Ray Richmond: A next-day look at those Emmy nominations – what we saw coming and what we didn’t

Ray Richmond
·8 min read
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It’s the day after the Emmy nominations, and “Jury Duty” is still nominated for comedy series and three other things. No one from the academy stepped up to declare, “We’re sorry, but there’s been a terrible mistake. What we meant to say was, ‘Poker Face.’ You can understand how something like this can happen. ‘Jury Duty’ and ‘Poker Face’ sound almost exactly the same.” No. That didn’t happen, and at least one executive producer was relieved that it didn’t.

David Bernad won an Emmy last year as part of the producing team of “The White Lotus” and is now nominated again for that drama series. But he’s also an exec producer on “Jury Duty,” and he was beyond thrilled to hear the news that the grassroots viral hit had been honored for series and its writing and casting as well as for quirky star James Marsden in comedy supporting. Four nods for a show that launched in April on an obscure network (Amazon Freevee) and a title that everyone wants to get out of when they receive a summons in the mail.

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“I was 100 percent shocked,” Bernad admitted. “You can never expect anything like this, and I didn’t.”

SEEEditors slugfest: 2023 Emmy nominations review of snubs, surprises and domination

But let’s move on from “Jury Duty” for a moment (much as it kills me) and look at the bigger picture of these Emmy nods and what it tells us about what voters were thinking.

-VOTERS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LIKE HBO DRAMAS

Oh my God. Do they ever. We’re talking, of course, about “Succession,” “The Last of Us” and “The White Lotus.” They earned 27, 24 and 23 nominations, respectively, or 74 total. Say what you will about streaming, but HBO still rules the roost when it comes to Emmy-worthy drama series. Just for those three shows, that’s nearly as many drama bids as all of the other drama series contenders combined. Of the 54 total drama nominations for all of the performing, writing and directing categories, “Succession,” “Last of Us” and “White Lotus” snatched 40 of those slots. They swept three categories outright, with “White Lotus” alone commanding 5 of the 8 spots for drama supporting actress. Ergo, what was anticipated to be a one-horse race (“Succession”) is now a two-horse (“Succession,” “White Lotus”) or possibly even three-horse (add “Last of Us”) race for drama series.

Everyone was expecting “White Lotus” to be strong in its move to drama after dominating limited series last year, but not this strong. Explanation: the academy flat-out adores “White Lotus” writer-creator Mike White.

SEEExperts slugfest: Breaking down the chaotic 2023 Emmy nominations

-THEY REALLY LOVE ‘TED LASSO,’ TOO

Heading into the Emmy noms, it wasn’t entirely clear if voters would embrace it in quite the same way. Season 3 wasn’t nearly as buzzy as the first two were, after all. But it wound up with an extremely impressive 21 nominations, more than everyone save for the three HBO dramas cited above and the most for any comedy series by a wide margin. It still now has to be seen as the heavy frontrunner to three-peat in a strong lineup that features the farewell seasons of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Barry” as well as that comedy that isn’t really a comedy, “The Bear.”

-THEY DON’T LOVE ‘ABBOTT ELEMENTARY’ QUITE AS MUCH AS WE THOUGHT

Yes, they kind of snubbed a series that was supposed to be coming into its own as a powerful sophomore. True, it received eight nods, or one more than last year when it was a red-hot rookie. And voters gave the requisite acting noms to last year’s supporting winner Sheryl Lee Ralph along with Quinta Brunson, Janelle James and Tyler James Williams. But the red flag was the show’s lack of a nomination for writing, a category in which Brunson won last year. That doesn’t bode well for “Abbott’s” chances of lasso-ing “Lasso.”

SEEEmmy nominations x 2, 3, or 4: Bill Hader, Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, Sharon Horgan …

-THEY DIDN’T LOVE ‘A SMALL LIGHT’ EVEN A LITTLE BIT

Just because I loved it, I was expecting the seminal Holocaust drama from NatGeo, “A Small Light,” to pave the way in limited series nods, a lock for top series as well as for its powerful star Bel Powley and supporting player Liev Schreiber along with a bunch of crafts categories. Instead, it was cited solely for its music composition but otherwise shut out completely. This is monumentally confounding and a major bummer that I’m still trying to sort through. It was a quality piece of work in every way, presenting a fresh take on an otherwise dusty piece of history (the Anne Frank saga). What went wrong? Perhaps we’ll never know. All I know is, they wuz robbed!

-THEY EVIDENTLY AREN’T SO HOT ON HARRISON FORD, EITHER

Man, can showbiz ever be brutal. She is indeed such a fickle gal. Exhibit A: Harrison Ford. The superstar was on top of the world in mid-May after being awarded an honorary Palme d’Or for lifetime achievement at the Cannes Film Festival. He was promoting the heck out of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” He was poised to land at least one (his acclaimed performance in the Apple TV+ comedy “Shrinking”) Emmy nom and possibly two (also for “1923”). At 80, ol’ Harry was BACK! Then came July, and the promise of the immediate future quickly fizzled. “Indiana Jones” flopped, and against all odds he wound up snubbed with zero nods on Emmy morning even though his co-stars Jason Segel and Jessica Williams were nominated. Oh well. That’s life, as Frank Sinatra once famously crooned.

SEE‘Jury Duty,’ James Marsden, Harrison Ford, other surprises at the 2023 Emmy nominations

-AND THEY STILL AREN’T COMPLETELY SOLD ON PEACOCK

There was a wide expectation that the seriocomic Rian Johnson-created mystery series “Poker Face” would land a comedy series nomination. And it wound up getting four, including a no-brainer for the sublimely talented Natasha Lyonne as well as a guest nod for Judith Light. But it didn’t crack the series lineup, nosed out by “Jury Duty” and “Wednesday.” Part of that may be ascribed to the fact Peacock isn’t yet on everyone’s radar as a relatively new streamer still establishing itself. Or maybe the show just feels like too much of a hybrid to call it strictly a comedy, a condition known as “The Bear” Syndrome.

-BUT MAN DO THEY LIKE ‘WELCOME TO CHIPPENDALES’

Evidently, voters hadn’t forgotten about Hulu’s sex-and-murder crimefest “Welcome to Chippendales,” which failed to generate a limited series nod (there were only five slots) but it nonetheless overperformed. It wasn’t expected that four members of the cast would be honored, but that’s what happened with Kumail Nanjiani, Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford and Juliette Lewis landing nominations. Nanjiani’s in lead was especially surprising, knocking Steve Carell out for his performance in “The Patient.”

SEEEmmys nominees from 10 years ago are back in the hunt this year: Bill Hader, Elisabeth Moss …

-AND THEY LOVED ‘DAISY JONES AND THE SIX,’ TOO

With nine nominations – including for limited series – “Daisy Jones and the Six” did far better than anticipated.

-PLUS, ‘OBI-WAN KENOBI’ LANDED A TOTALLY UNEXPECTED LIMITED SERIES BID

In fact, “Obi-Wan Kenobi” used its “Star Wars” clout to upend some big and glossy heavyweights like “George & Tammy,” “Black Bird” and the aforementioned “A Small Light.”

-ACKNOWLEDGING THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR

It must be noted that all five nominees in the category for best narrator are people of color. There’s reigning category champ Barack Obama (“Working: What We Do All Day”), Angela Bassett (“Good Night Oppy”), Mahershala Ali (“Chimp Empire”), Morgan Freeman (“Our Universe”) and the Chilean-born Pedro Pascal (“Patagonia: Life on the Edge of the World”). Very, very cool.

-FINALLY, BECAUSE I’M IMMATURE, I’D LIKE EVERYONE TO TAKE NOTE OF THIS

There were three shows tied with 13 Emmy nominations apiece: “The Bear,” “Beef” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” All of them link to food in some way, due either to their title or subject matter. I’ll see myself out now.

PREDICT the 2023 Emmy winners through September 18

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