 32 nominations, the most for any series — ever. The producers were not penalized for their sloppiness — that stray Starbucks coffee cup left on the set, for example, or the large sections of “The Battle of Winterfell” that could not be seen by the human eye. Some nods, in particular the writing of the series finale, seemed outrageous. Ten of its actors — even the mediocre ones, like Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington — were nominated, which seems excessive. The only entity from the show not nominated was Drogon, the dragon who carried off Daenerys’ dead body in the finale.
I could carp that continued nominations for shows that never win (“Better Call Saul”) irk me, but nothing is going to win against the “Throne.”
HBO did not score the most nominations for a comedy series; that went to last year’s winner, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — 20 nominations, including one for star Rachel Brosnahan.
But the real reason to get excited about the comedy category is to celebrate the inclusion of “Schitt’s Creek” — the satire whose stars, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, might be the funniest people on the planet — and Amazon’s “Fleabag.” This idiosyncratic British comedy has
been under the awards radar for a while, but this is the year Hollywood finally caught up with its clever creator Phoebe WallerBridge and her nutty cast, which includes her fellow nominees, Oscar winner Olivia Colman and the deadpan Sian Clifford, who plays Fleabag’s miserable sister Claire. Mystifyingly, the academy left out Andrew Scott, who stole the season as the Hot Priest.
There were so many cool choices among the nominees that one doesn’t have to be embarrassed about watching the actual ceremony in September. Patricia Arquette, one of the last real actresses left in Hollywood, was recognized for not one but two gutsy performances, in Showtime’s “Escape at Dannemora” and Hulu’s “The Act.”
Sixteen of the 117 nominations that Netflix picked up went to “When They See Us,” the explosive Ava DuVernay limited series about the trial of the Central Park Five and its shameful aftermath. Eight members of its powerful cast, including stars Jharrel Jerome and Niecy Nash of TNT’s “Claws,” received nominations and makes this show a serious contender.
HBO’s excellent and bleak “Chernobyl” also received a boatload of nominations for its grave examination of the 1986 nuclear disaster and what the Soviet government did to protect its citizens: almost nothing. Beloved character actor Jared Harris was the heart and soul of this unstinting production and his nomination as Outstanding Actor in a Limited Series was well deserved.
While fame-craven West Coast awards watchers were betting on George Clooney’s tepid “Catch-22” to scoop up some nominations, the television academy gained my respect by staying away. And we’ve all managed to get through the workday even though Julia Roberts was not nominated for the Amazon series “Homecoming.” I’m not fond of film stars slumming in TV projects because their Hollywood wattage has dimmed. Any number of well-known actresses from TV could have played her part as well as she did, if not better.
The unsung Mandy Moore was finally nominated for her work on “This Is Us”; another smart move: nominating Jodie Comer for the award she should have won last year for “Killing Eve.” It was a great year, too, for Joey King (“The Act”) and Billy Porter (“Pose”) and their nominations gave hope that maybe the academy members took the time to actually watch their shows.
The year’s major snub? Ignoring Chuck Lorre, whose “Big Bang Theory” finale drew 18 million viewers and whose “Kominsky Method” drew nominations only for stars Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin.