The Emmy B-Team: Reality and The Scruff

The Emmys are less than a month away. As always, I'm in the process of spending way too much time thinking about the awards, only to then complain about how they are meaningless, before they even pick the wong winner because the voting process is so fundamentally flawed. In the past, I've worked on projects that involved looking back on prior ceremonies and picking at them (most notably, my list of snubs from 2012). There's plenty of fun in doing that, but this year, I decided to go after the nominations for the 2014 ceremonies.
Every year there are "snubs" when the nominations are announced. Given the dozens of channels with original programming (not to mention the websites), there's always going to be names, shows, episodes, ect. that are overlooked, some justly, some ignorantly, some predictably. The gut reaction is to go on about how the system is broken and offer up a host of ways to improve it. I stopped myself from writing a post about exactly that after some of my favorites were ignored yet again.
Instead, I decided to look into how badly the Emmy voters did botch the picks in the form of an alternate ballot with all the snubs. My thought: if I can make a stonger ballot than the actual one, then I can finally convince myself that there's no value in the Emmys. I'm calling this the Emmy B-Team for a reason though. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences do a better job than I give them credit for.
One final note: In some categories, I still couldn't fit all the deserving nominees so I approximated as best as I could, and I haven't seen everything, so I'm certain I missed some great ones.


Look, there's no way that even I have the time to do this for every category the Emmys have. I can't even pretend to pick Outstanding Art Direction for a Contemporary Program or Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series. The could extra categories I did decide to do I've grouped with Reality TV, because, while Reality is a growing nomination field, it's still lagging behind the others.

Reality Competition

A-Team
The Amazing Race
Dancing with the Stars
Project Runway
So You Think You Can Dance
Top Chef
The Voice
B-Team
American Idol
America's Got Talent
Big Brother
Hollywood Game Night
RuPaul's Drag Race
Survivor
Survivor wins the legacy award but has always been bested by The Amazing Race. American Idol is no longer the force it was and has been supplanted by The Voice. Big Brother is...still on the air, whereas Dancing with the Stars is seemingly doing as many season a year as possible. So You Think You Can Dance is a more specific summer hit than America's Got Talent. Rupaul's Drag Race is the biggest snub and the B-Team winner, but it comes down to RuPaul vs. Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum which is a bit of a toss up. Hollywood Game Night is fun but clearly a show you put on when nothing else is working. Meanwhile, people still really enjoy Top Chef.
Winner: The A-team. Too many legacy shows on the B-Team are dragging down RuPaul.

Reality Host

A-Team
Betty White's Off Their Rockers - Betty White
Dancing with the Stars - Tom Bergeron
Hollywood Game Night - Jane Lynch
Project Runway - Heidi Klum & Tim Gunn
So You Think You Can Dance - Cat Deely
The Taste - Anthony Bourdain
B-Team
Dancing with the Stars - Erin Andrews
America's Got Talent - Nick Cannon
RuPaul's Drag Race - RuPaul Charles
Top Chef - Padma Lakshmi & Tom Colicchio
Survivor - Jeff Probst
American Idol - Ryan Seacrest
You can't tell me that Erin Andrews is much worse than Tom Bergeron on Dancing with the Stars. RuPaul and the Gunn/Klum team is a toss up. Cat Deely beats Nick Cannon in every conceivable way. Ryan Seacrest has been on the air nearly as much as Betty White as this point. I'd rather watch Padma Lakshmi eat something than Anthony Bourdain (That's a weird thing to say). Jane Lynch is way more fun than tired Jeff Probst.
Winner: A-Team, although RuPaul won't go quietly.

Structured Reality Program

A-Team
Antiques Roadshow
Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives
MythBusters
Shark Tank
Undercover Boss
Who Do You Think You Are?
B-Team
American Pickers
Betty White's Off Their Rocker
Catch a Contractor
Catfish: The TV Series
Pawn Stars
Storage Wars
I don't know this category very well, but I think you have to go with the one that has Mythbusters, Antiques Roadshow, and Shark Tank. Catfish makes the B-Team very intriguing though.
Winner: A-Team, in a rout.

Unstructured Reality Program

A-Team
Alaska: The Last Frontier
Deadliest Catch
Flipping Out
Million Dollar Listing New York
Wahlburgers
Wild things With Dominic Monaghan
B-Team
Appalachian Outlaws
Cops
Duck Dynasty
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
Mountain Men
Teen Mom 2
Again, I don't watch any of these. The best of the B-Team include shows I can't stand, such as Duck Dynasty, Kardashians, and Teen Mom 2 (what differentiates it from Teen Mom, exactly?). The A-Team benefits from me never having heard of most of the shows.
Winner: A-Team, easily.

Children's Program

A-Team
Degrassi
Dog with a Blog
Good Luck Charlie
Nick News with Linda Ellerbee - Family Secrets: When Violence Hits Home
One Last Hug: Three Days at Grief Camp
Wynton Marsalis - A YoungArts Masterclass
B-Team
Sam & Cat
Austin and Ally
The Haunted Hathaways
I Didn't Do It
Instant Mom
Lab Rats
The tough part here is how few shows are even submitted in this field. I think Sam & Cat is the only B-Teamer with a case to be made for a nomination and I'm a little amazed that Ariana Grande and Jeanette McCurdy's star power did bump it into the A-Team.
Winner: A-Team, without question. It has Nick News for god's sake.

Informational Series or Special

A-Team
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Inside the Actors Studio
Through the Wormhole With Morgan Freeman
Vice
The Writer's Room
B-Team
And the Oscar Goes to...
Brain Games
Oprah's Master Class
Talking Dead
Talking Bad
This is actually pretty tough. On one hand, Actor's Studio is an institution, The Writers' Room is easily the show I find most interesting, Vice isn't TV, it's HBO, and Wormhole has Morgan Freeman. On the other hand, Oprah. To go along with that, my parents say very good things about Brain Games and the Talking shows mooch off my love of the shows they discuss.
Winner: A-Team. It's close, but the fact that I had to include two Talking programs shows how little diversity was left after the Emmys made their picks.

Even though the Emmy's picks have won each time today, this was much closer than I expected. I'm guessing that's because I care so little about all the shows in question.