Emmy Analysis: Voters Spread the Love for a Change, and Good for Them

Early in the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday night, host Kenan Thompson mentioned that the Emmys honored the hundreds of shows on television over the past year – “and we give awards to about five of them.”

In the last couple of years, that pointed joke about Emmy voters’ propensity to throw lots of trophies at only a few shows would have been dead-on. Last year, after all, saw the first-ever sweep in the drama categories, when “The Crown” won all seven of the awards handed out on the primetime show; the year before, “Schitt’s Creek” swept all seven comedy categories, the first show to achieve that feat in any genre.

But within the first hour of Monday’s Emmys, the show had blown past Thompson’s prediction and already given awards to eight different shows.  The first two comedy awards went to “Abbott Elementary” and “Ted Lasso,” the drama awards to “Ozark” and “Succession,” the limited-series prizes to “Dopesick” and “The White Lotus.” No program received a second Emmy until Jennifer Coolidge won the second for “The White Lotus” a full 71 minutes into the ceremony.

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Of course, that’s not to say that the Emmys remained totally egalitarian. Once Coolidge won that second award for “The White Lotus,” the Mike White limited series ran the table on the final three categories in which it was nominated: directing, writing and Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. “Ted Lasso” and “Succession” finished strong as well and scored the big series wins, but they didn’t block ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and Netflix’s “Squid Game” from each scoring a pair of significant wins.

In the end, four different drama series and three different comedy series went home with trophies. That’s a significantly more diverse showing than 2021, when one show won all the drama awards and two split the comedy ones. And when you throw in the three limited series and four variety and reality series that also won, it means Kenan Thompson’s joke about five shows getting all the Emmys missed the mark by quite a bit.

It’s good for the Emmys that voters found room to recognize “Abbott Elementary” creator-star Quinta Brunson’s achievement in bringing strong comedy back to broadcast TV, and that they delivered key directing and acting awards to the groundbreaking Korean series “Squid Game” while also saluting Zendaya for “Euphoria” and Julia Garner for “Ozark.”

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The big awards for the most part did go to the favorites — “Succession,” “Ted Lasso,” “The White Lotus,” “Saturday Night Live” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” which will apparently never lose — but there were enough surprises to make this a satisfying collection of winners. And voters did suggest that the conventional wisdom can be suspect in dealing with the Television Academy, particularly when it comes to the idea that a show with multiple nominations in a category is in danger of splitting the vote. Coolidge won even thought she was one of five (!) “White Lotus” nominees in her category, Matthew Macfayden was one of three “Succession” nominees for supporting actor in a drama and Sheryl Lee Ralph one of three “Abbott Elementary” comedy supporting actress nominees.

Another delicious surprise came in the Outstanding Competition Program category, which is known for long win streaks and which seemed likely to go to “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for the fifth year in a row. Instead, “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” dethroned “Drag Race” and became the only first-year show ever to win in that category. (The Prime Video show’s nomination had already made it the first freshman series since 2006 to land a nom.)

This wasn’t a groundbreaking Emmys or a shocking one, but it did provide valuable evidence that the voters aren’t quite so much in lockstep, and that the last two years of sweeps might have been a passing phase rather than a trend. The wealth was also spread among networks and streamers, with HBO and HBO Max claiming 38 total Emmys while Netflix followed with 26. (In addition to the HBO haul, Warner Bros. Discovery’s TBS and CNN landed one each.)

In the end, you can’t be too disappointed in a show that finds ways to pay tribute to Quinta Brunson and Brett Goldstein, Jesse Armstrong and Hwang Dong-hyuk, Mike White and Michael Keaton, Lizzo and Jerrod Carmichael — a worthy and diverse slate of winners on a night that needed them.

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