The Emmy B-Team: The Scruff

I'm back with another year of the Emmy B-Team. The idea of the B-Team is simple. I look and the Emmy submission ballot and make the strongest list of actors/shows/episodes that were not nominated for the Emmy Award. Then, I compare the nominees with the B-Team and decide which I think is stronger. This started as a way to determine if the Emmy voters were as bad at making their picks as everyone thinks. Quickly, I realized that the Emmy picks are pretty strong when compared with the available replacements. The idea now is more about highlighting the "snubs" that are worth mentioning.

There's a lot of Emmy awards. So many that there's an entire other ceremony before the Emmys that people already largely ignore. That's the Creative Arts Emmys, and if you think the main ceremony has a lot of awards, then don't check out the list for the Creative Arts ceremony (It takes two nights even). There's a bunch of awards for lighting, cinematography, and sound that are more technical than I understand, so I won't be finding B-Teams for those. There's others, like the award for Documentary or Nonfiction Special or Information Series that I wanted to include for this. I did last year. I'll save some time and tell you there's not enough options to make a competitive B-Team. For the bigger categories, it's easy. For the niche categories, the 5 shows nominated are often the only shows anyone has heard of and there's a reason for it.

As happy as I am that the Short Form series are finally getting some love, now with acting awards of there own and nominations for both series and variety series, I don't watch or hear enough about any of these shows to make even a guess about B-Teams.

There are a few categories that I couldn't help but throw in my two-cents though that don't really belong anywhere in particular. Let's take a look.

(Final Note: I'm sure that I'll mention this more than a few times, but this is based on who is submitted and where. For example, Hugh Dancy did not submit for Hannibal, only submitting his name for The Path, so I cannot include him in the B-Team for Hannibal, even if I want to. Similarly, even though it aired episodes in the eligibility period, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was not submitted and won't be considered. Finally, there's the Rob Lowe Rule. Rob Lowe always submits for the lead role. Even when he was on Parks & Rec. he submitted as a lead, so that's the only thing I could consider him as.)

* Indicates a show that I haven't watched this season.
# Indicates a show I've seen before, not this season.

Animated Program

 

Nominees:
Archer ("The Figgis Agency")
Bob's Burgers ("The Horse Rider-er")
*Phineas and Ferb ("Last Day of Summer")
This Simpsons ("Halloween of Horror")
#South Park ("You're Not Yelping")

B-Team
#Rick and Morty ("Total Rickall")
BoJack Horseman ("Escape from L.A.")
#Robot Chicken ("DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship")
#Family Guy ("A Lot Going On Upstairs")
*Gravity Falls ("Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls")

This is a confusing category in that I don't understand the single episode submission. I'm going to treat this the way most people do, by rating what I know of the series as a whole.
Like SNL, people overstate how much the quality of The Simpsons has dipped. It's not as fresh as it once was, but it's impressively stable. I'd take it over Family Guy. Phineas and Ferb and Gravity Falls are both children's shows that I've heard some adults rave about, so I'm putting them on equal footing. It comes down to the other three nominees. Bob's Burgers is the best traditional animated series around at this point. South Park had a resurgent season from what I hear. Archer was definitely down though, feeling older than animated series tend to. While I don't know much about the Robot Chicken DC Special, I assume a baseline quality for it. Rick and Morty and BoJack Horseman are two of the most adventurous series, animated or not, on TV.
Winner: B-Team. The two groups are pretty evenly matched. The Nominees are pretty traditional while the B-Team is more ambitious. When all else is even, I reward ambition.

Special Class Program

Nominees:
The 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards
*Grease: Live
The Oscars
*Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show
*69th Annual Tony Awards

B-Team
*American Music Awards 2015
*The Wiz Live!
*21st Annual Critics' Choice Awards
*2015 ESPY Awards
*58th Grammy Awards

This one is pretty easy. Everything in the B-Team is the weird cousin of something in the Nominees. The Tonys put on the best show around. The Grammys is just like watching a concert with occasional interruptions. I give the Super Bowl show an edge over the ESPYs because of the degree of difficulty. The same goes to the ambitious Grease: Live over the still difficult to pull off, The Wiz. Honestly, the rest of my B-Team was picking the best available, which wasn't saying much. The Oscars and Golden Globes are technically well done even if the ceremonies themselves feel sort of antiquated.
Winner: Nominees. More because of the weakness of the B-Team than the strength of the Nominees.

Children's Program

Nominees:
*Dog with a Blog
Girl Meets World
*It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!
#Nick News With Linda Ellerbee: Hello, I Must Be Going! 25 Years of Nick News with Linda Ellerbee
*School of Rock

B-Team
*Austin & Ally
*Liv & Maddie
*Degrassi: Next Class
*My Depression: The Up and Down and Up of It
*100 Things To Do Before High School

A few bullet points.
-Yeah, Nick News is still on the air. It looks like it finally ended this year. Farewell to a legend.
-I watch Girl Meets World. Even though it's frustrating, it's actually pretty good.
-Disney Channel sure loves ampersands in their titles.
-Did they just reboot Degrassi again? Crazy Canadians and your addictive teenage soaps.
-Dog with a Blog is a show that exists and is a perennial nominee. We should all pause and reflect on that for a moment.
Winner: Nominees. Millennial nostalgia (Girl Meets World), boomer nostalgia (Charlie Brown), domination in the category (Nick News), and a dog that is able to maintain its own blog (Dog with a Blog). The Nominees check every box.

Stunt Coordination – Comedy Series

Nominees:
*Angie Tribeca
Brooklyn Nine Nine
*K.C. Undercover
Saturday Night Live
Shameless

B-Team
*Ash vs. Evil Dead
*Galavant
#It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
*Lemonade
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt   

Anything that gets Shameless a nomination is good in my book. Angie Tricbeca and Brooklyn Nine Nine mean the voting body responds to cop shows for the category. SNL probably uses way more stunt work than I realize for all those digital shorts. I have a feeling that Ash v. Evil Dead alone has the stunt work needed to carry the B-Team to a win, but I didn't see the series.
Winner: Nominees. Until I get a better eye for this, I'll assume the Nominees are well enough chosen.

Stunt Coordination – Drama Series

Nominees:
*The Blacklist
Game of Thrones
*Gotham
Marvel's Daredevil
*Rush Hour

B-Team
Arrow
#Marvel's Agent Carter
Fargo
#The Flash
The Leftovers

Game of Thrones is probably enough to carry this. If that's the case, then Daredevil seals it, as its second season amped up the fights and action even more than the first. I'm sure the other nominees were serviceable as well, given the premises of the shows. The B-Team has a lot of DC and Marvel shows, because stunt-work is vital to those (I left Jessica Jones out specifically because it was more character work and less action). Fargo has some big shoot-outs and what not. And, I'm going to include The Leftovers anywhere that I can. Learn and accept this now.
Winner: Nominees. Too strong at the top to consider otherwise.

For those keeping track, that gives an early 4-1 lead for the nominees. Anyone who has followed this the last couple of years will know that that the best case-scenario at this point. It should be another overall victory for the Nominees, but we'll see.