The Emmy B-Team: The Scruff

How bad are the Emmy nominations? This question comes up every year when the nominations are announced and everyone has a long list of snubs and shows that didn't deserve nominations. The way people talk about the nominations, you start to wonder if the Emmy voters have watched anything in the last year or if they are just rubber stamping the shows they picked the year before or choosing the last buzzy show they heard about. I certainly had that opinion. I still kind of do. That's was drove me to make what I call my Emmy B-Teams.

In case you are new to this, the idea is pretty straightforward. I go through the Emmy nomination ballot for a bunch of categories and put together the strongest group I can among what wasn't already nominated for the Emmy. I call this group my B-Team. I then compare the Nominees to my B-Team and choose a winner based on which is a stronger group of performers/shows/etc. The idea is to see how badly chosen the nominees actually are. This serves two purposed:
1) To see how bad the nominees really are. The first year I did this, my theory was that, as a very informed TV viewer, it would be easy for me to find 5-7 names that the Emmy voters missed. I'll go ahead and say now that the Emmy voters, especially outside the Comedy and Drama categories, tend to do a pretty good job picking most of the best options in a category.
2) To highlight some other great work from the last year. With the explosion of new content over the last few years, 5 or 6 nominees just isn't enough to cover all the great work being done, especially on lesser seen shows that have trouble putting together enough support to be nominated.

As far as who I pick for my B-Team, please disagree with me. I watch a lot of TV, but I miss much more than I see. My B-Team is exactly that: My B-Team. In other words, I'm stacking the deck in the B-Team's favor. If I'm picking the 5-6 shows that I like the best and the B-Team still loses, that means the Nominee list is pretty damn strong.

Did you know that most of the Emmy awards aren't announced during the Primetime Emmys ceremony? About a week before that, the Creative Arts Emmy ceremony takes place over two nights. That's when all the awards you don't think about, like Outstanding Informational Series or Special, Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series, and Outstanding Music Direction are handed out. Most of these awards are more technical than I understand. For niche categories, the 5 shows that are nominated are often the only shows anyone has even heard of. So, I'm not going to include most of those categories for this B-Team exercise. There are a few categories that I can't help but throw in my two-cents though that don't really belong in any of the themed posts that I have coming up. I call this group "The Scruff". Let's take a look.

(Final Note: I'm sure that I'll mention this more than a few times, but all my picks are based on who is submitted and in which category. For example, I would've considered the Halt and Catch Fire episode "The Threshold" a lock for my writing and directing by B-team, but it wasn't submitted. Thus, I can't include it. Similarly, Ted Danson would be a great supporting actor in a comedy contender on The Good Place. However, he submitted himself as a lead, so that's all I can consider him for)

Previously:
2014 Edition | 2015 Edition | 2016 Edition
Why You Should Dismiss the Emmys

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

Animated Program

Nominees:

# Archer ("Archer Dreamland: No Good Deed")

Bob's Burgers ("Bob, Actually")

* Elena And The Secret Of Avalor (Sofia The First)

The Simpsons ("The Town")

# South Park ("Member Berries")

B-Team

BoJack Horseman ("Fish Out of Water")

# Family Guy ("Peter's Lost Youth")

* Samurai Jack ("XCIII")

# American Dad! ("Whole Slotta Love")

* F is For Family ("The Liars Club")

I'm willing to yield that The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers form the stronger Fox Sunday combo than Family Guy and American Dad!. I feel good assuming that South Park beats F is For Family, although I'm not sure it's a runaway. I'm sure that Elena And the Secret of Avalor (Sofia the First) was a fun crossover, however Samurai Jack is a three time former winner in the category and the rare Cartoon Network series that gets steady critical support. Archer didn't have a particularly strong season. BoJack Horseman, on the other hand, is arguably Netflix's strongest series overall. The chosen episode, "Fish Out of Water" was one of the most critically praised episodes of TV that year, comedy or drama, animated or live-action.

Winner: B-Team.  
The Nominees have the depth, but at the top, Samurai Jack and especially BoJack Horseman pull ahead. Seriously, how the hell did "Fish Out of Water" not even get nominated? This is why The Emmys can't be relied on. There's no excuse.

Special Class Program

Nominees:

* Hairspray Live!

The Oscars

Super Bowl LI Halftime Show Starring Lady Gaga

* 70th Annual Tony Awards

B-Team

* Chris Gethard: Career Suicide

* 59th Grammy Awards

74th Annual Golden Globes

* American Music Awards 2016

There's really only one strong argument for picking the B-Team here and that's the Oscars. This is the Oscars, after all, that ended with the Best Picture debacle. It was a good show before those closing moments. Were those closing moments disastrous enough to knock the whole group down? I don't think so. The Tonys are always a good time. The live aspect of Hairspray gives that a degree of difficulty I need to reward. Lady Gaga's Halftime Show was quite good once I get past the fact that I spent the whole time in suspense that she would do something controversial. That make it a kind of dramatic production in its own right. The B-Team, on the other hand, I can't even make up something memorable about any of them.

Winner: Nominees. 

Because even the Oscars fuck up with great TV.

Documentary Or Nonfiction Special

Nominees:

* Amanda Knox

* The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years

* A House Divided (Vice Special Report)

* L.A. Burning: The Riots 25 Years Later

13th

B-Team

* Burn Motherf*cker, Burn!

Holy Hell

* I Am Heath Ledger

* I Am JFK Jr.

* Mary Pickford, The Muse of the Movies

I'll go ahead and say that the two L.A. Riots documentaries - L.A. Burning and Burn Motherf*cker, Burn! - more or less cancel each other out. I really liked Holy Hell. But, 13th has a very deserving Oscar nomination and The Beatles was directed by Ron Howard. Weigh that against me filling 3/5s of the B-Team with the most interesting sounding titles I could find and this hardly seems competitive.

Winner: Nominees. 

13th by itself probably locked it up.

Documentary Or Nonfiction Series

Nominees:

* American Masters

* Chef's Table

* The Keepers

* Planet Earth II

30 For 30

B-Team

* America Divided

* American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story

* Five Came Back

* The Great War (American Experience)

The History of Comedy

If I was told to watch everything in one group vs. the other, I'd pick the B-Team. The History of Comedy aligns perfectly with my interests. I'm dying to see The Great War, because I love Ken Burns documentaries and have been really curious about WWI lately. I heard very mixed things about American Playboy, but I do find the history of Playboy to be quite interesting. That said, American Masters and 30 for 30 are institutions. Planet Earth II, while not the event that the original was, is still exceptional. Chef's Table I've actually heard people talk about and The Keepers tapped into the same true crime curiosity as Making a Murderer. 

Winner: Nominees. 

Although I'm surprised that I could put together such a strong B-Team.

Stunt Coordination - Comedy or Variety Series

Nominees:

* Angie Tribeca

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Saturday Night Live

# Shameless

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

B-Team

* Ash Vs. Evil Dead

Atlanta

* The Detour

# It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

# Scream Queens

This is lazy of me, but I think the two cops shows put the Nominees safely ahead. Ash Vs. Evil Dead makes it closer than I expected though. 

Winner: Nominees. 

Anecdotally, I remember the Nominees that I watched having some decent stunt work. I can't say the same about the B-Teamers.

Stunt Coordination - Drama or Limited Series

Nominees:

# The Blacklist

* Blindspot

# Gotham

* MacGyver

Marvel's Luke Cage

B-Team

# Arrow

# Supergirl

The Leftovers

Legion

Mr. Robot

I nearly put The Walking Dead in the B-Team. That would've been in poor taste though, so I resisted. The nominees have four solid cop shows and a Marvel show with some solid stunt work. The Greg Berlanti shows like Arrow and Supergirl have been ignored for far too long though. Legion had some good scenes needing good stunt work. Mr. Robot did too on occasional. And, you can't tell me some stunt work wasn't needed for the lion sex boat on The Leftovers.

Winner: B-Team. 

Learn this now. The Leftovers is going to push a lot of close call categories over the edge. I do promise that the presence of that show in a B-Team won't mean an automatic win, although it may start to feel like ti.

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For those keeping track, the Nominees end the day 4-2 over the B-Team. I'm a little surprised it's even that close, since these a categories known for having thin ballots.