Delayed Reaction: The Lives of Others

The Pitch: East Germans go all "Big Brother" on some artists before the fall of Berlin Wall.

Is it fair to call this a muted cinema masterclass? I praise a lot of films and TV shows for holding back. The greatest thing about Coach Taylor in FNL or Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea is that they only say about 70% of what you'd like them to say. The rest you have to read from their performance. Ulrich Muhe's character is even more restrained than that. I didn't even realize until I thought about it afterwards how little he talks throughout. He's always listening to the people in the apartment that he bugged for the government, and when he does talk, it's not wasted words.

I can't say I was all that sucked into the movie before the last 20 minutes or so. After the East German government falls, Sebastian Koch's character pieces together all the ways that Muhe helped him. That's when it all comes together. Muhe accepting his demotion for interring with the operation, Koch finding Muhe but deciding not to meet him, and especially Muhe seeing the dedication in Koch's book all brought the film to a new level.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Handmaiden

The Pitch: A petty thief is hired to fraud a Japanese heiress...and then stuff happens.

I picked up the Filmspotting podcast recently (because the other dozen podcasts I'm subscribed to somehow aren't filling enough of my time), and they went crazy for this movie in 2016. I wasn't at all aware of it before that, so I decided to watch it as a sort of test of how my tastes align with the Filmspotting crew's.

If you haven't seen it, the less you know the better. The story reveals itself in waves and changes the perspective of the characters constantly. It's a clever script and not at all what I was expecting. I hesitate to say "twist" because that immediately causes some people to only focus on "figuring it out" rather than enjoying the film. The story is twist-y though. There's a lot to reinterpret as you watch.
A few warnings. It is a foreign film, all in Korean and Japanese. It's pretty long. The nearly 2 and a half hour run time nearly made me late for a movie showing I was trying to make at a theater. There's some intense nudity. I was taken aback by some of it. It's not bad nudity or anything. I just wasn't ready for it. Let's just say I get why the film was unrated now.

The lead actresses, Min-hee Kim and Tae-ri Kim, are both excellent. If I ever get to watching modern Japanese and Korean films more often, I'll be looking for them. On the technical side, the film looks great. I didn't know it at the time, but this is from the same writer/director as Oldboy. That makes sense, although this is nowhere near as violent.

Verdict (?): Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Formula: Kingsman: The Secret Service + more

I'm not sure what to do with the assessment "it's good if you can just turn your brain off". In one respect, I get it. Movies work on two levels: art and entertainment. Great movies can be both. A lot of movies aren't trying to be artistic in any traditional sense though. They just want to entertain. Because of that, they are shielded from critical assessment. In another respect, that's a cop out. It's the same logic as a "guilty pleasure", which I reject. You should always be able to point out what you like about a movie or what works about it. If a movie can't pass that basic test, then what's the point? I run into this problem a lot. Films like Power Rangers or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 I come away from not impressed and my Reaction ends up pretty negative. Then, when I tell people that, the response I get makes me feel like a self-serious downer. I swear, I love dumb movies. I just need the charms of them to outweigh the shaggier elements.

That brings me to Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service. I quite enjoyed that first movie for its commitment to utter excess and its keen awareness that it was a 13 year-old's fever dream version of James Bond. I don't think the movie was trying to say anything other than "this would be fun", and I respected it for that. Kingsman 2 (I'm not writing The Golden Circle every time), picks up a while after the first film. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is a full agent now, every bit as effective as his mentor, Harry (Colin Firth), was. After a sneak attack by a drug kingpin (Julianne Moore) who has a fondness for 50's nostalgia, the Kingsmen are decimated, so Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong) must employ the help of their stateside counterpart, the Statesmen. The Statesmen are filled with plenty of cowboy stereotypes and played by Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, and Halle Berry. The Statesmen and remaining Kingsmen have to work together to take down Julianne Moore and her secret organization: The Golden Circle. Oh, and since every bit of advertising has spoiled it, I should mention that Colin Firth is back. Yay!...?

Kingsman 2 is a sequel in the TMNT: Out of the Shadows vein. It's designed for fans of the first movie and no one else. And, the bigger a fan of the first you are, the better. It employs the standard sequel mentality of "escalate and amplify". There's more of everything in the movie. Bigger action. More characters. More complicated explanations. Archer villains. Cruder humor. I loved all the stuff about the Statesman, if nothing else, because they are bourbon distillers based out of Kentucky, and I'm from Kentucky and love bourbon. They aren't all that inventive though, just a cowboy version of all the same ideas behind the Kingsman. It's like getting a new version of a video game with more characters but no changes to the gameplay*. I could be bothered by the oversimplification of the Statesman, that's the way this series operates: broad generalizations. All Brits are stuffy. All Americans are cowboys. I'm sure an Australian group would all look like Crocodile Dundee. Anything less would almost be a disappointment.

*For fans of Super Smash Brothers. Kingsman is to Statesman as Marth is to Roy. Not inspired, but technically new.

The movie is very unforgiving if you don't have a good memory of the first movie. It is filled with callbacks. As someone who only somewhat remembers the first movie, that got old quickly. I like that they are trying to reward fans. They do it just a little too much though, and it starts to come off as isolating, like it's saying, "oh, this film isn't for you. It's for real fans". Another thing about callbacks is that they work best when the unfamiliar don't realize it's happening. If the movie is pausing to say, "Hey, remember this?" then I can't call it a good call-back. A good example is that this film recreates the most iconic scene from the first movie and has some fun with shaking it up. It works even if you forgot or didn't know about the original scene, but there are enough added details to make it even better if you recognize them.

I take the good with the bad in a movie like this. I enjoy how ridiculously over the top everything is. Julianne Moore is a bad villain just like Samuel L Jackson was. He was a man with a lisp and loved to talk and was a crime boss who hated the sight of blood. She is a ruthless drug kingpin who doesn't like drugs or swearing. They don't fit the bold mold at all. The action is so absurd that I'm happy to go along with it. Going back to the video game comparison, it's like playing a level that you've already mastered just for the fun of it. There are no stakes but it's still fun to go through those motions. But, I have the same issues with this as with the first. Some of the sex humor is dirty without being clever and the violence is a bit more over the top than I care for.

I am lower on this movie than the first. There's a lot of small things that annoy me that all build up. Bringing back Colin Firth is inexcusable fan service. One thing that made the first movie interesting is that it was willing to kill off the stand-out character like that. Bringing him back and in such a convoluted way undoes a lot of the goodwill I had for the series. It also struck me as a huge waste to off Sophie Cookson so casually. Other characters get big sendoffs. She gets "oh no, a missile". That didn't sit well with me. Given that, the way that Halle Berry takes the back seat for most of the movie, and the mission Eggsy goes on at a music festival, the film has some gender issues . I forgave the first film a lot more because Cookson had a prominent role and Sofia Boutella got to be the ultimate badass. Moore as a benign supervillain didn't make up for that as much. There's also a cameo that overstays its welcome. It's like Matthew Vaughn was so happy he got this person to appear in the film, that he kept writing more scenes with him and didn't factor in the law of diminishing returns.

Oh, and the less I say about the toothless drug commentary in this film, the better. It felt really unneeded. It's not more absurd than anything else in the movie, especially the U.S. President's response to it all. It's just more than the plot really needed.

Everyone in the cast, new and old, knows exactly what is expected from their characters. Taron Egerton embodies the new face of an old way of thinking. He fits in the suit perfectly while also being a bit of a renegade when compared to the older generation. Collin Firth and Mark Strong represent that old guard just as well this time around. The Statesman casting is pretty perfect. Jeff Bridges is the obvious pick for the elder Statesman. Channing Tatum seems right as one of the younger agents, especially since he can just use that Logan Lucky accent* (I know, it's a little different). Pedro Pascal is even having a lot of fun doing his best Burt Reynolds impression. Halle Berry is frustratingly underused but fine when she shows up. Julianne Moore is delightfully over-the-top. Anything more subtle would've been somehow less authentic.

*Btw, this is the second Channing Tatum movie in a row that prominently features the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads". That's probably a coincidence, but it's specific enough to be worth noting. If he suddenly gets cast in a John Denver biopic, I'll know that something's up.

I wasn't crazy about Kingsman 2. I did like it, only slightly less than the first movie. It has that same half a grade letter grade drop that's assumed for any sequel. That ends up being the difference between enjoying the first movie a lot and simply enjoying this one. It doubles down on everything, which is effective in some cases and too much in others. I can only recommend this to people who liked the first movie. Even then, if you were only tepid about that one, there's nothing to change your mind this time. Matthew Vaughn knows what he's about. So yeah, this movie is good is you can just turn your brain off. If you leave your brain on, it's still fun but pretty flawed.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Cartel Land

The Pitch: Who fights the cartels when the government won't?

If it isn't clear by now that I've gone a little documentary crazy lately, I don't know what it will take. I blame stumbling onto some Ken Burns documentaries on Netflix a few months ago. Regardless, I decided to give this one a try because it was easily available and was nominated for an Oscar. As much as I disagree with Oscar selections, it's still a useful shorthand. I like the idea behind the film: a look on both sides of the fence to see how vigilantes are fighting back against the cartels in Mexico and the US. There's a massive imbalance in how interesting the material is though. The story of Jose Mireles and the Autodefensas dominates the movie. There's some nice touches with the Arizona Border Recon stuff, but not enough to justify this documentary not being entirely about the Autodefenses. The filmmakers get incredible access. That alone makes this doc engaging to watch. The smear job at the end was a little strange. They almost go overboard in showing the fall of the Autodefenses, namely Jose Mireles. The stuff about him being a womanizer, I don't see what that has to do with anything, unless the filmmakers were worried he was looking too heroic. It did help me feel less sympathy for him when it ends with him in jail. It just felt like a bit much.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Stronger

Formula: Patriots Day * The parts of Forrest Gump with Lt. Dan

Stronger is the kind of movie that Rotten Tomatoes was made for. I make it no secret that I get annoyed by RT. People have a fundamental misunderstanding of the site. They treat it like Metacritic (which has its own issues), and assume that a high number means it's a great movie. It actually rates how well received a movie is: how likable it is. Likability does not equal quality. Sometimes, that doesn't matter at all. Last week, mother! got middling reviews. That's good. That movie was almost designed to split audiences. I don't want to see the universally praised version of mother!. That's why I don't care much about RT for most horror movies. They are intended to turn people off.

Stronger is different. This is a movie that had a lot of things working against it. First of all, there was already one really good, emotional film about the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year. I'm sorry to say it, but that's a niche market that gets saturated super fast. It's not that there can only be one. It's that there should only be one every so often. This movie is very Boston - or rather - Ba-stan. Every other word out of someone's mouth is either "Red" or "Sox" and the actors are all putting on think Boston accents which turns some potentials viewers off immediately. It's a movie that is transparently emotional. It makes no secret that it's trying to make you cry, and you can't convince me that Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't thinking "Oscar" when he signed on to star in and produce this. This movie goes for broke in a way that I had expecting critics to pounce on it like it was directed by Micheal Bay and starring Keanu Reeves with a soundtrack by Nickelback and a Guy Fieri cameo. Really, I pre-dismissed it as a well-meaning but not very good film about a tragedy. Then I saw that the Tomato-meter had it at over 90% and I immediately reconsidered. If critics weren't taking an easy swipe at Gyllenhaal* and this film, then maybe I should see it. After all, there are a lot of things working for the movie too. Gyllenhaal might be my favorite working actor right now, or near the top. It's got Tatiana Maslany, who is stupid-good in Orphan Black. It's from director David Gordon Green, who has a very interesting filmography that includes everything from stoner comedies (Pineapple Express) to sweet indies (Prince Avalanche).

*And before you go claiming that Gyllenhaal is some critical darling that people put on blinders for, I'd like to remind you about Demolition - 53%, Accidental Love - 6%, and even Southpaw - 60% and Life 67%, which only got middling reviews.

So, yeah. I liked Stronger. It's the story of Jeff Bauman (Gyllenhaal), who lost his legs from the Boston Marathon bombing. It starts shortly before the bombing; long enough to introduce Jeff as kind of a slacker, with an on-again/off-again girlfriend (Maslany), a tight-knit family, and a deep love of the Red Sox. After the bombing, he must learn how to cope with newfound celebrity as a symbol of "Boston Strong" that he didn't ask for and he has to figure out how to cope with his loss. As is often the case with movie like this, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: the fact that its based on a true story. On one hand, the fact that so much in the movie really happened gives a lot of moments a profound impact, and the film gets a lot of those moments right. On the other hand, you can feel when things are reorganized, changed, or exaggerated to make it work as a film. I was pretty forgiving of those aspects, but I can see how other people could have a harder time looking past it. Similarly, sentimentality is one of those things that's highly dependent on how it's received. You can look at something as melodramatic and overacted or you can see it as riveting and honest character work. That's really up to you at least as much as the film. This movie goes for a lot of big moments. There's yelling, crying, and menace that you have to embrace at least a little for it to work. It certainly worked for me. At many points, even as I was completely aware of what the movie was doing, I couldn't help but tear up. It got me on a gut level. It also has that weird thing you run into in biopics where the story seems to move too fast and too slow at the same time. There's a montage that races though weeks of work and also a single night in which everything seems to happen.

I'm mixed on the cast and characters. Gyllenhaal is happy to get as physical as the role requires and then some. It's a bit much at times but super effective more often. There isn't a lot to the Jeff character, which is a problem. Gyllenhaal and Maslany have good chemistry, but it's never all that clear why those two are together. It feels like she's only with him because of the injury way too much of the time. Some of that is intentional, but not at the level I was feeling it. Jeff spends most of the movie in shock or still processing his situation. Jeff/Gyllenhaal disappears at times despite being front and center on camera. He sells the hell out of the shock of it all. I just wish there was a bit of a character too rather than a collection of PTSD tropes. Maslany is great throughout. She sells every scene she's in despite having a similarly thin character. Jeff's large family all blend together, kind of like all of Mark Wahlberg's sisters in The Fighter. They are collectively one loud, chaotic character and I liked that.

Stronger isn't going to be one of my favorite films of the year. It was surprisingly good though. It does a great job of depicting the survivor's side of a tragedy. It earns the emotions it got out of me. The performances are strong even though the writing isn't always there to match. It earns its R-rating in a good way. It's not gratuitous with what it shows. It's honest. You can't fake sincerity and this is a very sincere movie.

One final note: The fact that they found no way to sneak in Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger" is inexcusable.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Christine

The Pitch: The story of the woman who inspire Network.

Here's how this is going to go. Rebecca Hall is tremendous in this movie. See it for that reason. It's about news reporter Christine Chubbuck. If you don't know her story and want to be surprised by the movie, stop reading now. If you already know her story, just clicked the Wikipedia link, or don't care about getting spoiled, please continue.

...

Chubbuck is infamous for killing herself during a news broadcast after reading the line "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in 'blood and guts', and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide." Christine follows Chubbuck for the few weeks leading up to this event. It is a character study first and foremost. Without someone as good as Rebecca Hall at the center, the movie is nothing.

I think there is a correct amount to know about this going in. Know too much, and you start to pick at the accuracy. Know too little, and you can misinterpret certain warning signs. Christine is depressed and manic. Her actions are way over the top. All sorts of people are throwing her life preserves and she refuses them all. And she knows she's doing it. That feels very authentic to her depression even if it's not exactly how if went for Chubbuck in real life. At times, Hall is devastating to watch. I was thoroughly impressed.

Verdict (?):Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Cameraperson

The Pitch: A documentary cinematographer cuts together a movie out of extra-footage from other projects of hers over the years.

2016 had a lot of good documentaries. It was lousy with them and I've probably saw more documentaries from that year already than I have for any other year. Some were fantastic (OJ: Made in America, Tower). Many were passionate (13th, Audrie & Daisy, The Witness). In  some cases, the story was so compelling that it didn't matter how well made the documentary was (Author: The JT Leroy Story, Holy Hell, The Lovers & The Despot). And there's still a lot that I'm looking forward to seeing (Wiener, I Am Not Your Negro, Kate Plays Christine). If OJ: Made in America and 13th were the most highly praised docs of the year, Cameraperson wasn't far behind. More than the other two, Cameraperson struck me as the kind of documentary that would be more appealing to critics than general audiences. There's no narrative structure to it. No narration. It takes a while to get used to the rhythm of the film. Overall, I liked it. It's simple, effective, well-edited, and a little ballsy. Figuring out the thematic significance requires a sort of "choose-your-own-adventure" approach.  By the end, it all feels right. It can be rough to push through the first 30 minutes or so, because it really does feel like a bunch of random footage put together. Around that point, it all starts to make sense in an ineffable way. Even if that didn't happen and it was just a bunch of random clips, that would've been fine by me. As long as the footage is interesting, I don't need to feel like it's going anywhere. I'm not as enamored by this film as some, but I still liked it.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: mother!

Formula: Rosemary's Baby + Pacific Heights

Darren Aronofsky is great at making audiences uncomfortable. Requiem for a Dream is a nightmare for all the characters in it. Black Swan has a heroine who is driven to madness by her desire for perfection. Noah is about a man who is pretty sure he's the one person who isn't crazy, at least about the flood. None of his films are crowd-pleasers. It should be no surprise to say that mother!, his latest film, isn't either. It also has his fingerprints all over it.

mother! is the horrifying story of a woman who just wants to keep her house clean but outsiders keep wrecking it. That's both an oversimplification of it and a direct metaphor. More specifically, it follows Jennifer Lawrence. She's married to Javier Bardem and they live in an idyllic and secluded farmhouse. Their blissful peace is ruined when two strangers played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up at their door. Well, I should say that Lawrence's peace is ruined. Bardem seems oddly fine with it. Increasingly bizarre things start happening around the house after that, and that's about all I can say.

It's going to be tricky to talk about this film, because the ad campaign has been so much about the mystery. The film isn't all that twisty. I'm pretty sure it's advertised as a mystery because it's hard to get across what the film really is in a TV spot or trailer. "It's a mystery" is much simpler to advertise. My biggest issue with the film is that I liked it less the more I realized where the story was going. It begins as a curiosity. Something is clearly wrong and Lawrence is oddly OK with letting it all play out. The more things escalate, the more biblical and personal (for Aronofsky) it all gets. By the end, the messaging of the movie gets too scattered for me. Aronofsky is making points about motherhood, marriage, female subjugation, and the curse of the tortured artist and none of the points hit me very hard.

The not so secret comparison that's being made with this movie is Rosemary's Baby. The two films are more similar in tone than plot. Lawrence is the lead but she isn't driving the movie. It's a very reactive performance and it's frustratingly passive. Lawrence is both very good in the role and wasted in it. Her character, only known in the film as Mother, doesn't say much. A lot has to be conveyed through looks and reactions and Lawrence is great at communicating that. I don't know that I've ever seen her be this passive though and it's uncomfortable. Her best characters take charge of a situation, partly because that's what she is best at as a performer, and that isn't what Mother is about. She's completely helpless. This is intentional and tied to the core of the film. As I said though, I didn't care for that core and what it's trying to say. The film is so heavily tied to Lawrence's perspective that it's hard to read the rest of the performances. I like that Javier Bardem would've been the lead of the film if it was told in a more straightforward manner. As is, he's a very opaque character. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer give good performances, although they are walking plot devices. 

On a technical level, the film is well made. It takes place entirely in the farm house but it never felt confined in it. The dedication of the camera on Lawrence is impressive. Often it's like the camera is chasing her so that it can find her for a close up, like she's looking away and it keeps finding her. Aronofsky manages chaos as well as anyone and foregrounds a lot of key items and locations effectively. While I mention the obvious Rosemary's Baby comparison that keeps getting made, I actually kept coming back to A Ghost Story, which I thought was a much better film and had a lot in common with this. mother! fits neatly into Darren Aronofsky's filmography but isn't essential to it. It might be his most personal film, which has to count for something. I simply didn't connect with anything it had to say.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

2018 Emmy Predictions

It's time for one my first and favorite traditions on this blog. I'm going to make my Emmy predictions for a year from now. This is my annual attempt to read the tea leaves and see where TV is going to be in a year. I did horribly with my 2017 predictions. Hopefully it goes a lot better for 2018. I feel like I made some easy predictions, but I thought that last year too. Things change quickly, and a lot of the Emmy contenders won't be showing up until April. That's a lot of time.

Past editions:
2017 Predictions | Results
2016 Predictions | Results
2015 Predictions | Results
2014 Predictions | Results
2013 Predictions | Results
2012 Predictions | Results

HBO wins the big four series awards
This isn't a big swing. Game of Thrones will be back. There's no obvious threat to dethrone Veep. HBO is always a player in the Limited Series category. Last Week Tonight could very well be on a Daily Show-esque reign of dominance. While each individual prediction is likely, it's hard to pull off all four.

Julia Louis Dreyfus goes for seven and history.
She is currently tied with Cloris Leachman for most Emmy wins for a performer, and unlike Leachman, hasn't won any as a guest performer. Nothing about JLD's current streak is typical. It's hard enough to be nominated every season of a series. Winning for the entire run is unheard of. The stars are aligned though. Her competition level looks weaker than it did  when she won her first few Emmys for Veep and next year will be for Veep's final season.

Netflix gains. Hulu falls. Amazon disappears.
It's hard to imagine Netflix gaining even more Emmy love than it already has, but the way they saturate the market with programming, it's become inevitable. Hulu hasn't had luck with anything other than The Handmaid's Tale, which will lose some real estate with Game of Thrones back in the mix. I'm not aware of anything in development for them that looks like an Emmy player either. Amazon has had a lot of failures lately and are publicly moving in a different direction. Transparent might get a lead actor nomination still, but that's about it.

Stranger Things falls hard.
I was very wrong about how sustainable Stranger Things' popularity was for season 1, so I'm probably underestimating it now too. This series looks like the definitive one hit wonder with Emmy voters. I'm sure it will still be popular, but without the surprise factor, I don't see how it keeps all those writing, directing, and acting nominations. A drama series nomination might still be in play, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Twin Peaks gets no more than 1 nomination for the main ceremony
By the time the next Emmys come around, Twin Peaks will have been over for a year. It had a niche audience, even by Emmy standards. While it won back in the day, I don't see this gets more than a token nomination for one of the actors or whatever episode David Lynch submits for directing.

HBO fails to win for TV Movie again
HBO has always dominated this category. In recent years it's shown more weakness, partially thanks to weaker offerings on their part. I'm not sure where the winner will come from, but the loophole that Sherlock and Black Mirror have used is getting more popular every year.

Tatiana Maslany doesn't get nominated again.
I'm not rooting for this at all. It just seems likely. It took a lot of campaigning to get her nominated in the first place. The momentum from her surprise win last year could be lost thanks to Orphan Black taking a year off from the Emmys because it premiered too late. I'm not convinced voters will remember her when she''s back on the ballot. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Elisabeth Moss wins two Emmys
The Handmaid's Tale is a safe bet. Top of the Lake will be back for Limited Series. She was nominated for that once. I don't think a win is out of the question. This, of course, is all invalidated if the continuing storyline of Top of the Lake gets it moved from Limited Series to Drama Series (a la Downtown Abbey) where Moss would be competing against herself.

Someone new from Veep is nominated
It's crazy that it hasn't happened yet. As much as I love Tony Hale and Matt Walsh, I would've expected them to rotate out with Timothy Simons, Reid Scott, Gary Cole, Kevin Dunn, or Sam Richardson at some point. The same goes Sarah Sutherland sneaking into the Supporting Actress field.

Welcome back, The Daily Show
This is a little out there. The Variety Talk category is pretty set as it is. Trevor Noah and company have settled into their Daily Show a little more. I could see them sneaking a writing or directing nomination at the very least.

Bonus: Diversity becomes a problem again
This one is hard to measure. But, after how nicely diverse the winners were this year and given likely hiatuses from shows like Atlanta and Master of None, and the media hair-trigger for this topic after #OscarSoWhite, I could the Emmys getting more vanilla in 2018 and a lot of people making a lot of noise about it. For the record, I am hoping the diversity on TV continues. It's led to many of my favorite shows being made. This just never seems to last though.

Emmy Predictions 2017 Results and Post Mortem

The Emmys are over, so now it's time to look back. I'm going to break this into two parts: My 2016 predictions for 2017 and my thoughts on this year's winners.

Part 1: 2017 [Blind] Predictions:

Perhaps my favorite tradition on this blog is when I make predictions for the next Emmys right after the current ceremony. In other words, on September 21, 2016, I made the following predictions about the 2017 Emmys. Let's see how I did.

Previous Editions:
2012 Predictions
2013 Predictions
2014 Predictions
2015 Predictions
2016 Predictions

Prediction: Julia Louis-Dreyfus fails to win a 6th consecutive Emmy for Veep
Reasoning: JLD was the first person to ever win five times in a row. Six is almost laughable, and surely, someone new will excite voters enough to go another way.
Reality: While Allison Janney moving up to Lead Actress for Mom made it a little more interesting, the overall competition wasn't enough for JLD to be dethroned. And, it's not like JLD wasn't the best performer.

Prediction: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee gets a Variety Talk Series nomination.Reasoning: It was surprising that it was snubbed in the first place. That had to be a fluke.
Reality: It was nominated and arguably in the mix to win. I'd also like to point out that I mentioned Colbert was likely to be nominated as well and he was.

Prediction: Kiefer Sutherland joins the Lead Actor field
Reasoning: The broadcast networks were due a Lead Actor in a Drama nomination and Keifer Sutherland (Designated Survivor) was a former winner for 24.
Reality: Well, I was right about the broadcast networks being due a Lead Actor in a Drama nomination (2, in fact). It just wasn't for Designated Survivor or Sutherland.

Prediction: Fargo win Outstanding Limited Series on the strength of Ewan McGreggor's Lead Actor winReasoning: There were no obvious contenders at the time to unseat Fargo's third season and Ewan McGreggor playing twins sounded like great Emmy-bait.
Reality: I should just stat away from Emmy predictions about Limited Series. It's getting more competitive every year and something in the winter is sure to surprise me. This year, FEUD and Big Little Lies knocked a weaker Fargo season down. And, I should get a big demerit because when I made this prediction, I'd already seen The Night Of and knew it would be eligible. The Night Of's Riz Ahmed ultimately beat McGreggor for the Lead Actor Emmy.

Prediction: Reality Competition will have a first time winner
Reasoning: The category is old and need of a shake up. RuPaul's Drag Race was picking up steam. It sounded like a sure thing.
Reality: Well, Drag Race did get that nomination. However, voters weren't ready to let go of The Voice.

Prediction: Hulu is still ignoredReasoning: Hulu hadn't had much luck in previous years and I don't think I knew enough about The Handmaid's Tale at the time to take it seriously.
Reality: The Handmaid's Tale won many for Drama Series, direction, writing, lead actress, and supporting actress, so what do I know? Even looking at overall nominations, Hulu jumped from 2 to 18 nominations.

Prediction: Netflix loses ground in the major nomination count (Drama, Comedy, Limited, Movie)Reasoning: They gained nominations every year since 2013. They were bound to take a slight step back at the very least.
Reality: Netflix had 16 nominations during the main ceremony in 2016. In 2017, they have 25. So, again, big miss by me. Mostly, I assumed that Stranger Things would go away by the time people got to voting, and even if it hadn't, it's not the kind of show that normally gets Emmy love in the first place.

Prediction: Keri Russell or Matthew Rhys wins for Lead on The Americans
Reasoning: The Americans increased its number of nominations the last couple years and, more recently, Emmy voting has been following a "we finally discovered it" pattern. Shows like Game of Thrones, Veep, and Breaking Bad all took a few seasons before becoming Emmy winners. It looked like The Americans was following the same path.
Reality: It took GoT, Veep, and Breaking Bad several seasons to win the overall series award. All of them got acting wins in their first season. The Americans didn't even get nominations in its first season. It didn't help that it also got lost in an unbelievably crowded April this year and had an uneventful season.

Prediction: Kate McKinnon isn't the only SNL cast member nominated.
Reasoning: McKinnon isn't the only good cast member. People were bound to notice.
Reality: I never thought to bake in the possibility of a potential President Trump bump. Lucky (?) for me it happened and SNL dominated the nominations, even getting two wins.

Prediction: Only 1 of the 8 Drama and Comedy Acting winners will repeatReasoning: A couple winners were guaranteed to gone and a few others felt like flukes to begin with.
Reality: 1/8 was too ambitious. Still, I was almost right. Only JLD and Kate McKinnon repeated.

I also want to include my overall thoughts of these predictions when I made them last year:

Ok, maybe these aren't that bold. They sound good right now. Then again, last year, I had no idea that Limited Series would become the strongest series category. I hadn't even heard of Master of None or Baskets. Blackish hadn't made "the leap" yet. And The Americans was still an Emmy outsider. A lot can change in a year.

A lot did change in a year. I only got 1 out of 10 this year, which I'm pretty sure is the worst since I started in 2011/2012. Oh well. Check back Tuesday for my 2018 predictions. I need some time to lick my wounds.

Part 2: Thoughts on the 2017 Emmy Results

As for this year's ceremony, I'll break this down into my standard Good, Bad, and Meh.

The Good 

Donald GloverI would've been fine to hear Donald Glover give four acceptance speeches tonight. Two (Lead Actor, Directing) is fine though. He deserves whatever accolades anyone wants to give him. Seeing him finally getting major recognition would've been my favorite part of the night if not for...

Elisabeth Moss
Fucking, finally! I still don't understand how she lost every year on Mad Men and once for Top of the Lake, just to add insult to injury. She should have a shelf of Emmys already inside an annex in her house where she keeps all the Golden Globe, SAG, People's Choice, Television Critics Association, Critics Choice, Online Film & Television Association, Satellite, Cable ACE awards she should've also won. This is a good start though.

Black Mirror: San Junipero
I picked this show up late and I'm glad I did. While I liked many of the other nominees, it was nice to see this stand-alone anthology show get some love in the TV Movie and writing categories.

The Bad

Reality Competition



I really don't have anything against The Voice, but literally only three shows have ever won this award since it was created in 2003 (The Amazing Race, Top Chef, The Voice). It's time for voters to watch a few more shows. I really wanted to see something like RuPaul's Drag Race or American Ninja Warrior pull off an upset.

The Wins That Were Never Going to Happen
I didn't have a lot of problems with the ceremony. A lot of shows I liked won. Even ignoring all the snubs that I would've loved to see nominated in the first place, there were a frustrating number of nominees that I didn't even bother rooting for, because I knew they didn't have a chance. Mainly, I'm thinking of Carrie Coon on Fargo, the Better Call Saul episode "Chicanery", and The Night Of pilot.

The Meh

The Handmaid's TaleI liked the show. I don't think it was good enough to deserve the level of domination it had against the field. Then again, it was a pretty weak field overall for drama with all the delayed productions, snubs, and shows that ended last year.

Veep

I don't like when people turn on a good show just because it's won a couple times. Veep wasn't as strong as it was the previous two seasons. It wasn't going against crazy-strong competition this year either. Maybe Atlanta or Master of None, but even huge fans (including myself) have to admit those are niche series. I'm pleased that voters didn't turn on Veep and that other deserving shows got some wins as well.