The Emmy B-Team: Reality Shows

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 purposes: 
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, 5-7 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, 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 5-7 shows that I like the best and the B-Team still loses, that means the Nominee list is pretty damn strong.

Reality TV has too much of a precense at the Emmys for me to leave it out, but I watch so little that my picks hear are admittedly very weak. I could get into why I don't care much for reality TV. I think I just prefer writing over editing. That's a discussion for another day though. For now, enjoy my limited descriptions and sarcastic comments.

(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 Brooklyn Nine Nine episode "The Box" a lock for my directing B-team, but it wasn't submitted. Thus, I can't include it. Similarly, Mandy Moore would be a great supporting actress in a drama contender on This Is Us. However, she submitted himself as a lead, so that's all I can consider her for)

Previously:
The Scruff

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

Structured Reality Program 

Nominees

* Antiques Roadshow

* Fixer Upper
# Lip Sync Battle
* Queer Eye
* Shark Tank
* Who Do You Think You Are?

B-Team
* Bear Grylls: Face the Wild
* The Grand Tour
* Impractical Jokers
# Mythbusters
* Penn & Teller: Fool Us
# RAW

OK. Queer Eye and Lip Sync Battle have legitimate buzz. Fixer Upper appeals a lot to the older audiences. Antiques Roadshow is an institution (I remember a Fraiser episode about it, to give you an idea of how long it's been around). Shark Tank and Who Do You Think You Are? have a history of Emmy love. Meanwhile, Face the Wild, The Grand Tour, and Fool Us are sequel series to better shows. Mythbusters is an institution but without as much history of Emmy love. I only bring up RAW to point out how unlikely it is for WWE to get Emmy love. Impractical Jokers is legitimately popular, at least according to my supervisor at work.
Winner: Nominees
In short, it's not a tough call.

Unstructured Reality Program

Nominees
* Born This Way
* Deadliest Catch
* Intervention
* Naked And Afraid
* RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked
* United Shades Of America With W. Kamau Bell

B-Team
* Ball In the Family
* Catfish: The TV Show
* Keeping Up with the Kardashians
* Man vs. Food
* Ride With Norman Reedus
* Wahlburgers

Naked and Afraid is one of my favorite reality show concepts, whereas Wahlburgers is one of my favorite reality show names. Deadliest Catch, Born This Way, and Intervention are long established Emmy favorites. Keeping Up with the Kardashians has more cultural impact than anything on either team. I like that Ride with Norman Reedus has lasted as long as it has. Catfish has run into a bit of trouble after those allegations against the star of the show (For what it's worth, I don't believe the investigations have turned up much).
Winner: Nominees
Well, I am sick and tired of Lavar Ball, so Ball in the Family doesn't help matters (please ignore that I'm the one who assembled the list). The RuPaul's Drag Race sister series helps the Nominees in my book.

Reality-Competition Program

Nominees
* The Amazing Race
American Ninja Warrior
* Project Runway
# RuPaul's Drag Race
* Top Chef
* The Voice

B-Team
* Dancing With the Stars
* American Ninja Warrior: Ninja vs. Ninja
* America's Got Talent
* Glam Masters
* Chopped
#American Idol

I think The Amazing Race and Dancing with the Stars have about 100 seasons combined. I'd lean Amazing Race, simply because the definition of a "Star" gets looser every season. The mothership American Ninja Warrior edges out the Ninja vs, Ninja edition. Project Runway vs. America's Got Talent is a wash. I'm definitely picking Drag Race over Glam Masters. I hear good enough things about Chopped that I'm fine calling it a draw with Top Chef. The Voice, not American Idol got Kelly Clarkson, so, you can guess how I feel about that.
Winner: Nominees
American Ninja Warrior is the only Reality Competition program I actually watch and Drag Race is the only other one I consider watching. I pretty much have to pick the nominees for this.

Host - Reality Program

Nominees
* Ellen DeGeneres (Ellen's Game Of Games)
* Jane Lynch (Hollywood Game Night)
* Heidi Klum & Tim Gunn (Project Runway)
# RuPaul (RuPaul's Drag Race)
* W. Kamau Bell (United Shades Of America With W. Kamau Bell)

B-Team
* Martha Stewart, Snoop Dogg (Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party)
* Cat Deeley (So You Think You Can Dance)
* All the Guys (Queer Eye)
Matt Iseman, Akbar Gbajabiamila (American Ninja Warrior)
* Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio (Top Chef)

The B-Team is trying to win with numbers. RuPaul versus the Queer Eye collective is almost a fair fight. Iseman and Gbajabiamila submitted together. I'd certainly take them over, say, Jane Lynch. While I didn't realize that So You Think You Can Dance is still a thing, I'm sure Cat Deely is still doing good work on it. I think Klum and Gunn beat Lakshmi and Colicchio in the battle of the shows that have been around forever. As much as I love Ellen, I think I love that Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg working together is a thing. 
Winner: B-Team
Fuck it. I hate picking against RuPaul, but I find the B-Team members more interesting.

-----

A 3-1 day for the Nominees, and the one for the B-team is almost a cheat. I kind of miss the days when Drag Race was getting snubbed, because it made the B-team debate much more interesting.

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 purposes: 
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, 5-7 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, 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 5-7 shows that I like the best and the B-Team still loses, that means the Nominee list is pretty damn strong.

Most of the Primetime Emmys in a given year are handed out a week before the main ceremony. They are awarded over two nights at the Creative Arts Emmys. That's where all the crazy specific awards 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 claim to understand. For niche categories, the 5 shows that are nominated are often the only shows anyone has even heard of. I can't make a B-Team out of all the categories. There are a few I'd like to do. So, before get into the main awards, let's take a look at some assorted leftovers.

(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 Brooklyn Nine Nine episode "The Box" a lock for my directing B-team, but it wasn't submitted. Thus, I can't include it. Similarly, Mandy Moore would be a great supporting actress in a drama contender on This Is Us. However, she submitted himself as a lead, so that's all I can consider her for)

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

Animated Program

Nominees
* Big Hero 6: The Series ("Baymax Returns")
Bob's Burgers ("V For Valentine-detta")
# Rick And Morty ("Pickle Rick")
The Simpsons ("Gone Boy")
# South Park ("Put It Down")

B-Team
* Big Mouth ("Am I Gay?")
# Archer: Danger Island ("Disheartening Situation")
Bojack Horseman ("Time's Arrow")
# Family Guy ("Send In Stewie, Please")
* Castlevania ("Witchbottle")

Bojack Horseman is the single best of any of these shows in the last year. Rick & Morty's "Pickle Rick" is probably the most buzzed about single episode of the group this year. Let's say we cancel those out. I've heard good things about Castlevania and nothing about Big Hero 6: The Series. Big Mouth made more critics' top 10 lists in 2017 than anything other than Bojack Horseman. Family Guy is consistent, but I trust The Simpsons over it at this point in both series' runs. I think Bob's Burgers is the deciding factor for me.
Winner: Nominees
Bojack Horseman is nearly enough to win this for the B-Team on its own. The combined powers of the other top tier shows among the nominees after a slightly down season of Bojack is enough to edge it out.

Documentary Or Nonfiction Special

Nominees
Icarus
* Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention Of Tony Clifton
* Mister Rogers: It's You I Like
* Spielberg
The Zen Diaries Of Garry Shandling

B-Team
Andre the Giant
* Gaga: Five Foot Two
* March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step
* Tickling Giants
* Whitney: Can I Be Me

The Mister Rogers and Whitney documentaries cancel each other out in the "these weren't the documentaries that were released in theaters" division. I'm over the penguin love a decade later, so that's a "no" to March of the Penguins 2. Icarus got an Oscar nomination, which set it apart as well. Andre the Giant was a lesser HBO effort compared to Spielberg and The Zen Diaries. 
Winner: Nominees
There's nothing in B-Team to match the care and scope of The Zen Diaries. 

Documentary Or Nonfiction Series

Nominees
* American Masters
* Blue Planet II
* The Defiant Ones
* The Fourth Estate
Wild Wild Country

B-Team
* American Dynasties: The Kennedeys
* Chef's Table
Evil Genius
History of Comedy
The Nineties

I've seen more of these than I expected. The History of Comedy hit a lot of the same notes I've seen before, although I appreciate how it divided everything up. CNN's decade series like The Nineties are always outdone in my mind by VH1's I Love the __ from over a decade ago. I heard great things about The Defiant Ones, even from people I didn't expect to. And if it's between Evil Genius and Wild Wild Country, then it's no question.
Winner: Nominees
Wild Wild Country is among the 10 best things I've watched in 2018. Nothing else comes close. Maybe The Defiant Ones could, but that's also a nominee.

Informational Series Or Special

Nominees
* Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
* Leah Remini: Scientology And The Aftermath
* My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman
* StarTalk With Neil deGrasse Tyson
* Vice

B-Team
* Bill Nye Saves the World
# Inside the Actors Studio
* Citizen Rose
* Jay Leno's Garage
# Talking Dead

It's hard to argue with the heavy hitters in the nominee list. People certainly nominated by brand. Neil deGrasse Tyson > Bill Nye. David Letterman > Jay Leno. Leah Remini's Scientology show is a bit more focused than Citizen Rose. Rose gets in her own way too much. Vice and Inside the Actors Studio are different kinds of institutions. Then you have beloved, dead Anthony Bourdain vs. the burned by scandal Chris Hardwick's Talking Dead.
Winner: Nominees
This is especially moot, because Anthony Bourdain's death essentially removes all debate anyway.

Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking

Nominees
City Of Ghosts
* Jane
Strong Island
* What Haunts Us

B-Team
Icarus
* Gaga: Five Foot Two
* Spielberg
* Tickling Giants

Where the hell is The Vietnam War series from Ken Burns? I'm confused by its eligibility absence. Oh well. It's 2 to 1 for Oscar nominees (City of Ghosts and Strong Island vs. Icarus). Critics likes Jane more than all of them. Tickling Giants never got much traction. Spielberg was overshadowed by The Zen Diaries.
Winner: Nominees
I don't feel strongly about this. I'm still too busy trying to track down what happened to the Vietnam War in these categories.

Stunt Coordination - Comedy Or Variety Series

Nominees
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
* Cobra Kai
GLOW
Saturday Night Live
# Shameless

B-Team
* Ash vs. Evil Dead
Barry
* Get Shorty
* Stan Against Evil
* The Tick

The similarly titled Ash vs. Evil Dead and Stan Against Evil have good opportunities for stunts. The Tick too. Barry is probably the most surprising omission from the nominees, since it got a lot of general awards love and had some good stunt sequences. Then again: Brooklyn Nine Nine (cop show). Cobra Kai (karate show). GLOW (wrestling show). It's hard to beat that.
Winner: Nominees
I was going to revolt if GLOW got ignored for this.

Stunt Coordination - Drama Or Limited Series

Nominees
# The Blacklist
* Blindspot
Game Of Thrones
* Marvel's The Punisher
Westworld

B-Team
# Gotham
Mr. Robot
# Marvel's Agents of SHIELD
# Marvel's Jessica Jones
Marvel's The Defenders

It's a lazy rule, but if Marvel is in the title, I give it a leg up here. I see that the CW's DC shows didn't even submit themselves. I guess years of being ignored despite being very deserving finally got to them. While I appreciate what The Defenders and Agents of SHIELD do with their budgets, few things in film, let alone TV, compare to the size and execution of Game of Thrones and Westworld. 
Winner: Nominees
I can't do it. Game of Thrones earns it.

-----

This year's edition starts with a clean nominee sweep (7-0). The nominees do tend to come out ahead, especially early on. I have a feeling this year could be even more severe than normal thanks to a relatively thin lineup over the last year.

Delayed Reaction: Meek's Cutoff

The Pitch: Oregon Trail: The movie.

A group of settlers get lost on the last leg of the Oregon Trail and travel for weeks in search of water.

This has to be the quietest, most patient Western ever made, or at least of the ones I've seen (a much smaller subset). This film is based on the first journey on the trail that became known as Meek Cutoff. It was a particularly difficult hike through the Oregon High Desert that cost many people their lives. Director Kelly Reichardt turned that into a film that, as promised, is 100 minutes of people slowly walking around looking for water. I liked this as an experiment, but it is a really slow movie. People don't talk a lot either. When they do, you sometimes can't even make out what they are saying.

I like the cast a lot. Bruce Greenwood is unrecognizable under a giant beard. I kept expecting him to be comic relief because of how he looked. He's not the most composed character, but I wouldn't say he's a source of much comedy. Michelle Williams is good in everything and she gets the signature moment in the movie (the one on the poster). Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan don't have much to do. I kept waiting for Dano to turn into his preacher character from There Will Be Blood. Sadly, he did not. I like seeing real-life couples on screen together though. It's fun to see if that chemistry translates to the screen. In Dano and Kazan's case, not so much, although this isn't a movie that would know what to do with any on-screen chemistry anyway.

The ending took me by surprise. It's pretty abrupt and not very conclusive. For anyone who is watching this and only putting up with the slow trudge in hopes of it paying off at the end: prepare to be disappointed. The ending has grown on me now that I've had time to digest it. I'm sure it'll play better when I know it's coming  if I watch this again ever.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Match Point

The Pitch: "It's 2005. My name is Woody Allen. I haven't made a movie yet this year. Money please."

A tennis pro maneuvers his way into a high society life then almost throws it away for an affair with a struggling actress.

Woody Allen is probably a garbage person.

OK, now that that is out of the way, Allen has had the most prolific career of any modern mainstream director. The last year he didn't direct at least one movie was the same year Britney Spears was born. He also writes the movies. That is an insane pace. Because of the fast turnaround, there's a pattern to his work. The most common is what I call his "first draft problem". Allen's movies normally have one great idea that the film is built around. Since he moves through movies so quickly, he doesn't get much time to flesh the ideas out. Most of his movies end up feeling incomplete. Endings especially happen suddenly, or in some cases, straight up deus ex machina (Mighty Aphrodite jumps immediately to mind). He tends to only be interested in one or two characters. The rest are filler. This is all true of Match Point, although this is one of his slicker films.

He has different eras based on common locations, story types, or actors. Match Point is a particularly significant film for him because it marks the beginning of both his Scarlett Johansson and his European eras. Interestingly enough, both of these were accidents. Johansson replaced Kate Winslet at the last minute, and he only shot in London because his funding for New York fell through. Given the indifferent response to films like Melinda and Melinda, Anything Else, and Hollywood Ending that immediately preceded this one, I think these changes forced Allen out of his comfort zone and challenged him. As a result, I get why Match Point is one of the better regarded of his films from the era. It's the movie that ended his longest Oscar nomination drought since Annie Hall (1977)*.

*For the record, I expect his Blue Jasmine nomination for 2013 to be his last, so a bigger drought it coming.

I'd be shocked if the idea that inspired this movie was anything other than a tennis ball hitting the net. It's the central metaphor of the movie and exemplifies most of what is going on. Because it's a movie about luck, I essentially have to throw out my idea of One Big Leap. Everything in a movie about luck is allowed to defy logic. And Allen uses this idea well. At first, the ending really bothered me because of how abrupt and unsatisfying it is. The longer I think about it though, the ending is true to the rest of the movie.

I did appreciate the first half of the film much more than the latter half. Watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers tactfully increase his social standing was a treat. He's so transparent to the audience (always offering to pay and pretending like he's too proud to accept handouts) but able to look sincere to everyone he interacts with in the film. Even some of the social commentary is weirdly delightful. There's the scene where the group is chatting at dinner. Only after a couple minutes of them talking do they acknowledge that there's a waiter at the table waiting on their food order. It's hilarious in a "they have absolutely no idea how privileged they are" kind of way.

The second half is less interesting because it turns into a pretty typical "cheating spouse" story. I like how it's tied to luck by the end, but most of it used the same beats we've seen a hundred times before in this kind of story.

Indirectly tied to the movie, I find it funny that apparently US critics loved the movie whereas British critics rejected it. A lot of the British reviewers seem offended by the fact that it was set in London without Allen appearing to know much about the city. I get that irritation, but as someone who has grown up with every lazy interpretation of Kentucky imaginable (Louisville in particular), I have a hard time caring that much that a city as well-documented as London isn't perfectly captured in a movie that isn't really about the city anyway.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Eighth Grade

Formula: Angus - a few years

It's taken me a while to get to Eighth Grade. There are a few reason for this. One is a matter of timing. Between vacation and the resettling of MoviePass, I had trouble finding a time to get to it. Also, there's the simple fact that 8th graders are among the worst kinds of people, so a movie about them carried little interest for me. To give you an idea of how close I was to skipping it this time even, my deciding factor was that I wanted Penn Station and there was a theater with Eighth Grade playing across the street. Otherwise, it probably would've been BlacKkKlansman this week.

Eighth Grade was about what I expected, more for better than for worse. It covers the last week of 8th grade from the perspective of the class quiet girl, Kayla (Elsie Fisher). It's told episodically through assorted adventures (a pool party, a high school shadow day, hanging out at the mall) but with enough thematic tissue connecting it all to work as a coherent whole.

More than anything, writer/director Bo Burnham nails the tone. So much of the movie feels dead-on accurate. Nearly every character feels real, recognizable, and relatable. I'm at a weird convergence of age and maturity where I relate to Kayla (naturally introverted with no idea how to put herself out there) and her father (a guy who just doesn't want to mess things up and is making it all up as he goes along), played by Josh Hamilton, in equal measure. Even smaller characters feel real. The "cool kids" in her class who are actually just as lame as Kayla*, the parents who have to ignore how awful their kids are being because they know (hope) it's just a phase, the somewhat nerdy kid who sort of has a crush on Kayla and has no idea how to be cool about it. There's a scene when Kayla hangs out with some high school kids that features some truly "high school" conversation. I'm not sure how Burnham captured it all so perfectly. It's all one big 90 minute awkward mess.

*All 8th graders are lame. It's a persistent condition.

I love what Burnham does with the time capsules. The movie begins with Kayla getting a time capsule she made at the beginning of 6th grade and ends with her making one to receive at the end of high school. I've done and still do things like that now (I assume I'm not alone in that, but if you don't, I recommend it. It's...enlightening). I have to say, Kayla learns things by 8th grade that I'm still learning now. Perhaps it underlines the point of the movie too much, but I liked it.

I have trouble saying that I liked Eighth Grade. It's like saying that I like The Act of Killing or Requiem for a Dream. I'm impressed by how real it is. The detail work is tremendous. There's one scene between Kayla and her dad that is as touching as anything I'll see this year. I see great value in younger audiences watching this. The movie doesn't talk down to its characters, which is harder than it sounds. Elsie Fisher is a talent. Josh Hamilton is a great goofy dad. I had a couple issues with the lack of nuance in a few of the antagonist characters. Mainly though, the one thing working against Eighth Grade is that it too perfectly recreates a time I'd rather not revisit. In a way, that's the highest praise I can give it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend