Broad City’s Emmy Snub Was Depressingly Predictable
In ‘The Simpsons’’ The Boy Who Knew Too Much, Seymour Skinner briefly finds himself disillusioned that a truant Bart Simpson isn’t bunking off school in his old haunts. “Am I so out of touch?” he quickly asks himself, before then instantly dismissing this suggestion with, “No, it’s the children who are wrong.”
I can only imagine that the Emmy voters have the same feeling about the hugely popular but somehow constantly overlooked ‘Broad City’, which for the third year on the trot has missed out on any nominations.
Instead, the Outstanding Comedy Series nominees were reserved for ‘Black-ish’, ‘Master Of None’, ‘Silicon Valley’, ‘Transparent’, ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’, ‘Veep’, and, somehow, ‘Modern Family’, which has sharply declined in quality in recent seasons.
But it wasn’t just in this field that ‘Broad City’ was cruelly omitted.
Personally, I was dreaming that both Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer would receive Best Actress Emmy nominations for their semi-biographical, but still wonderfully absurd performances. But, instead, they were beaten to these slots by Julia Louis Dreyfus (’Veep’), Ellie Kemper (’Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’), Laurie Metcalf (’Getting On’), Tracee Ellis Ross (’Black-ish’), Amy Schumer (’Inside Amy Schumer’), and Lily Tomlin (’Grace and Frankie’).
I mean, come on, while she’s obviously hilarious, does Amy Schumer need to be recognised for her work on ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ any more? Not only has she won a Peadbody Award, but last year she won the Emmys’ Outstanding Variety Sketch Series accolade, and after ‘Trainwreck’ she’s now a bona-fide mainstream star. Share the wealth, Schumer.
At the same time, ‘Broad City’ failed to be recognised in the directing or writing categories, too. Let me remind you, this was for the third year on the trot. But by this point ‘Broad City’ die-hards have become so used to these ovesights that they’re long desensitised to the disappointment.
It’s hard to see why the Emmys have failed to recognise ‘Broad City’ for three years in a row. Not only is it a show that’s well and truly hit the zeitgeist, but in its third season it perfected its already smooth rhythm, while still allowing it to fizzle with a creative and unpredictable energy over the course of its 22 minute episode run.
Sure ‘Broad City’s’ premise of two friends trying to make it in the big city is as old as time, but the fact that it unfolds in such an original, empowering, proudly feminine, but still subversive, and always hilarious manner means that the show’s lack of nominations now just reflects badly on the Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences.
Don’t be fooled by them into believing that ‘Broad City’ isn’t as great as critics and its viewers know it is. Because, to paraphrase Seymour Skinner, ‘It’s the Emmys that are wrong.’
[Images via Comedy Central]
