The Emmy B-Team: Reality Shows

Welcome to the 8^th edition of the Emmy B-Team. The idea is simple. People like to complain about the Emmy nominations. They point out snubs, never consider what was actually on the ballots*, and say the Emmy voters did a bad job picking nominees. The skeptic that I am, I wanted to find out if the Emmy picks were really that bad. So, every year, I look through the Emmy nomination ballots. I create an alternate group of non-nominated performers/episodes/shows (my “B-Team”) and compare those to the actual nominees to see which is stronger. I’ll spare you the suspense: The actual Nominees always win handily even though I go into it each time thinking this is the year the B-Team has the edge. It turns out, a couple bad snubs don’t outweigh 3-5 good picks. Instead, the B-team serves as a fun way for me to point out the biggest snubs, audit the Emmy picks more fairly, and point out some quirks in the nominating ballots.

 

*Remember, a show, person, or episode can only be nominated if it is submitted. Even if you want every episode of Ted Lasso to be nominated for writing, that won't happen, since they only submitted some of the episodes.

 

**You'd be surprised how often that actor you thought was snubbed wasn't even on the official ballot or had listed himself as a lead instead of a supporting actor.

 

I don't do every category. I don't pretend that I've seen everything or that I fully understand all the categories. I'm a one-man operation talking about hundreds of shows. I'm doing the best I can.

 

I want to make it clear what my decision means for these match ups. What I’m asking is, would I replace the Nominees list with the B-Team. That is the only thing I am testing.

 

Next up are the Reality categories, which I fully guess about.

 

Indicates a show that I haven't watched this season.

# Indicates a show I've seen before, not this season.

 

Outstanding Host For A Reality Or Competition Program

Nominees

• Nicole Byer (Nailed It!)
• Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, Tan France, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan Van Ness (Queer Eye)
• RuPaul (RuPaul's Drag Race)
• Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, Kevin O'Leary (Shark Tank)
• Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, Gail Simmons (Top Chef)

 

B-Team

• *Matt Iseman, Akbar Gbajabiamila, Zuri Hall (American Ninja Warrior)
• Selena Gomez (Selena + Chef)
• Tyra Banks (Dancing With the Stars)
• Bear Grylls (Running Wild with Bear Grylls)
• #Ryan Seacrest (American Idol)

 

I struggled to fill up this B-Team. I like Iseman, Gbajabiamila, and Hall’s cheesy banter on American Ninja Warrior, and Seacreast is an old pro. The Nominees have all the required people. RuPaul remains the king (or queen?) of the category. All the Queer Eye, Top Chef, and Shark Tank’s co-hosts share single tickets. That’s so much host power.

 

Winner: Nominees (Dominantly)

 

 

Outstanding Structured Reality Program

Nominees

• Antiques Roadshow
• Property Brothers: Forever Home
• Queer Eye
• Running Wild With Bear Grylls
• Shark Tank

 

B-Team

• Catfish: The TV Show
• Impractical Jokers
• Selena + Chef
• Snapped
• Top Gear America

 

Another B-Team I really struggled to fill. This might be easier if I watched more reality TV, of course. All the shows that I’d think needed to be nominated were nominated though.

 

Winner: Nominees (Dominantly)

 

Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program

Nominees

• Becoming
• Below Deck
• Indian Matchmaking
• RuPaul's Drag Race Untucked
• Selling Sunset

 

B-Team

• Crikey! It’s a Baby!
• Deadliest Catch
• Intervention
• Keeping Up with the Kardashians
• The Real World Homecoming: New York

 

I’m not one to fight the Drag Race franchise. Below Deck and Selling Sunset are two shows that I saw discussed all over Twitter at different points, so I’ll assume the Nominees have the most popular shows. I kind of like my B-Team though. Crikey! It’s a Baby! is probably an awful show, but that title is *chef’s kiss*. Deadliest Catch, Intervention, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians are all institutions. And The Real World Homecoming brings things back to the show that really kicked off the Reality TV revolution.

 

Winner: B-Team (Comfortably)

 

Outstanding Competition Program

Nominees

• The Amazing Race
• Nailed It!
• RuPaul's Drag Race
• Top Chef
• The Voice

 

B-Team

• *American Ninja Warrior
• *Battlebots
• The Masked Singer
• Penn & Teller: Fool Us
• Supermarket Sweep

 

If this exercise was “Which group of shows would I rather watch?” then it would be B-Team in a rout. American Ninja Warrior and Battlebots are two of the only Competition series I actually watch. I love me some Penn & Teller and have a nostalgic fondness for Supermarket Sweep. And, while I don’t really care about The Masked Singer, I appreciate the oddity of it.

But, come on. The Nominees have this. Drag Race, Amazing Race, Top Chef, and The Voice have been the class of the Competition Program category for years. This isn’t a category for upstarts.

 

Winner: Nominees (Comfortably)

 

Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series Or Special

Nominees

• My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman
• Oprah With Meghan And Harry: A CBS Primetime Special
• Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy
• United Shades Of America With W. Kamau Bell
• Vice

 

B-Team

• History of Swear Words
• Six Degrees with Mike Rowe
• Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi
• Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives
• Modern Marvels

 

This category is still pretty shallow. The Nominees got all the really key ones like United Shades and Vice as well as the big names like Oprah and Letterman. I suppose the B-Team is nice with Mike Rowe and Padma Lakshmi’s latest shows. It’s no comparison.

 

Winner: Nominees (Dominantly)

 

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4-1 Nominees

Normally this is 5-0, so the B-Team is showing a little strength here. The Nominees still represent the best in the Reality space though, despite a whiff or two.

Delayed Reaction: Irreplaceable You

Premise: A woman dying of cancer tries to find a woman for her fiancé to be with after she dies.

 

The premise of this movie is so baffling that it's hard to move past it. Like Gugu Mbatha-Raw's character, its heart is in the wrong place, but it requires a character to charge directly into an awful decision for so long that I can't connect with it at all.

 

Mbatha-Raw has been dating Michiel Huisman since they were kids. They are deeply in love. When she finds out she has terminal cancer, her method of coping is becoming obsessed with making sure Huisman moves on and finds the right woman. Nearly every character tells her this is a horrible idea, but she keeps up with it anyway. Things go predictably wrong.

I see the bones of a sweet idea here. It's a bittersweet idea: trying to roll a doomed romance, losing a love one, and trying to move on all into one story. It's got P.S. I Love You vibes that are irresistible. I don't begrudge them for trying. If they pulled this off, it would be a devastating classic of the genre that people would discover for years. That it fails is evidence of how incredibly hard it is to pull off.

 

Mbatha-Raw plays the character well, especially in the moments not about her quest to find a replacement girlfriend. Huisman seems a bit miscast as the boyfriend. Both of them are a little too gorgeous to be this bashful about dating. At least she's dying though. They try to She's All That Huisman with a pair of glasses and have Brian Tyree Henry tell him how useless he is with women. It doesn't track. The cast of this movie is really freaking stacked. Everyone is a name or at least a face. I'd love to know the story here. Does director Stephanie Laing have a lot of friends? Is this a Netflix pull thing (although I'm pretty sure they just distributed it and had nothing to do with the production)? None of the producers jump out as connected people. There's a story here, and the Wikipedia page isn't detailed enough to tell it.

 

In the end, this is a noble failure that I commend. It's still sweetly romantic at times and a kick in the balls in places that are undeniable. It's just effective enough to ruin my afternoon, although the best version of this could've ruined my week.

 Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend