The Emmy Nominations!!

The 69th Emmy nominations have been announced! HBO need not worry that Game of Thrones wasn't eligible this year, as they landed the most nominated drama anyway with Westworld. The early-in-the-season genre hit tied Saturday Night Live for 22 nominations each, followed by Stranger Things and Feud tying for second place at 18 each.

Most of the nominations follow Emmy's expected players despite the openings left by departed perennials like Thrones, though this year isn't without surprises or fresh faces. The major breakthroughs this year were Hulu (finally in the major races thanks to the success of The Handmaid's Tale) and our beloved RuPaul's Drag Race (scoring 7 nominations, plus one for Untucked).

The team will be sharing their favorite nominations and frustrations on what missed the cut later today, but our dream ballot should give you a hint of our thoughts. Here are the nominees in the top categories:

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Team Experience's Dream Emmy Ballot!

Emmy voting closes tomorrow evening, dear readers! Since Nathaniel and the team here at The Film Experience have been writing up our favorite FYCs of the past television year, we have decided to also do some fantasy Emmy voting of our own. Our own Emmy dream ballot has favorites you've read about here before, like nomination leaders Big Little Lies (7 nominations), Feud (6), The Leftovers and the conclusion of Looking (5).

That's a whole lot of love for HBO here at TFE, with Veep also being our most nominated comedy at 4 nods. Might HBO earn similar success with Emmy itself, even though mainstay Game of Thrones won't be eligible? Will this allow for The Leftovers to finally get some love?

Take a look at the results after the jump...

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FYC: "The Good Place" for Best Comedy

Team Experience are sharing their Emmy hopeful favorites. Here's Sean Donovan...

The Good Place was one of the quietest critical successes of the 2016/2017 television calendar, amassing a small but loyal band of followers. They attended to every minuscule detail of the show’s terrifically nuanced mythology. Yet, of all the Emmy FYCs The Film Experience has been doling out these past two weeks, this feels like one of the farthest reaches. The Good Place is perfectly in the lane of a future cult classic. But that's the problem. To become a true cult classic, your greatness must somehow allude the powers that be at the time. 

For the uninitiated, The Good Place follows Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who, following her sudden death in the pilot, finds herself in the afterlife, specifically the carefully non-denominational “Good Place,” presided over by cheerful architect Michael (Ted Danson)...

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Emmy FYC: Difficult People, Season Two

By Spencer Coile 

Emmy season is a treacherous time. With so many scrambling to campaign for their favorites, it is incredibly easy to get lost in the mix of all the names and shows being talked about. Difficult People, however, is not  a show that should merely be talked about. Much like its leading characters, it requires heavy shouting. 

Wannabe actor/comedians and best friends Billy and Julie (played by Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner respectively) are two of the most wretched, vile, and selfish people to hit the televisual landscape in recent years. They attempt to cloy and scratch their way to the top. Season two of Difficult People is practically breathtaking in how quickly paced it is, and it should also go without saying that it is utterly hilarious... 

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Soundtracking: "Big Little Lies"

It's Chris Feil's weekly series on music in the movies, this time on one of this year's television favorites...

Did you know that Emmy added a music supervision category this year? While this may seem a bit nebulous (Emmy sure does have a heck of a lot of categories!), at least we might get some great soundtracks and song choices recognized. Consider my soundtrack column this week an FYC (among others we've written) for what must be the inaugural front-runner Big Little Lies. Emmy: did you ever want it? Did you want it bad?

The musical landscape of Monterey is packed with soul tunes both new and old, weighted with a kind of timeless, cross-generational longing that ties together the various women of its ensemble. They way these songs ache deepen our understanding of each woman’s unique pain: the angry defiance of Jane running to “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”, Madeline’s romantic respite in “River”, and a lyrically literal reflection of Celeste’s sexual confusion with “Victim of Love”. For the audience, music helps us draw the connections between their shared pain, what ultimately unites them all. Big Little Lies’s musical identity is as distinct as the series itself.

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